The code below will define the animation needed for our effect.

@-webkit-keyframes pop-in {
0% { opacity: 0;-moz-transform: scale(0.5);-webkit-transform: scale(0.5); }
100% { opacity: 1;-moz-transform: scale(1);-webkit-transform: scale(1); }
}
@-moz-keyframes pop-in {
0% { opacity: 0;-moz-transform: scale(0.5);-webkit-transform: scale(0.5); }
100% { opacity: 1;-moz-transform: scale(1);-webkit-transform: scale(1); }
}
@-ms-keyframes pop-in {
0% { opacity: 0;-moz-transform: scale(0.5);-webkit-transform: scale(0.5); }
100% { opacity: 1;-moz-transform: scale(1);-webkit-transform: scale(1); }
}

As you can tell the custom keyframe code has huge potential for lots of effects happening all at once, for more detail check out CSS-Trick’s Article.

Now that our animation has been defined we have to apply it to a class. This can be done by adding the following code below to any style.

-webkit-animation:pop-in 0.5s;
-moz-animation:pop-in 0.5s;
-ms-animation:pop-in 0.5s;

These are the bare essentials needed for a pop-in animation, feel free to experiment with different effects, transition timing, and styles.

Feel free to leave an example of a pop-in effect in the comments

Pingdom – Pingdom is a great tool for finding bottle necks and testing the general speed of your pages

Kraken – This amazing tool will compress any images/css/js you have to smaller sizes to optimize your site’s speed

Sprite Cow – If you’re building CSS sprites for your site you need this tool, it will give you the css for each image you select in your sprite

Subtle Patterns – This site is full of subtle patterns which are amazing for any web or graphic design projects

Premium Pixels – An excellent resource of quality PSDs from Orman Clark

Smashing Magazine - If you’re in the web profession you should be reading this blog

Line 25 – A great blog by Chris Spooner with a new article in web design weekly, including tutorials and inspiration

zscreen – This Windows program will allow you to screenshot anything on your computer and instantly upload it to any image host

What tools do you use in your daily web adventures?

Here are a few buttons including default, hover and active states. These are great if you need an eye catching call to action.

The font used was Nevis which you can get for free here.

Here’s a simple contact box made in Photoshop for any project requiring a sleek contact form.

Here’s a fabulous shopping cart quick view dropdown which is great for any eCommerce project you’re working on.

This Freebie was inspired by Orman Clark on PremiumPixels.com

Using the lowest aperture of 3.5, there is some difficulty taking photos in low light, but still works great in most night shots without the need for a stand. The 8mm viewing angle produces some great photos on my camera (Canon T1i), even on a cropped sensor. The lens also has very little distortion and no vignette on the edges, which was a surprise to me. The main buying point for this lens is the price sadly, for $300 it’s hard to beat such a cheap lens.

Since the lens is made for a variety of cameras, it doesn’t communicate well with the Canon T1i, meaning aperture settings need to be set on the lens itself and a lot of photos will appear under exposed or over exposed. The image quality of the photos produced by the Rokinon was also below the quality I expected, a lot of grain and unsharp areas were noticeable to me.

The Verdict

If you’re a photographer on a budget and need a great wide angle lens, you should defenently pick up the Rokinon 8mm.

View more images from my Flickr set here

Have you purchased a lens not made by your camera manufacturer?
let us know in the comments!

After spending an entire day with the new iPhone 4S after upgrading from an iPhone 4 the differences between the two products are lackluster. Here are my impressions

I waited in line for an hour to get the iPhone 4S at 8am today with 30 other crazy people (mostly Blackberry users) but the experience was easy going. While setting up the phone I logged in to my iCloud account and got it restored from my iPhone 4 iCloud back up which worked pretty well until I left the store (and leaving the wifi). At this point I couldn’t sync from iCloud  without wifi, so I went to work and it took 2 minutes for it to sync settings. After my 8gb of files were synced, the phone was exactly how I had it setup on my previous iPhone, down to the tabs open in the browser. This was such an easy migration period, which is why I love iCloud.

Siri and voice-to-text work wonders but it’s not much more than what we’ve seen on Android based phones. That said Siri is pretty fun to interact with, asking it things such as “Call my brother”, Siri will ask who is your brother and remember who it was.

The camera is noticeably improved but nothing to write home about, and the speed tweaks to the device it self are slight. What’s more noticeable are the iOS5 and iCloud tweaks which is available on both devices. If you are on an iPhone 4 I’d say stay with it, but I’d recommend the iPhone 4/4S experience to any new comer.

Here are a few random shots I’ve taken with the new 8MP camera.

Further Reading

Engadget has a great breakdown of the new product.

Techno buffalo has a nice video comparing speed between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s

and Finally Gizmodo has a nice speed comparison between the various 3g/4g devices

Did you buy the iPhone 4S today? What did you think about it?

Almost always when you find me at the computer or in the car I’m listening to music. With over 4000 songs in my Zune I still crave more, here are some of the ways I pursue new music.

Hype Machine has to be one of my favorite sites, it basically tracks music blogs and lets users vote on them. I spend a lot of time listening to the “popular” page of the site to see what is upcoming (Hypem’s popular is usually upcoming songs). The site allows you to monitor searches for your favorite artists also, creating a unique feed for artists you like. (If you’re interested here’s my Hypem profile)

While driving a great way to explore a genre is to have XM or Sirius in your car. I’ve discovered plenty of songs through satellite radio, and the best part is if you like a song you can see the title right on the display. (My favorite stations include BPM, BBC Radio 1, and SiriusXM U)

If you like to let the DJ (or robot DJ) do all the work for you, you might want to find a nice online radio station. I’ve found plenty of older and newer songs I’ve never heard of while listening to internet radio, and after downloading they’ve been a great addition to my collection. I suggest browsing station in the Shoutcast directory using WinAmp. A few of my favorite stations include FrenchKiss FM, Wadio, and TechnoBase FM.

When all else fails see what your friends are tuning into, it also helps to “like” bands and artits on Facebook to see when they release new work.

How do you explore music? Grooveshark? Pandora? Concerts? Let us know in the comments!

Article header image by Daniel Paxton via Flickr

The biggest change is to notifications, it no longer pops up interfering with what you are doing but rather gives you an Android like alert at the top of the screen. To see all your notifications you just drag down the top of your screen to see notifications, and they even added a stock and weather widget in the dropdown.

A lot of visual tweaks are welcomed, such as changes in the messaging apps and adding a slightly different style around menus. The notification settings are also a lot more complex than they used to be, which is a great addition if you preferred the old style messages.

Being able to setup/sync your device all wirelessly is a nice addition. They even had a setting during start up that allowed me to sync everything from iCloud, meaning when I get a new iPhone I can pull all my photos and settings back down without having to do anything besides logging in. Apple has improved iOS in nearly every way, some issues were it ran a little slower and a few apps don’t work, but I assume these issues will be resolved by it’s fall launch.

iOS and Android’s OS are pretty tightly matched after iOS5 in my opinion, but what do you think?