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Archive for the 'Design' Category

Why resizing people’s browser windows is the devil’s work

( Design and Email )

I’ve been working on a bunch of holiday card emails for clients lately and they’ve all had designers asking if we can resize people’s browser windows to fit the square box they designed for the flash-based card. The answer is yes, but no.

Most people think everyone uses the computer just like they do, although there [...]

iPhone Complaints

( Design and Me and Technology )

Below I list out my current gripes about the iPhone. I think this post was spurred a bit by the fact that I’m a little disappointed with Apple’s first major update to the iPhone software. The complaints are also informed by my experience of traveling in Asia with it. It really is handy for traveling. [...]

iPhone? Revolutionary is not an overstatement

( Design and Opinion and Technology )

So I don’t know why some people were suprised, but I got an iPhone last Friday. No, I did not wait in line.

I went down to the Apple store at around 3pm on Friday and there was a line around the block. I went back at 9pm and there was no line, but there was [...]

Men look at other men’s crotches

I was reading this article about an eye-tracking study done by the Neilson Norman Group and the last example surprised me. This study used eye-tracking technology to record where a user’s eye spent the most time when viewing a web page design. This technology is typically used to gather data used to compare the usability [...]

They’re Suppose To Make You Smile

( Design )

My friend Lynn Bryant made these. She says they’re supposed to make you smile.

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How To Use Outlook to Send an HTML File as the Body of an Email

( Design and Email )
I create a lot of HTML email templates and one of the more frequent questions after sending the HTML file to the client is how do I actually send that HTML file as an email. Here's instructions for how to get the HTML into Outlook so you can send it as an email. Save the HTML. If [...]

My Day Does Not Start at Midnight

( Design )

Hello developers, interface designers and human computer interaction specialists of the blogosphere, I have a complaint to make. My computer’s calendar and the calendar on my phone seem to think that my day starts at midnight. If I look at my events for today and have have an event that ended at 2am last night, [...]

pt vs. px

( Design )

I just noticed if I use pt (points) instead of px (pixels) for the units of font-size in my CSS, the font appears the same size on both my PC and Mac. My powerbook has 96 pixels per inch, so text frequently looks really, really small. I guess pt is relative to the physical screen [...]

Proof That Color Is Subjective

( Design )

Here’s a great example of how our perception of colors is completely relative to the surrounding colors. Illusion #3 is pretty amazing.

How To Use CSS in HTML Emails

( Design and Email )

Good current information on how to use CSS in HTML emails.

CSS Zen Garden Has Keyboard Shortcuts

( Design )

CSS Zen Garden is a great resource for ideas when coming up with a new web design. But I always found the interface a little hard to deal with. The link locations change with each new design, so you have to search for the link and remember which ones you’ve already looked at.

Well I just [...]

Firefox renders colors in .png differently than .gif

( Design and Technology )

I just noticed that Firefox renders colors in .png differently than those in .gif.