If you’re a conscientious web designer or developer who cares about accessibility, then I’m sure you’ve spent the last few years drilling yourself into the habit of using relative font sizes (EMs or percentages) rather than absolute font sizes (pixels – PX)?
Now with the advent of modern browsers and full page zooming (as opposed to just text scaling), I’m sure I’m not the only person that’s been wondering whether we still need to be going through the painstaking task of calculating relative font sizes?
[Read more →]
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been using ExpressionEngine on a client project. Other than briefly playing with it about a year ago, this is the first time that I’ve really got to grips with ExpressionEngine and deployed it on a live project. So, I thought I’d share some of my initial impressions.
[Read more →]
The days of the ever resourceful all-in-one web designer-come-developer extraordinaire are long gone. In this industry the general consensus is that a great developer doth not a great designer make (and visa-versa).
It’s more common for designers and developers to work side-by-side collaboratively in web design harmony. Or not as the case may be. Designers tend to make developers jobs as fiddly as possible and developers have a knack for screwing up great designs.
It doesn’t have to be that way, here are five tips designers can follow to make developers’ jobs easier and ensure the site turns out as great as you intended.
[Read more →]
I’ve begun using AudioBoo, a service that allows you to record short sharp audio podcasts – think Twitter for audio. Despite still finding the sound of my own voice somewhat cringe-worthy, I’m rather enjoying it.
[Read more →]
I am today delighted to announce the launch of brownnosefriday.com, the first web application to recognise and reward Twitter’s top brown nosers.
[Read more →]
At the end of last year Microsoft announced details of improvements to IE8’s compatibility view. It’s an announcement that went largely unnoticed until last week when a few rumblings could be heard coming from the web standards community.
To get to the bottom of this we need to understand the history.
[Read more →]
PICOL (otherwise known as Pictorial Communication Language) is a project that provides a series of free and open icons for use on electronic devices. The aim is to find a common pictorial language for electronic communication.
This short video tells the story of the History of the Internet using animated PICOL iconography.
[Read more →]
In the last couple of weeks Twitter has been making a lot of noise in the mainstream – at least here in the UK it has. First of all it was heavily featured on BBC news programmes and on their website. Then there was that interview between @wossy and @stephenfry on the Jonathon Ross show. And since then some of my non-techie offline friends have slowly begun following me on Twitter.
As exciting as it is to see real friends beginning to use Twitter, the excitement is usually short lived when I check them out to find they haven’t posted a single thing yet.
[Read more →]
The south west of England has long been synonymous with the word ‘creativity’. This short video examines the region’s world renowned traditional creativity producing techniques that have remained largely unchanged for centuries.
[Read more →]
As a freelancer or self employed person, you are your most valuable asset. It is vital you invest in yourself by developing your own skills and ability whether through formal training or more informal ‘on-the-job’ training.
The start of a year is of course a great time to look forward and think about how you would like to better yourself. In this unashamedly self-focused blog post, I list a few areas I am planning to focus my attentions on, and how I’m intending to do so. If nothing else, this article will be useful to refer back to in six months time to evaluate how well I’m developing.
[Read more →]
