November 2010
5 posts
U-Turn
I’ve packed up and moved things back to WordPress. As much as I’ve come to love Tumblr, using it as a primary way of hosting your business isn’t a rock solid option right now. Rate limits and downtimes have been on the rise in recent months, and it got to the point where reverting back to owning my own data and setup made more sense.
Luckily, I’ve always had a WordPress...
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Evolution
One of the things I’ve tried to maintain with the branding around here is a building on top of what currently exists. Rather than completely toss out the visuals of designs and previous logos, I like to keep hints to the past. Part of that helps familiarity, but it also maintains a path of evolution rather than revolution.
Last week I rolled out an updated SimpleBits mark and simplified...
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CSS3 For Web Designers
For the fourth time in my life, I’ve written a book. It’s titled, CSS3 For Web Designers and it’s available today in paperback and ebook formats from A Book Apart. I couldn’t be more excited, seeing this little green thing launch after months of planning, writing, editing, fretting. I certainly didn’t do it alone.
Photo by Jason Santa Maria
I wouldn’t be...
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“Designing for the web is like building sand sculptures.”
– Dan Rubin
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October 2010
6 posts
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Close Pixelate →
David Desandro’s “…script converts an image into a pixelated version using an HTML5 canvas element”. Awesome. (via @paul_irish)
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MOTHER EFFING TEXT-SHADOW →
Somewhat self-explanatory. Be sure to click the “all the way” button.
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The Big Web Show #22 →
I had the pleasure of being a live guest on The Big Web Show with Jeffrey Zeldman and Dan Benjamin yesterday. Had a great time talking about Dribbble, Cork’d, my upcoming CSS3 book for A Book Apart and more. The video and audio are posted now.
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Gridulator →
Handy tool for creating pixel-based grid layout guides. Creator David Sleight explains, “tell Gridulator your layout width and the number of columns you want, and it’ll spit back all the possible grids that have nice, round integers.”
September 2010
8 posts
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“I’ve lived through the change from metal type to film to digital and from the...”
– Matthew Carter profile in The Boston Globe
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Viva la SimpleQuiz →
Bruce Lawson has ressurrected the SimpleQuiz for HTML5. The first question tackles how to mark up a series of products using new semantics. This will surely be a fantastic way of getting a handle on new solutions made possible with HTML5.
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Snoopy: View-source on iPhone/iPad →
Handy little JavaScript bookmarklet for viewing source on the go. (via)
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IE9 Beta and CSS3 →
Internet Explorer 9 Beta will be unleased in a week. Here’s what it’ll support in regards to CSS3. border-radius, box-shadow, multiple background images, RGBA, opacity, media queries, loads of selectors and much more.
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August 2010
12 posts
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Ten Years
I’m about to head out on a little vacation, but I realized this Wednesday marks ten years of archives here at SimpleBits. Actually, there were a few other domains that came before simplebits.com (robotcom.com and cederholm.org). I’d actually been publishing short, frequent updates for a few years prior to 2000, either by updating a .html file by hand or using a hobbled together...
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“In the same way that a movie isn’t good because it’s in color, a movie isn’t...”
– James Cameron
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Pixel patterns for Photoshop or Fireworks →
Handy set of pixel patterns by Naomi Atkinson in .pat, .mpx and .pdf formats. Beats drawing them by hand every time (of which I’ve been guilty).
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PaintbrushJS →
New from Dave Shea, “…a lightweight, browser-based image processing library that can apply various visual filters to images within a web page.”
I’m salivating just thinking of the possibilities here. Be sure to check out the demo.
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“No one gives a damn about the size of your to-do list.”
– Ryan Freitas
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The new Virb →
Congratulations to the Virb team for relaunching as a way of building and hosting simple websites. The design and copy is beautifully executed as always.
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The Incident →
In their own words: “… a fast-paced, retro-style action game”. I can confirm this 8-bit iPhone game is fun, addictive, has great chiptunes, and is easy to play.
