Dustin Brewer - The technology of design and marke

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CSS Hack:Getting Safari to behave
2007-08-06 18:48:00
Safari is one of those tricky browsers that aren't the most cooperative but there aren't many hacks for it that will work. Unlike IE that allows you to target the browser directly easily, Safari doesn't offer that solution within XHTML. I could only come up with 2 ways to use CSS hacks or tricks for Safari specifically. The best step towards making sure all browsers work the same for your site is to use valid XHTML Strict code, this helps most of the time. But, sometimes you do have to venture away from that ideal.
More About: Safari , Hack

What is Robots.txt and why should I use it?
2007-07-31 06:16:00
I am here to answer just that question. There has been a lot of mystery I have gathered from fellow web developers about the benefits of using a robots.txt. Most are under the false impression that the only purpose for this text file is to tell search robots not to index a certain section of their site. This isn't the case at all! There are much more useful reasons to be using a Robo ts .txt that have to do very much with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that most people don't realize.

CSS Trick: Getting content wrappers to wrap
2007-07-31 05:31:00
You ever had that frustrating div that would stop just short of wrapping your content like it is supposed to? Usually this div will have a background image or color that you need to go all the way around the content. There are cases where this has come up for me and there are usually two things you can do one of them is to fix the problem as you have accidentally set a property to it that doesn't need to be there in the CSS. The other is you can add something to it to help wrap the div around your content. I'll talk about both of these methods a little more in depth but they are quick and easy solutions for the stubborn div.
More About: Content , Trick , Rappers , Rapper , Tent

Some changes to the site, and a little update
2007-07-30 02:53:00
I have made a few alterations to the site that I thought might be nice to point out to some of the seasoned visitors. I have added a functional footer at the bottom of the page that lists the most recent comments across all articles and I have also added a popular article section. Basically the more traffic an article gets the more popular I rank it. Pretty simple and to the point, I will watch it to see how well it works. Also I may end up clearing it our weekly or monthly to ensure that a page that is super popular doesn't just stay there forever. Also I realized that HTML Tidy isn't 100% acurate in xHTML validation. So I corrected some validation issues based off of the W3's specifications. The site is back to being 100% xHTML 1.0 Strict compliant which should be a nice little treat. It is also (as always) cross-browser compatible. I just did some minor tweaks in some little things that were over looked and how things were displayed. The CSS is also validated now but I use a ...
More About: Site , Update , The Site , Litt , Chang

Weekly link Roundup for the week of July 23rd
2007-07-27 19:03:00
It's been a hectic week for me, I'm sure the lack of articles portrays that pretty good. I am just glad that I have rearranged things so I can find time to focus on things like this. At any rate, I have a great collection of links from around the web today. First off I read a great article from Sitepoint this week about Microformats and getting meaning out of your markup. From the article, Microformats are all about representing semantic information encoded within a web page, allowing that information to be leveraged in ways that were possibly never conceived by the original publisher. All in all a great article and something that I am definitely an advocate for standards and semantics in design they are impossibly important.
More About: Roundup , Link , Week , Weekly , July

Test IE5 or IE6 on your PC with IE7 installed
2007-07-25 22:44:00
I get this question quite a bit for people that need to test their web sites on IE6 mostly that already have IE7 installed. I have found a great piece of software from TredoSoft that does just this. It basically installed IE 3.0, IE 4.01, IE 5.01, IE 5.5 and IE 6 on your computer to let you test your web page on them. This is all assuming you have IE7 already installed. If for whatever reason you don't want to replace your IE6 with IE7 they also have a stand alone IE7 that you can install to test your web pages on. I mostly use this software for testing web pages on IE6 standalone. This is a very useful software for testing your web page. For those of you wishing to test Safari you may know that it has been released for PC, but it is still a little buggy. Unfortunately I don't have a good way right now to test other browsers on your Mac but I will keep an eye out for something that does. Hopefully the company will create IE6 stand alone for the Mac soon. Currently it does work f...
More About: Test

Weekly CSS Trick: The IE underscore hack
2007-07-24 06:15:00
This week it is a hack that I am providing for everyone to enjoy, it allows you to easily add a quick style within your existing style sheet to target internet explorer. This can help so you don't have to check your ie CSS file if is just a simple margin adjustment. Which as we all know internet explorer has some issues with, especially internet explorer 6. The underscore hack is pretty basic but I will go over the various uses for it and touch on what browsers it affects and which browsers ignore it.
More About: Hack , Trick , Weekly , Under

