mezzoblue § July 2004 archive

Helping hands

Jul 29

In a ‘Dailies’ link two months back, I mentioned that US Peace Corps volunteer Scott Stadum was looking for a little design help. The response was great, and now he has bigger and better plans.

Continue Reading… | comments off | posted to The Good

François Briatte has compiled a rather large-ish survey comparing 10 web sites selected from his daily reads. The findings are interesting from a statistical point of view, but more so because of the various dissidence from the perceived ‘norm’.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (23) | posted to Design

Design Theft: Crossing the Line

Jul 26

Altering someone else’s design material creates a new work; is this acceptable? How much does the original have to change for it to become acceptable? A visual look at the process provides more questions than answers.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (109) | posted to Design

Notes From All Over Part V

Jul 23

Thoughts on the Odeon debacle and developer workarounds for bad sites, Internet Explorer news, and a few random links to start the weekend.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (19) | posted to Links

Veer, Marketing

Jul 22

A pleasant little surprise showed up in my mailbox this afternoon: summer goodies from Veer, the creative materials provider. This is a company that knows its market.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (10) | posted to Design

Heading Order

Jul 19

What’s up with heading order? Tomas Jogin wants to know. A “Web Standards Solutions” Q&A session if there ever was one.

Continue Reading… | comments off | posted to HTML/XHTML

Texture

Jul 14

Flat colour and gradients only go so far. It’s nice to have alternatives for filling larger stretches of space within a design; I’ve been turning to texture more frequently. Here are some notes on that.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (16) | posted to Design

Mobile CSS

Jul 13

My old cell phone plan expired some time last week, and after the indentured servitude of a rather lengthy contract (for the sake of free hardware some time in 2001), it was time to refresh the handset. New toy: a tiny little Audiovox 8900.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (28) | posted to CSS, Technology

Book Review: Web Standards Solutions

Jul 11

If you’ve been following Dan Cederholm’s SimpleQuiz series for any length of time, you’ll be happy to note that his new book Web Standards Solutions is a full-length summary of the best practices that have evolved from it, and more.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (14) | posted to Web Standards

PHP, CGI, and MT: Together at Last

Jul 08

A long-standing problem with Movable Type’s templating system is that the Perl-based .cgi files it relies on don’t allow for the use of PHP. That’s changing though.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (30) | posted to Server-Side