BonBon Sweet CSS3 Buttons
November 18th, 2010 — No Comments
There was a goal: Create CSS buttons that are sexy looking, really flexible, but with the most minimalistic markup as possible.
Goal achieved.
CSS 3D Transforms Demonstration
November 2nd, 2010 — No Comments
Very impressive demonstration of what’s possible with CSS 3D transforms on an iPad and in general:
Read more...Turns out, canvas kinda sucks for developing full-screen animations on the iPhone and iPad. Without hardware acceleration and a more efficient clearing mechanism, it just doesn’t cut the mustard.
But all hope is not lost… CSS 3D transforms to the rescue!
Captain Obvious Strikes Again
November 2nd, 2010 — No Comments
Sometimes I think Jakob Nielsen has the easiest job in the industry.
Read more...Building a Better Web
November 2nd, 2010 — No Comments
Slides from a presentation (with extra notes) by Ben Schwarz who has decided W3C specs are hard to read and to take some action. Slide number 38:
So, I’ve been trying to read [W3C] specs more than ever. Not only is the language used some form of incompressible bullshit, but the readability of these pages is abysmal.
He puts it even more elegantly in the following slide:
Why does a page have to look like that ugly ass bullshit?
If you’ve ever had to read any W3C specs (and if you haven’t, why not?), you’ll probably agree something needs to be done. Read about the design process on Ben’s blog for how he has improved it dramatically. It boils down to this: download this userscript (Safari 5 users, install NinjaKit for userscript support) to make the W3C specification documents very much more readable. Good work.
IE9 Continues to Amaze
November 1st, 2010 — No Comments
In a completely unexpected and pleasant surprise, Microsoft have announced the latest version of their Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive supports supports CSS3 2D transforms! Hands up if you saw that coming. Nope? Me neither. I’m hoping they’ve got some more surprises to come.
Read more...Hardboiled Web Design
October 20th, 2010 — No Comments
I learnt CSS from Andy Clarke’s and Molly Holzschlag’s CSS for Designers video tutorials (highly recommended for beginners) and now Andy has a new book out called Hardboiled Web Design. I’ve only just finished the first section and had a peek at the example files but I’m thoroughly enjoying it and itching to read more. Here’s what it’s all about:
Hardboiled Web Design is different. It’s for people who want to understand why, when and how to use the latest HTML5 and CSS3 technologies in their everyday work. Not tomorrow or next week, but today.
Andy’s reasoning is that we should be designing and building websites for the best technology available to us while still making it accessible to browsers that don’t support the latest CSS advancements.
If we’re going to create the inspiring websites that our customers expect,we must look beyond how we’ve approached rogressive enhancement and graceful degradation in the past. Simply ‘rewarding’ people who use more capable browsers with rounded corners and drop shadows and generally settling for less isn’t enough.
Instead we should take full advantage of new technologies, and craft every user’s experience so that it’s appropriate to the capabilities of the browser they’re using. That will likely mean that designs will look different — sometimes very different — across browsers.
I’m on board. Are you?
Let me know what you think by sending me an @tkenny reply on Twitter.
Read more...Hardboiled CSS3 Media Queries
October 12th, 2010 — No Comments
Andy Clarke offers a comprehensive starting point for media queries based on the specs of different devices such as smartphones and iPad as well as varying screen sizes. Apparently they’re part of a wider toolkit that he’ll be releasing with his book coming soon which is almost certainly going to be worth the wait.
Read more...