sitedesignmagazine.com

I know this is good news, but all I keep thinking in the back of my head is, “Great, another browser to worry about when I’m creating websites…”

Read Google’s Official Post on the new Browser

I’m writing this post from the iPhone wordpress app. It’s pretty freakin sweet - very simple and easy to use.

I also upgraded our wordpress installation to v 2.6.1 or whatever was the latest. It was a little painful- but not so bad.

Hopefully some new updates for the site are just around the corner.

Just in case you’re in the middle of designing a new condiment packet and needed some inspiration, here is a collection of like 700+ condiment packets…

I imagine this has been around for a long time, but I recently came across the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. There’s also a ~28MB 400+ page PDF available.

Surprisingly enough, I found the interface for the guide to be clunky, somewhat difficult to use, and really painful to try to read (probably due to text stretching to full screen on my widescreen monitor). You’d think that a guide specifying Interface guidelines would at least like this would take into account the usability of the medium it’s being presented on.

I hate looking this stuff up and I don’t do it enough to remember so here goes:

• Logging in: mysql -u <username> -p
• list or show all databases: show databases;
• open or start using database: use <database name>;
• list or show all tables: show tables;

I’m not a big fan of intermediate landing pages, but this one is so well done, I had to mention it: http://marketing.beatsource.com/landing_pages/gateway/

So due to the overwhelming pressure to conform and be ‘cool’ like all those other developers, I started using Lightbox2 to make that cool floaty image on top of greyed out content functionality. I must say, it was really really easy to do. I did it for the first time on a site (still in development) for an upcoming firefighter apparel company (click one of the shirts).

Then for another project I got to thinking, gee, it would be really great if I could do this with PDF files and other miscellaneous content, as opposed to just images. Enter ThickBox.

That is all.

Deadline for Entries: April 1, 2008

Enter your great web designs in STEP’s Best of Web Design Competition sponsored by Jupiterimages Unlimited and get the recognition you deserve. Winners will be interviewed and prominently featured in the Best of Web Annual [September|October 2008 issue].

Enter your …

• Entire Website
• Web Advertising [web banners, pop-ups, etc.]
• Motion Graphics

… in these categories

• Business
• Consumer
• Self-promotion
• Nonprofit | Public Service

www.stepinsidedesign.com/bestofweb

So I know this is a site for web designers and I keep posting about software issues, but honestly, where would web designers be without their software? So I recently made the leap to Vista. It was a reluctant leap because I knew there’d be issues. Sure enough, there are.

FlashPaper doesn’t work in Vista

And now while trying to work in flash, I found that everytime i double-clicked on an element to edit it, it went really slowly. I was worried for a bit because I’m got this major flash presentation due next week, but then I found a solution at video-tutes.com.

It seems all you need to do is

1. go to your flash8.exe file,
2. right-click and choose Properties,
3. then set the compatibility mode to Windows XP (Service Pack 2).

This worked like a charm for me, thanks video-tutes!

Seriously. I wish Firefox would just go away. I need to design “I Hate FF” banners or something.

Anyway, I just realized my homepage is all screwed up in Firefox. That’s not why I hate it by the way, but it doesn’t help.

I realize that lots of my visitors are on Firefox, so I’ll try to get this fixed. In the meantime, visit the site in IE so it’s not totally screwed up.

I’m guessing that Adobe is no longer interested in supporting its recently acquired, eliminate the need for Acrobat, FlashPaper.

After my originally reported FlashPaper installation problems (Oddly enough, they’ve removed that original technote I was linking to), I’ve now discovered that the program is not compatible with Microsoft Vista and Intel-based Macs. This makes me sad.

What am I going to do now? Anyone out there familiar with some good FlashPaper alternatives?

Just thought I’d bookmark this.

Google Keyword Tool: Enter keywords or URLs that are relevant to your business to get new keyword ideas.

Createthe.com is an interactive agency for luxury, fashion, and retail brands. I stumbled across their site as I was admiring the Marc Jacobs website. All their work has a very similar look and feel, but it’s all done really well. Their work seems to be full flash and while it doesn’t work at all for SEO, it does create a great brand experience.

Anyway, their website is done as one long page that makes their work the hero. I’m not exactly sure why they made it in flash, because they could have accomplished the same exact thing with HTML, but to each his own I guess.

I stumbled across Vitaly Friedman’s Notebook today, and his post on 25 free, designer quality fonts. It’s a great list that includes:

• Delicious
• Fontin
• AUdimat
• The Share Font
• Gentium
• Lido STF
• Cardo
• Day Roman
• Yanone Kaffeesatz
• Union
• Pigiarniq Inuktitut font
• New Media
• JustOldFashion
• 078MKSD Medium Condensed
• PetitLatin
• Lacuna
• ATF Antique
• SlabTallX
• Vera Sans Mono
• ClassizismAntiqua
• HopeRound
• Blue Highway
• Baskerville Old Face

Click here for the full list, complete with previews.