Back from vacation, with some links
2007-07-24 06:04:00
I went to Galveston Island in Texas over the weekend for a little weekend retreat to the beach. It was great. So I missed the link roundup for last week and I'm coming close to missing the CSS trick / hack for the week. But I won't miss them and I'm here now to provide everyone with some quality links.
More About: Links , Vacation , Back , Some

Fonts on the web and a list of web safe fonts
2007-07-18 12:44:00
Many of you have been asking, âWhat fonts are safe for me to useâ and âWhat fonts are universal and good for use on the web,â Well I am here to help. Web safe fonts are ever important but a lot of designers I have seen lately are forgoing this important step in their design creation. Some are taking the steps to use a font similar to a web safe font but because it is not in fact web safe they inevitably have to default back to a font that isn't quite the same. Their design loses a little of itself and at this point they typically struggle to find a font that is close and web safe. There are plenty of web safe fonts available it just takes some creativity in using them to your advantage. I have a list of web safe fonts available in the article to help everyone out.
More About: List , Fonts , Safe , A list

CRAP Design 3: Alignment in design
2007-07-15 03:36:00
The much anticipated follow up to my 4 part series on CRAP design (CRAP is Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity). I didn't plan on taking this long to have this article up but as it happened work got in the way of things. But on to the good stuff.. Alignment is impossibly important in design because it is the basis for everything that is design. Without alignment you have elements that are seemingly unrelated and randomly placed. This easily applies to web, print and other media just as the other CRAP principles do. Alignment is used to create order in your design.
More About: Design , Crap

Weekly link roundup for the week of July 9th
2007-07-15 03:11:00
One of the coolest links this past week was from Smashing Magazine and they give you another one of their great lists, this time it is the list of code beautifiers and formatters from across the web. Another great link from this past week was from Bitbox who is now notorious for giving away various vector elements, this time they are giving away some cool new Vector Foliage images. For a good laugh I came across this post from downloadsquad on digg about how the web looked in 1994, which is pretty hilarious in comparison. It brings back some good 'ole memories... ok maybe they weren't that great.
More About: Roundup , Link , Week , Weekly , July

FreelanceSwitch is doing the Freelancer survey
2007-07-14 04:01:00
Check out <a href="http;//freelanceswitch.com&quo t; target="_blank">FreelanceSwi tch</a> and take their Freelance survey. They are offering some cool prizes that will be awarded randomly. They intend on using the results to formulate a basic idea of the freelance community as a whole. They will provide the results publicly to everyone once they have commenced the survey. I took it, it is quick and easy nothing too complicated to answer. I had some trouble with the how much profit I have at the end of the year thing. Which is just because I consider profit money left over after I buy all the cool things I want. Which was 0. Take the <a href="http://freelanceswitch.com/gen eral/freelancers-unite-the-2007-global-fr eelancer-survey-is-here/" target="_blank">freelance survey</a>, it is easy and productive.
More About: Survey , Lance , Elan , Doing , Freelancer

Happy Fair Use day!
2007-07-11 12:07:00
Fair use describes conditions under which copyrighted material may be used without permission. Today is the day when all of the pirates around the world grab their best eye patch and some fine rum. Today is Fair Use day, it is not exactly a formal holiday but it is still a practiced holiday by Fair Use supporters.
More About: Happy , Fair

New design is here and new plan coming
2007-07-08 22:07:00
I decided not to make a sneak preview and that I would go ahead and just implement a new design rather then waste my time making the preview. The new design will be an ongoing project and I will try to keep the layout the same so that everyone can navigate the site easily. A few quick things about the new web site design, first the site is XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant and works on IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera all the same way. Which is always a little frustrating at times.
More About: Design , Plan , Ming

New design is here and new plan coming
2007-07-08 22:07:00
I decided not to make a sneak preview and that I would go ahead and just implement a new design rather then waste my time making the preview. The new design will be an ongoing project and I will try to keep the layout the same so that everyone can navigate the site easily. A few quick things about the new web site design, first the site is XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant and works on IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera all the same way. Which is always a little frustrating at times.
More About: Design , Plan , Ming

Part 1: Finding clients as a freelance designer
2007-05-05 14:15:00
There are a lot of ways to find clients as a freelance designer, the one I am going to touch on today is a good way to go about it. This method will ensure that you get in contact with clients directly because that is exactly what it is. Some designers may be timid about using this method because you have to have a somewhat outgoing personality to do this successfully. There are two very distinct methods to this form of setting yourself up for design clients. I will touch on them both and give some simple ideas to help make the method easier for those having trouble with it already.
More About: Freelance , Clients , Designer , Sign , Part

