SimpleBits
Handcrafted pixels & text from Salem, Massachusetts.
For the last few weeks I’ve been playing with a new free iPhone app called Instagram. Snap a photo, choose a vintage filter and share it with other Instagramers and the web. Sounds simple no? But it’s a unique take on photo sharing, where the social aspects play a large role, but entirely within the iPhone interface (at least for now). The square dimensions of the “Polaroid” add creative constraint along with the built-in filters.
It’ll be fun to watch Instagram grow. Oh, and it’s available today on App Store.
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.”
Received a beautiful pre-event package from Andy McMillan today. Very much looking forward to thanking him in person in November at the Build conference in Belfast.
“I’ve lived through the change from metal type to film to digital and from the desktop and to the Web to wherever we are now — I don’t know — so I’ve had to adapt to these changes, and I’ve done so very readily, I’ve been glad to do that.”
— Matthew Carter profile in The Boston Globe
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.
Snoopy: View-source on iPhone/iPad
Handy little JavaScript bookmarklet for viewing source on the go. (via)
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.
Surely I’m late to the game with this (as usual these days), but this is possibly the greatest music video ever conceived. Speaking as a former marching band geek of course. (Hat tip Hannah Donovan)
(Source: vimeo.com)
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 home-grown CMS built with PHP and Perl. Those old posts are long gone, but there’s about to be 10 years of archives still preserved here and that’s rather dumbfounding when I stop and think about it.
It’s likely dumbfounding because the last 10 years also happen to have been the most eventful I’ve ever had. They’ve been both terrifying and wonderful; educational and exciting; important and enlightening. I’m doubtful a majority of that shows up in the archives here. I was busy learning about the web, and that was mostly what was talked about in hypertext. Over the last decade, getting married, having kids, buying a house and other big life events mingled with starting a business or three, writing some books and traveling to parts of the world I never imagined visiting to talk about web design. I have an enormous amount to be thankful for.
Looking ahead, I wonder if I’ll look back at the next 10 years as being this dynamic. I hope so, but it’ll undoubtedly be different. Either way, I thank you very much for reading this tiny little corner of the web, and encouraging the (now) infrequent ramblings and bits.
CSS3 For Web Designers paperback + ebook A Book Apart
Handcrafted CSS book + DVD New Riders
Bulletproof Web Design second edition New Riders
Web Standards Solutions special edition Friends of Ed
Dribbble What are you working on? 
Outbrain logo design + HTML/CSS 
Wikirank logo + UI design 