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Dunk - The Dribbble feed viewer →
I’ll do my best not to make this website a repeat of Dribbble news, but… makers of one of my favorite apps for the iPhone (Outside) have just launched the first Dribbble iOS app. Dunk is a beautifully-designed feed viewer for Dribbble shots, tags and players. Really looking forward to seeing more from the Robocat folks (and other app crafters!) as our API matures.
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Penultimate →
Giving this sketchbook app a spin on the iPad. Hoping it helps me use it more. I’m finding that having an iPhone and a Macbook Pro has me pretty well covered. Waiting for a breakthrough moment with the iPad that goes beyond having yet another device to check email, web, Twitter, etc.
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“Dream big, implement small.”
– twitter.com/simplebits
July 2010
20 posts
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CSS3 Generator →
Handy tool that spits out the syntax and associated vendor-prefixed CSS3 for properties like border-radius, box-shadow, multi-column layout and more. Especially helpful are the supported browsers icons with pop-up version numbers for each property.
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“Web design is not merely building. It’s not just designing. It’s not only the...”
– Jason Santa Maria, A Real Web Design Application
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Bobby McKenna →
One of the most consistent and admired illustrators on Dribbble, Mr. McKenna just graduated from Notre Dame and is apparently looking for a job. Something tells me finding one won’t be a problem.
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Bye-Bye Redirect
A month into using Tumblr for the blog and portfolio here, and I’m still happy I made the move. Something that had been bothering me was the redirect that was required for the homepage. I couldn’t point simplebits.com at Tumblr completely. If I had, over 10 years of files and old archives would’ve vanished. Setting up a subdomain avoids that, but I wanted the blog to be the main...
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An interview with Think Vitamin →
While I was in London for the Future of Web Design conference this past May, I had the pleasure of chatting with Keir Whitaker from Carsonified about Dribbble.
You can also find the audio over at Huffduffer if you happen to huff the duff stuff.
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FontFonter →
This is a wonderful tool. Enter a URL and replace its fonts with any of FontFonts web fonts. Hmm, this site looks rather nice with FF Dagny and FF Meta Serif replacing Helvetica and Georgia.
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8 Faces →
I just purchased a debut copy of Elliot Jay Stocks’ new print magazine that asks:
“If you could only use eight typefaces for the rest of your life, which would you choose? 8 Faces is a new magazine for devotees of typography that asks this question — and many more — to eight leading designers from the fields of web design, print design, illustration, and of course type design...
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“I found myself resorting to the same button styles, shading techniques, etc… and...”
– Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain on his redesign of Steinway & Sons
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Q & A with Jason Munn of the Small Stakes →
Grain Edit interviews the prolific music poster designer. Have long been a fan, and now purchasing the book, which collects over 150 of Munn’s poster designs for various indie bands.
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Font metrics and vertical space in CSS →
Tim Brown from Typekit explains the complexities of visible and invisible vertical space between characters when typesetting with CSS.
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EPICWIN →
A genius concept for an iPhone app: to-do list meets RPG. For a procrastinator like myself, this just might be the ticket to checking things off.
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The Unfathomable Octophant →
The latest hand-printed screenprint from Phineas X. Jones. We have this one framed in our dining room. Love the style, detail and craftsmanship.
Which loads faster? →
Compare two URLs to see which wins. (via @trentwalton)
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Twenty-six Hundred →
A painting by Chris Bishop that I wish wasn’t sold. I demand prints.
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On moving work
Decided to simplify things and just start another Tumblr to handle the portfolio here. This enabled me to reuse the new theme with some slight tweaks, and begin my “different shade background for each section” thing. It’s far from comprehensive yet, as I still need to bring over some more of the old stuff.
It’s been interesting going through work that’s several years...
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“We ought to praise vendors for using prefixes, and indeed encourage them to...”
– Eric Meyer on Prefix or Posthack
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WatchCurrent status at the office today, the Friday before a long holiday weekend. And admittedly a test of a Tumblr video upload.