Part 1: Finding clients as a freelance designer
2007-05-05 14:15:00
There are a lot of ways to find clients as a freelance designer, the one I am going to touch on today is a good way to go about it. This method will ensure that you get in contact with clients directly because that is exactly what it is. Some designers may be timid about using this method because you have to have a somewhat outgoing personality to do this successfully. There are two very distinct methods to this form of setting yourself up for design clients. I will touch on them both and give some simple ideas to help make the method easier for those having trouble with it already.
More About: Freelance , Clients , Designer , Part , Lance

Top 10 Firefox extensions for web designers
2007-05-05 10:49:00
There are a lot of extensions out there, most of them are unnecessary because of their limited worth to more advanced users. The big downfall for some of the extensions is that they are a full toolbar and take up entirely too much screen real estate for their total worth as a tool. Just like a Swiss Army Knife you have to be able to conceal the smaller tools until you are ready to use them-- hence Swiss Army making it pocket worthy and not made for a lanyard.
More About: Firefox , Extensions , Designers , Web Designer

Top 10 Firefox extensions for web designers
2007-05-05 10:49:00
There are a lot of extensions out there, most of them are unnecessary because of their limited worth to more advanced users. The big downfall for some of the extensions is that they are a full toolbar and take up entirely too much screen real estate for their total worth as a tool. Just like a Swiss Army Knife you have to be able to conceal the smaller tools until you are ready to use them-- hence Swiss Army making it pocket worthy and not made for a lanyard.
More About: Firefox , Extensions , Designers , Extension , Sign

Should you upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite 3?
2007-04-27 08:39:00
Adobe Creative Suit e 3 has been released for about a week now and everyone has had a chance to try it out and see what kinds of new things it can do or what new features it has. So far everything that we know and love about the products is mostly there. Although the new palettes in illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3 and Photoshop CS3 are similar to InDesign CS2 as in they stay mostly out of the way unless you need them. Which is a huge benefit for saving screen real estate and possibly one of the most useful features so far. There are of course more functional features that are useful but some of the best features are organizational.
More About: Adobe , Should

Microsoft announces Silverlight as a Flash competitor
2007-04-19 02:10:00
The announcement of Microsoft <a href="http://microsoft.com/silverlig ht" target="_blank">Silverlight & lt;/a> comes as somewhat a shock to a lot of the design community, with Microsoft introducing a new flash competitor things could start to heat up in the design world. Especially sense they are also developing Microsoft Expression Blend and Microsoft Expression Designer. They have already released Microsoft Expression Web which was the replacement web design product for Frontpage (which was utter crap). So far Expression Web looks like a good program, as far as standards go at least.
More About: Flash , Soft , Light

Discover Popup 2.0 a new breed of Web 2.0 mischief
2007-04-07 09:33:00
We all remember when popup advertisements were all the rage, advertisers were reaping the benefits of having their advertisement flush in the consumers eyes whenever they visited web sites. Just boom and your product is in their face and they have to look at it. Brilliant. We of course learned our mistakes, well most of us learned our mistakes, and went to more subtle advertisements based on the users interests that gave the consumer the ability to choose to click on an advertisement if they were interested. Now, we have snap preview that takes that choice and adds a little suggestive manipulation to make sure the user sees the advertisement.
More About: Cover , Over , Reed , Popup , Disco

Go nude with the second annual CSS Naked Day
2007-04-01 11:14:00
Dustin Diaz has come up with a wonderful idea about an annual CSS Naked Day that will basically be a day without the use of CSS in your web design to show the benefits of CSS over old HTML or XHTML based designs. It shows how much of a difference the CSS makes to the way your overall web site looks. He currently has a list of over 40 web sites that are going to be participating on April 5th with the CSS Naked day.
More About: Second , Econ , Annual

Microsoft has announced their acquisition of Adobe
2007-04-01 10:43:00
Microsoft recently announced in a press release that they will be acquiring Adobe Systems for $14 billion. This move would further make Microsoft the largest software company in the world and risk bringing Apple down from their recent explosion of popularity by totally monopolizing the industry. Could this means that Adobe products in the future may not work with OSX?
More About: Microsoft , Soft , Micro , Acquisition