Image buttons are a fairly common occurrence in web media. As with everything else in web design, you have a dizzying arsenal of methods from which you can choose to create this type of design element, and choosing the right method can greatly aid in your design’s accessibility, performance, and SEO-friendliness.
I love jQuery; I use it all the time. I also love the great UI controls that come with the jQuery UI library. Unfortunately, I’ve found that a lot of these controls can be a little heavy in terms of required JS/CSS files that your clients will have to download in order to use these controls. Being the minimalist that I am, I really want to drop a small amount of CSS and HTML into my site and quickly get myself up and running with a tab structure that’s both flexible and accessible.
Just about every web designer uses applications like Dreamweaver, Coda, Photoshop, and the like for their work each and every day. These tools really lay a foundation for web design work, but there are a number of other applications and plug-ins out there that you may not be aware of. These tools can increase your productivity and make your job easier to boot. In an effort to alleviate your designer woes, I have come up with a list of the five most valuable (and FREE) tools that I’ve found. Your comments and supplemental suggestions are most welcome!
In retrospective, there are definitely some areas where I could have improved on my Karate Corners design. I decided to take a second look and write a quick post that details how I create corners today, after almost a year of evolution in the ever-changing world of web design. This is absolutely the most simple and efficient way to create rounded corners using strictly CSS and HTML.
Each time you implement a new design element into your site, there are a vast array of approaches you can take to achieve the same outcome. Often times, I feel that the most simple of solutions is the best one. When implementing the “user comments” feature into ThumbSticks.com, I decided to wrap each user comment in a sort of “chat bubble box,” much like you would see in a comic book story. I experimented with various solutions that gave me different amounts of flexibility and performance, but I eventually settled on a very simple solution that resulted in what I think is an elegant CSS chat bubble.
I’m constantly creating new designs, either for work or for fun, so periodically I try to update my portfolio to include the latest and greatest. Check out the newest additions and please let me know what you think!
Web designers would be wise to approach every situation with one thing in mind: simplicity. Simplicity is the cornerstone of designing a well-structured and highly flexible HTML/CSS design. I’ve found that all too often, many designers approach a website with one thing in mind: the “look” of the fully rendered site. They approach each page or screen with a definitive pixel-perfect image in their heads, and they execute the design process to produce each pixel as it was originally intended.
After many months of diligent design, testing, and development, I have finally reached the first major release of my latest project, ThumbSticks.com. You may have seen the design for this site on my portfolio page for quite some time now. This creative design has finally become a reality!
Should we abandon rounded corner techniques that require additional HTML markup in favor of emerging CSS techniques that are not yet supported on all browsers? Apparently, the answer is an overwhelming YES.
I know it’s been a long time since my last post, but things have been busy! I’m at An Event Apart this week, which is a conference for UI designers such as myself. I’ll be making a few posts that have been “in the making” for quite a while now in the coming weeks, so look forward to seeing some new design tips and tricks in the days to come.