Owner: Paul Dixon Web Design blog URL:http://www.pauldixonwebdesign.co.uk/blog Join Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 13:34:51 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Blog of Paul Dixon, a web designer living and working in Preston Lancashire. Site statistics:Click here
Ideas and inspiration 2007-07-14 14:50:42 Designing a website from scratch can be difficult, some days ideas can seem to be in short supply. When this happens to me I find the following 3 sites helpful for ideas and inspiration.
Inspiration from other designers
Not only is CSS Remix a nice looking site in it’s own right, it also features some of the best CSS based websites. Unlike some showcases it’s updated on a regular basis and you can choose to filter results by award (votes by users) or date added.
Tips, resources & ideas
Although Smashing Magazine does occasionally showcase websites, it also has regular features and articles on all sorts of web related topics. A recent highlight was 35 Designers x 5 Questions.
Inspiration from images
Searching stock image libraries by keywords can be a slightly different way to get ideas early on in a project, iStockphoto is one of the best and contains photographs, illustrations and graphics. It also comes in handy later on in projects when you need to source high qual
Site redesign 2007-07-04 15:20:34 The redesign
of this website had been something I wanted to do for the past year, and after numerous unsuccessful attempts I finally decided on the version you see before you today.
The old design which you can see a jpeg of here, hadn’t seen any significant changes to the design in the 2 years that it had been live, and although it served it’s purpose reasonably well in that time - I felt it was time for a change. (more…)
Diagonal stripey backgrounds 2007-06-27 15:12:18 Diagonal stripes can be used to give a design a more dynamic and modern feel, the downside is that they tend to involve quite a bit of messing with in Photoshop to create a completely seamless pattern, you only have to be 1 pixel out to ruin the effect.
Stripe Generator is an online tool that makes the process a breeze, you simply decide on the stripe size, spacing and colour and it creates a tile which you can then download ready to use.
You can even choose to use one of the many examples already created by other users.
simple and easy to use CMS 2007-08-04 09:53:15 I recently had the opportunity to beta test an early version of CMS from scratch - a new simple and easy to use content management system developed by Ben Hunt - web designer and creator of Web Design from Scratch.
One of the most frustrating aspects of content management systems that I have tried in the past is the actual integration of the systems into an existing website, it’s rarely straightforward and tends to involve a certain amount of programming knowledge combined with lots of trial and error. This is where CMS from scratch impresses - it really is simple to implement it into existing HTML pages. Sections of a page can be converted to ‘includes’ and these can be edited without having to mess with the page structure. These ‘includes’ can be anything from the meta description in the head section of a page to a paragraph of formatted text.
As a designer you have complete control over which sections of a site are client editable, this ensures a client can’t mess wit
Favicons - inspiration & tools 2007-09-23 09:46:48 One of the last things I do when finishing off a new website is to create a favicon.
Favicons (favourite icons) are the little graphics that you see in the address bars of modern browsers, they also appear next to bookmarked websites which can be helpful when trying to find a particular site in a list of others.
Thanks to online favicon makers they are simple to create from existing website logos and graphics.
Though their size 16×16 can be limiting it is surprising how creative some people mange to be, there are some good examples in this favicon gallery.
Here are some more favicon links -
Favicon ideas and inspiration
Inspire Yourself: 50 Remarkable Favicons
Favicon from Pics - Gallery
MpP Favicon Gallery
Favourite Favicons
5 tips for a nice looking favicon
Online favicon makers
Favicon Generator - create favicons from text
Favicon Editor
Dynamic Drive FavIcon Generator
Favicon Convertor
Favicon Maker
Backing up work with Time Machine 2007-12-08 13:51:45 I have always been aware of the importance of backing up work but up until recently it was always one of those little jobs that I didn’t quite get round to doing often enough, my setup was a 160 GB Formac external hard drive attached to my old eMac. While I didn’t have any problems with the Formac drive it had a built in fan which made the drive ridiculously noisy, also despite it’s relatively small storage size of 160 GB the drive was physically big - it took up a footprint of just under an A4 piece of paper and was the height of 2 and a half dvd cases laid flat. Because of it’s design it couldn’t really be stood on it’s end which would have saved a lot of desk space.
Having upgraded my iMac to OS X Leopard it made sense to use it’s built in backup application Time Machine
, but to get the most out of it I realised I would need a bigger and better external hard drive. I decided early on that I wanted the drive to have more storage space than the iMac’s 500 GB internal h Read more:Backing
Web design books 2008-03-21 14:02:59 You can learn all aspects of web design
and development online and for free, but for really getting to grips with a subject I personally don’t think you can’t beat a book. The photo below is of my mini library built up over 3-4 years, some of the books have seen more use than others, [...]
Test websites in multiple browsers from one machine 2008-11-18 16:51:28 Whether you design sites on a Mac or a PC, chances are you won’t always have immediate access to all the popular browsers
. As a Mac user I sometimes need to test sites in IE 6 & IE 7.
For IE 7 I can reboot my iMac with Vista, but when I need to test in [...]
Recommend Site To A Friend
