octoberland - Tips and Tricks
Properly Saved Web Graphics With Photoshop
Written by craig coffman
OxideDesign, here in Omaha, recently posted a very brief and useful article about how to save graphics properly for the web using Photoshop. I must confess that I was not aware of this method, but have tried it and agree that what you get is much closer to what you see. Granted, there will be some loss in image quality if you start optimizing below 100%. However, the colors hold much better than not doing these steps. The best thing is you do not need to buy Fireworks, which does make very nice images. In fact, there is a commment talking about this point. Four easy steps. Learn and enjoy.
CSS Table Styles
Written by craig coffman
Ever find yourself in the situation where you need to use a table? You ought to, because there really is a time and a place for them in modern html. However, if you (like me) have all but tossed the cursed memory of tables out of your memory and are fully embracing the css / xhtml paradigm, some style guidance is appreciated. That’s right, I just said style.
Computer Backgrounds at any DPI!
Written by craig coffman
Perhaps I am the only one not knowing this, but I was amazed to learn that you can set a graphic to whatever DPI you want and it still displays sharp on your monitor. That is, you can make an image 1600X1200 with a DPI of 2 (yes, 2!) and set it to your desktop background. It displays beautifully. This, in my opinion, is a huge deal to anyone wishing to make images for other people, or even yourself. Apparently it does not decrease the file size (for whatever reason), but you can make images massive without having a giant 300DPI image as your source.
The Beez-Knees of Joomla 1.5
Written by craig coffman
If you develop in Joomla, you no doubt are aware of how important and relatively easy it is to create a template. However, once you have pain-stakeingly crafted a glorious xhtml/css layout, you get it trampled on be the code from the beloved CMS. Or at least you used to.
How to Remove the Yellow Background From Forms in IE
Written by craig coffman
Are you tired of having your forms appear with colored background when you know you did not code it? Wonder why it is only in IE? Well, as many of you already know, the Google bar in the IE browser has an option to auto complete form fields. While this is definitely a handy thing, it is probably not how you pain-stakingly designed the page. As well, it does not even do it to all of the fields so the style is not even consistent. Good news, there is a fix!
Since it is not always a reality that your visitors will know to go up and disable the functionality of the Google toolbar, CSS will have to save the day. Here is all you need to add to your style sheet:
input { background-color: white ! important}
Viola! Now your page appears as desired. Thanks to this article from html dog. In particular to Chris Weber who chimed in on comment numbers 32 and 33.
Multiple Versions of IE on your PC
Written by craig coffman
If you are a developer, then you know the pain associated with testing your pages within Internet Explorer. To make things worse, the IE Team’s 'fixing' existing problems removes the workarounds implimented on thousands of sites (sorry for the old link). For example, the * hack (which has a new workaround). Well, now you can easily test all of your pages in multiple versions of IE. Your code can now be simply tested in versions from 3 - 7. All with a free application.
CSS: A New Star-HTML hack
Written by craig coffman
Perhaps you already know of this article: #IEroot — Targeting IE Using Conditional Comments and Just One Stylesheet. If so, you should have told more people. I have been using the Star-HTML hack for some time as it was an easy way to serve my CSS to IE or non-IE browsers. Well, IE 7 fixed their code and killed the use of it to serve specific styles. This new fix, apparently posted by Hiroki Chalfant uses IE’s Conditional Comments to serve a bit of additional mark-up to the page. While this does add unnecessary mark-up, you would still need to do something to serve different styles. The main advantage to this is you can still write everything in a single style sheet. Very cool.
Can You Build a Web Page?
Written by craig coffman
It seems like everyone and their brother is a web designer / developer these days. While I am glad that more people are interested in the web and the technologies which drive it, this influx sort of pisses me off. Not only because it makes it harder to get a fair rate, but because it makes it harder to have a company trust I know what I am doing.
LocalConnection: Hot Flash-on-Flash Communication
Written by craig coffman
How many of you Flash developers out there have had two separate movies in an HTML file and wished they could talk to each other? I know I have. On several occasions. I know that you can go the JavaScript route and use fscommands. But, frankly, to me they are hassles to put in place. If for no other reason because you have to use an entirely different scripting language. Wouldn't it be nice if this could all be done in lovely actionscript? Well, in some cases at least, it can.
Read more: LocalConnection: Hot Flash-on-Flash Communication
Cutting Edge Creative
Written by craig coffman
I am wondering if people really know what cutting edge is? I do not profess to have the answer, but I can certainly see what is not. That is, there are many people making a living off the concept of being 'forward thinking' and such. In my opinion, all they are really doing is finding a bit of clever design, or a style, and lifting it. Sure, sure, sure. All things have been done before and nothing is new and blah blah blah. However, that does not mean that someone is cutting edge simply because they mimmic another style. They are cutting craftsmen, perhaps.
Page 1 of 2
