Archive for December, 2007
December 28, 2007 at 7:58 pm · 260 views · Filed under portfolio, work
StomperNet releases Scrutinizer, software for viewing websites through a simulated fovea vision. Since not everyone could set-up, let alone afford a real eye-tracker. This software uses the mouse pointer as the user’s focal point, or foveal view. It blurs everything except where your focal point (the mouse) is. It is helpful because it forces you to re-think web design from an extreme usability standpoint. This browser software was built in conjunction with Nitobi using Adobe AIR and Flex. I had the chance to do the skinning of the browser in flex! I really hope to have a good excuse to play more with flex.
Anyways, check out the free software
(master-minded by Andy Edmonds), this ‘Click Fu’ video created to explain it, and the many uses of Scrutinizer.
Tags:
actionscript,
AIR,
download,
flex,
stompernet,
video,
web design,
website,
work,
xml
December 21, 2007 at 11:27 pm · 677 views · Filed under tutorial
Overview:
When making websites frequently we want a navigation bar or menu to show on every page. Rather than repeating the code on every single page, which is virtually impossible to update and maintain, or worse, using frames, use PHP to automate this and build each page dynamically. PHP will just paste in the navigation or whatever you’d want represented on every page. To do this we use the php include function. You can use include() to show headers, footers, or any elements that you’d reuse on multiple pages. The include() function takes all the text in a specified file and copies it into the file that calls the include function. This is great for scalability and updating- instead of changing multiple files, only change one!
Here’s what a php include function looks like:
<?php include(”nav.php”); ?>
Steps:
1. Make the actual nav you want.
2. Put it into a php file (or any type of file, html, txt, as long as it’s formatted as html)
3. Place the php in your page to ‘print’ the desired file into your final html page before the browser renders the page using the include function. This spits out html. The viewer’s only see html, as that’s all it is, the php created the html file- That’s why it’s called PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.
Example:
The nav.php file:
<p id=
"fromMenuPhpFile"> <a href=
"home.php">Home</a> |
<a href="about.php">About Us</a> |
<a href="portfolio.php">Portfolio</a> |
<a href="contact.php">Contact Us</a>
The homepage.php:
<?php include("nav.php"); ?>
<h1>Welcome to my home page</h1>
home page text lorem ipsum
And here’s a sample site with a nav bar containing 4 pages included through php for Home, About, Portfolio and Contact.
Download:
phpNav.zip
Tags:
download,
html,
open source,
php,
tutorial,
website
December 18, 2007 at 7:37 pm · 258 views · Filed under portfolio
Here’s the new circlecube logo! I’ve had it for a while, but hadn’t uploaded it.
I still have to update my theme to incorporate it. I like the green transparent circlecube graphic in the header now but it’s gotta go… and plus it’s a little too green.
The common 2d © symbol and a 3d cube.
I’ll have to figure out a way to make it interactive… hm…
Any ideas?
Tags:
3D,
circle cube,
graphic design,
illustrator,
interactive,
photoshop
December 11, 2007 at 6:00 pm · 2,558 views · Filed under tutorial
The Overview:
An interactive navigation bar using CSS with rounded corners. Just put the html as an unordered list and your navigation links as list items and the CSS will do the rest! As shown here! The css will tell the browser to display this special unordered list as the menu. This utilizes a technique to have one background image with three states: normal, hover and active. The css controls the placement of the background image so when you hover, the images is displaced to show only the hover state, and likewise for the active and then returns to the normal state. This is compatible in all the browsers I have checked so far, let me know if you find any issues [thanks].
The Steps:
1. First make the html. An <ul> full of <li> elements.
2. Make the desired backgrounds. Three part background (or two) . One part ‘Normal’ state and another ‘hover’ state and optionally an ‘active’ state. Add additional backgrounds if you want anything like rounded corners, or just a header.
3. The CSS to attach the two together
The Example:
verticalMenuCSS.html
As you can see this is a simple html unordered list with list items.
<ul>
<li class="top">My Site</li>
<li class="middle">Home</li>
<li class="middle">About</li>
<li class="middle">Biography</li>
<li class="middle">Portfolio</li>
<li class="bottom">Contact</li>
</ul>
Here’s the magic.
/*vertical Menu CSS style sheet*/
*{
list-style:none;
margin:0px;
padding:0px;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 1em;
}
.sidemenu {
width: 150px;
border: none;
}
.sidemenu li a {
height: 18px;
text-decoration: none;
}
/*Top sidemenu Item (Header and rounded corners)*/
.sidemenu li.top a:link, .sidemenu li.top a:visited {
color: #828282;
display: block;
background: url(images/menuTop.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
padding: 1px 0 1px 0;
font-size: 1em;
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
}
/* Uncomment this if you want the header to be an interactive link
.sidemenu li.top a:hover {
color: #828282;
background: url(images/menuTop.png) 0 -22px;
}
.sidemenu li.top a:active {
color: #26370A;
background: url(images/menuTop.png) 0 -44px;
}*/
/*sidemenu Item Middle*/
.sidemenu li.middle a:link, .sidemenu li.middle a:visited {
color: #5E7830;
display: block;
background: url(images/menuMiddle.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
padding: 1px 0 1px 20px;
font-size: 0.8em;
}
.sidemenu li.middle a:hover {
color: #FFFFFF;
background: url(images/menuMiddle.png) 0 -22px;
}
.sidemenu li.middle a:active {
color: #FFFFFF;
background: url(images/menuMiddle.png) 0 -44px;
}
/*Bottom sidemenu Item (rounded corners)*/
.sidemenu li.bottom a:link, .sidemenu li.bottom a:visited {
color: #5E7830;
display: block;
background: url(images/menuBottom.png);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
padding: 1px 0 1px 20px;
font-size: 0.8em;
}
.sidemenu li.bottom a:hover {
color: #FFFFFF;
background: url(images/menuBottom.png) 0 -22px;
}
.sidemenu li.bottom a:active {
color: #FFFFFF;
background: url(images/menuBottom.png) 0 -44px;
}
verticalMenuCSS.html
The Download:
verticalMenuCSS.zip
Tags:
css,
dreamweaver,
html,
interactive,
open source,
tutorial,
web design,
website
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