I’m a big fan of polaroid’s. I love the fact that you can snap a photo and the camera will spit out a photo for you instantly. I love the style so much in the new version of CSSgirl (to be released within the next two weeks!!!) has incorporated their style in the new design. I thought I’d share how I went about creating the image and the HTML/CSS behind it!
I’ve noticed a lot of sites have a very complicated way of styling the code samples they provide, using multiple span classes and/or inline styles and many, many <br />s. Other times the site just wraps the code in a <code> attribute and doesn’t highlight the different syntaxes.
I’ve written some simple CSS styles to fix this problem. So if you are interested in having your code display as if it was in a text editor with syntax highlighting here is an easy way to do it.
The first example is a sample of CSS code and how it can look when you apply these styles (***This is not the actual styles, just an EXAMPLE):
Anyone who blogs consistently knows how hard it is to come up with fresh content all the time. And when you do, it can take hours and hours to perfect that article before it’s ready to go live.
Say you work on a post relentlessly for two or three hours one day, and a few days later you go back, make your final edits and set it up to publish next Monday. And then the Friday before you see that someone else has gone and posted their spin on the exact same idea that you worked SO hard on.
You run into a fork in the road - do I publish my article as is no amendments? Do I delete it and cry over the hours of hard work? If I publish it are people going to think that I saw XYZ’s blog post and copied the idea? Do I include a link to XYZ’s post to show camaraderie?
I’ll be honest, when I have experienced this (and it happens at least once every other week to me!) I get so angry at myself. I kick myself when I’m down. I scold myself and question why didn’t I just post it when I first had the idea. Why did I put SO much work into it, and not publish right away. Than I usually sit on the post for a few weeks before I put it live, unless I think it’s really, really good and want feedback and to share it right away. A few times I have gone back and reworked the post to be a little bit different that what XYZ published and often included a link or reference to XYZ’s post as well.
What would you do?
We are never satisfied with our blog software or CMS - it’s almost like an unwritten rule. We are constantly awaiting new updates and features, and when they come they are never good enough. It’s why the age old debate of Wordpress vs. Movable Type exists, and why there is never one clear winner.
So what do we really want in our Content Management Systems?
For myself I would love to see the following capabilities:
- Sweet templating system (a la Wordpress)
- Comments (preferably threaded, with an easy way to distinguish admins)
- Statistics built in (post views, exit points, referrers, # of subscriptions
- Kick ass spam management
- Easy image uploading (multiple images) - (haven’t used WP 2.5 yet to test their version of this)
- Category systems that allow you to better organize categories.
- Better back-end user interface (no winners: Movable Type, Wordpress, Joomla, Expression Engine, Textpattern, etc all fail in some points)
- Better draft and published posts editing panels
- Better documentation
- Multiple blog/site support
So, what do you want and/or need of your CMS? What doesn’t it do right now that you wish it did? What does it do, but you wish it did better?
One of my favorite parts when creating a new design is the process of choosing a color scheme. There are times when the colors just fall into place after I have my main color, or when using a photo the colors just flow around it. But sometimes you need a little help.
Whether your looking for a color scheme to base your design on or you need a little help picking out complimentary colors the generators, articles, color wheels and more below will assist and inspire your color creativity.
