Category Archives: Articles

Create A Memorable Maintenance Page

Jun
16

12 Comments - LEAVE A COMMENT

Every once in a while we have to take our site down for upgrades, or god forbid something breaks and we have to fix it and we don’t want to leave the broken version for our users to see.

I was inspired to write this after seeing the funny Technorati maintenance page this morning:

Technorati Monster Loose

Maintenance pages are important for many reasons, but one of the most important reasons is to make people remember to come back. If someone is visiting your site for the first time and you are currently working on your site and have placed it in maintenance mode typically you will replace your index with a page explaining the downtime and encouraging users to check back later (giving a specific time frame is good practice).

Rounded Corner Boxes With Expandable Heights Using CSS and Images

Jun
9

17 Comments - LEAVE A COMMENT

Rounded corners are a great design element to escape from the blocky/boxiness a lot of web designers fall victim to. I remember the first time I created my own rounded corner box using Photoshop and HTML/CSS. What a thrill :) A lot of people shy away from it because it SEEMS a lot more difficult than it really is.

I’m going to show two ways to create this effect using Photoshop (or the graphic editor of your choice) and HTML/CSS. There are other ways to create this effect using just CSS – but I really am not a big fan of it because it creates a lot more empty divs than this method. Yes if images are off you will lose this effect – but I’m willing to sacrifice that.

Like I said I’m going to demonstrate two ways to accomplish this. The first is using just a flat rounded corner image with no other effects. The second will have a box with a drop shadow, border and gradient. :) So let’s start easy!

Create Full Width Header & Footer With Centered Content Using CSS

Jun
7

22 Comments - LEAVE A COMMENT

Update #2 1/15/2012 – I have update this version once again, please see the latest release of 100% Full Width Header & Footer with Centered Content.

Update!: I’ve published a new version of this method that is even EASIER. If you would like to learn more please see How to: Create Full (100%) Width Header/Footer with Centered Content (Updated). This method is still valid and feel free to use it if you like.

There are probably a million different ways to do this, but I’m going to show the way that I have preferred to do it, combined with my favorite centering position method.

So the simple way to do this is as follows:

Photoshop Essentials – Thousands of Free Brushes, Gradients, Layer Styles and More!

Jun
1

15 Comments - LEAVE A COMMENT

Photoshop is an amazingly powerful tool. It alone can allow you to create fantastic designs and photo manipulations. But, there are many, many other resources available to designers to enhance Photoshop and increase your productivity.

I’m talking about free gradients, patterns, brushes, layer styles and more that you can download and add on to Photoshop.

CSS Sprites – Easily Use CSS To Replace Images

May
28

23 Comments - LEAVE A COMMENT

If you’re not using CSS Sprites (also known as the CSS Image Replacement Method) you should be. Many coders seem to fear this easy and basic way to use images with CSS and I’m not sure why.

The benefits of CSS Sprites are plentiful, but you (and your visitors) will benefit from this method ten-fold. For the coder it’s less slicing and cropping of images, and for the user it rids us of that annoying image loading flash when you use CSS to replace background images.

I’ll take you through some quick steps to get started with CSS Sprites.