Robert Spangler

8 Web Design Resources I Couldn’t Live Without (Honestly!)

Robert — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:50:16 +0000

Ok, so the “10 ___’s that will save your life!” posts can be annoying. Hopefully you can get some use out of this post; these are the web resources that I honestly use all of the time. No Filler! They are ordered by how well they’re know (least to most known).

1. Web Template

I typically use either a 12 or a 16 column grid on most of my designs. I also need to see what it will look like in 800×600 and 1024×768, so I basically just created a nice little .PSD file that includes all of my necessities in an overlay folder at the top of my document. It helps to get my design going on the right foot (after planning, research and sketches of course!). For the grid system I’m using overlays from 960.gs.

Download the Web Template (.zip)

2. The Viget Photoshop Color Fix

Have you ever sliced out an image and the colors are slightly different from what you saw on your .psd? Photoshop does this horrible thing where it changes how you see your colors in Photoshop window to match your monitor. This is unacceptable for the web! Make sure you run this fix to ensure that your colors come out right.

Read the Blog Post

3. IETester

We all hate IE, but we all still need to make sure that our visitors and clients don’t hate us (because you know they all use it!). The difficult thing about designing for IE is that you can only have one version of it installed on your PC; unless… you don’t have 3 virtual PCs running do you? That’s a shame, because IETester gives you the ability to open a different version of IE in separate tabs (from 5.5 to 8).

Get IETester

4. AutoPopulate

This was originally developed by Roger Johansson and basically auto-populates your input field with instructions (ex: “Enter Your Search Term Here”) but it still keeps your fields accessible by doing it using the title attribute. I’m a big fan of JQuery, and so is my friend Andy Stratton, so he created a great plugin for it.

Get JQuery Populate Plugin

5. JQuery UI

Ok, JQuery is an awesome hotdog, and JQuery UI is all the relish, mustard and ketchup. JQuery UI allows you to easily create a datepicker, a slider, a dialog box…, or even make elements resizable. I find myself using the tabs more than anything.

Get JQuery UI

6. FireBug

If you’re a web designer, you probably already know what this is all about and you can skip to the next one. FireBug has saved me countless hours in my CSS, it allows you to inspect and alter live CSS on any site. This is great if you’re fixing an issue on a website that has already been integrated into a complex CMS (e.g. Ektron!).

Get FireBug

7. SwfObject

There are a couple good solutions out there for flash replacement, but I stick with SwfObject because it never lets me down and it’s not complicated. It basically allows you to add your flash file in an accessible way by providing alternate content for people without the Adobe Flash Player.

Get SwfObject

8. sIFR

I have a love/hate relationship with sIFR. I always seem to have to tweak the heck out of it to really get it doing what I want, but it is still the best font-replacement tool out there.

Get sIFR

xHTML 1.0 Strict Doctype Template

Robert — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:29:14 +0000

This is just the xHTML document that I usually start off with, already included tags for title, description, keywords, favicon, and stylesheet.




	
	
	
	<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />

There were a few occasions where I gave up on using the UTF-8 charset because IE6 had a ‘white screen’ bug on certain pages using a post through PHP. If you’re having these problems use ISO-8859-1, ex:

WhatTheFont iPhone App

Robert — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 01:53:01 +0000

Ever been looking through a magazine and wondered what font you’re reading? MyFont’s just released a WhatTheFont iPhone app to answer that question!

I took a picture of my mouse pad at work which has one of our client’s logos printed on it. I’ve always wondered what that font was…

First Crop Your Font Selection

Crop Selection

Upload Your Image

Upload Image

Verify Font’s Characters

Check Chars

Pick the Correct Font!

Font Matches

The app isn’t quite perfect, you definitely have to make sure that you have a clear picture with decent lighting. But for headings, and larger font faces it’s great to be able to figure out the font.

Don’t have an iPhone? I don’t blame you, they’re expensive. Use this!

New Redesign and WordPress 2.7

Robert — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:36:26 +0000

The feeling of “I’M BORED” was definitely the impetus for the redesign. I wanted something that was a bit more personal and I always felt like my last design was a bit too “corporate.” I have a few pictures that I’ve taken sampled throughout some of the backgrounds, and just an overall warmer feel. Still a bit of a work in progress, let me know if you have any suggestions!

Along with the design changes I decided to ditch Textpattern and head back over to WordPress. The latest WP changes have been great and the platform has become so much more flexible since the pre-2.5 days. Hopefully Textpattern will begin some updates for us, but in the meantime I’m definitely happy sticking with WordPress for a while.

Taking a Little Break

Robert — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:42:57 +0000

Well friends, I’ll be away from the computer for about a week (jealous?). Me and the wife are heading out to Daytona Beach for Student Life & The Beach 2008 with the students at our church.

Bye!

Thinking About Using Video on Your eCommerce Website?

Robert — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:27:19 +0000

I just posted a blog over on Groove Commerce’s eCommerce Blog about using product videos on your eCommerce websites. Check it out, and let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.

eCommerce Gallery Has Launched!

Robert — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 22:09:28 +0000

I’m pleased to announce that eCommerce Gallery has finally launched. This has been a side-project I’ve been working on for quite some time.

I frequently check a lot of CSS/website galleries, but I’ve always struggled because most of them simply feature websites for edgy design firms. What about eCommerce and lead generation? Not all clients are going to want that hot glossy header with that 300k grunge background (though some do, and that’s fun too!).

Please check it out and let me know what you think. Feel free to submit your eCommerce sites!

I have some fun features in there such as ratings and comments, but mainly it’s about the sites and hopefully that comes across clearly.

Random Tidbits of News

Robert — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:48:10 +0000

1. WordPress 2.5 is out, and looks great. Admin was redesigned by Happy Cog (Jefferey Zeldman’s Crew)

2. Magento just launched it’s first production build (v1.0)

3. Nathan Smith released 960.gs a web design grid system for 960px wide designs.

4. This guy raps about SEO & Conversions (thanks Luke)

Is Gmail’s Spam Protection Too Good?

Robert — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:52:26 +0000

I’m a huge Google fan but I laughed a bit when I checked my spam folder today…

In case you didn’t notice, Google put it’s own “Google Alert” in the spam folder.

Safari for Windows Released

Robert — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:24:39 +0000

This is a little bit dated now, but just in case you haven’t heard. Safari 3.1 is out for Windows! This is great news for web developers using a PC, as you no longer have to boot up your Mac to check out your site (though, you probably should as i doubt that they’re completely identical).

Download Safari