As some of you who follow my Twitter feed or Facebook page will already know, I’ve recently switched to Google Chrome. I’ve been reluctant to switch from Firefox for a long time purely because of my huge admiration for Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar, however that’s all changed thanks to the Google Chrome Extensions in this post.
13 Google Chrome Extensions for a Web Designer
IE9 Preview
Microsoft have made their first preview for Internet Explorer 9 available for testing. At this stage I’m pretty impressed with the progress they’re making but what can you expect from the new browser?
Perspectives on Cross-Cultural Web Design
It’s easy to get caught up in the design of your website. Transforming sketches and notes from the back of a napkin into a bunch of all-singing, all-dancing web pages gives a tremendous sense of achievement to amateurs and professionals alike: turning visions into realities certainly is satisfying.
How to become a Freelance Web Designer
I get a lot of emails from interested readers who want to know how to become a freelance web designer so I thought it might be a good time to write an article explaining how to get into this industry and share my experience as to how I got to where I am today.
Blank browser windows for Photoshop mockups
When creating mockups for websites, it’s useful to use a blank browser window within Photoshop so that you get a good feel for how the design will look when it’s actually rendered as a web page.
To make this process slightly easier, I’ve put together a collection of blank browser windows for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari at 800×600 and 1024×768 which are now available to download.
Web Browser News
Over the last couple of weeks Google have caused a bit of a stir in the world of web browsers. First they announced that they’d be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 and that was shortly followed by news that Chrome 4.0 had been released. Microsoft have been patching IE after a security flaw was discovered and finally, Firefox 3.6 has been released, so what do these new web browser developments mean to us web designers.
Using em’s for font sizing
Many web designers still use pixels for sizing their fonts within a web page, however this presents an accessibility problem on devices and browsers (namely Internet Explorer) which don’t allow pixels to be resized. The solution is to use ems or percentages to size the font so that they’re relative to the base font size set within the browser and it’s really not as difficult as a lot of people might think.
Project folder structure for a web designer
I’ve always been fairly well organised when it comes to projects but up until recently, I haven’t had a standardised way of structuring my folders which occasionally leads to hunting for that piece of documentation that’s hiding in a folder buried deep in a directory structure. I’m now using a method that is consistent across all my projects and thought I’d share it here in the hope that it helps other web designers to manage their documents and graphics.
HTML Escape Characters
Whenever I’m creating an HTML page and have a need to use a character that needs escaping (which is less common than the & or ©) I have to go hunting for a list of HTML escape characters so I’ve put together this article as a quick reference of all the character codes and entity names that you can use within HTML.
Using CSS3 Selectors in Internet Explorer
CSS3 is the next big thing to really help during the web development process but any web developer that has been following the progress of CSS3 will have become increasingly frustrated at the lack of support from Internet Explorer. However Keith Clark has put together a clever solution which means you can start using some of the selectors now and they’ll even work in Internet Explorer 5 and upwards.