Joshua Johnson
Equal parts editor, writer, designer, & photographer. Hit me up on Twitter, read my Mac tutorials or check out my photos.
Are You a Right-Brained or Left-Brained Designer?
Colors, pictures, creativity; designers are quite obviously a group of people that tend to gravitate towards using the right sides of their brains… right? Or is this simply a stereotype that doesn’t necessarily ring true?
Is design exclusively artistic talent put to productive use or is it possible that the industry is equally full of analytical problem solvers? Let’s take a look at how designers think, whether you’re a right brainer or a left brainer, and how I’ve struggled through being a left brainer in an industry of right brainers.
Read More
40 Awesome jQuery Plugins You Need to Check Out
The jQuery developer community has to be one of the most generous and hardworking group of people on the web. They’re constantly churning out amazingly useful and completely free tools that they share with anyone and everyone who wants to use them.
The quantity and quality of free jQuery plugins simply never ceases to amaze me. I’ve been keeping a list of some great ones that I’ve found lately and I thought I’d share it with you. Here are 40 awesome and free jQuery plugins that just about every web developer should check out.
May 10th, 2013 Posted in JavaScript
Should You Be Designing With QR Codes?
QR codes are all the rage… aren’t they? Their presence certainly seems to have increased in recent years, indicating an impressive adoption rate among marketers. But does that mean that you should be using them? If a client asks you whether or not using QR codes is a good idea, what will you say?
Join us as we take an honest and critical look at both sides of the QR debate so you can decide for yourself whether or not you should be designing with QR codes.
May 3rd, 2013 Posted in Business
Focal Point: Intelligent Cropping of Responsive Images
The practice of implementing responsive images is still in its infancy. We’ve seen a lot of ideas and suggestions for how it should be done and we’re bound to see a lot more.
Today we’re going to look at a fascinating little framework that allows you to not only automatically resize your images when the viewport changes, but also crop the images with a specific important focal point in mind. Amazingly enough, it does all this with pure CSS. Read on to see how it works.
April 12th, 2013 Posted in CSS
Mobile First Design: Why It’s Great and Why It Sucks
Historically, most web designers and their clients have approached the desktop side of any project first, while leaving the mobile part as a secondary goal that gets accomplished later. Even with the rise of responsive design, many of us begin with the “full size” site and work our way down.
There’s a growing trend in the industry though to flip this workflow on its head and actually begin with mobile considerations and then work up to a larger desktop version. Why would you ever approach a project this way? What are some of the pros and cons of this strategy? Read on to find out!
April 5th, 2013 Posted in CSS
Don’t Be a Pansy: Great Design Is About Making Decisions
What sets the great designers apart from the good ones? What goes wrong when a project with so much potential turns into something lackluster and subpar?
Decisions decisions decisions. Great designers recognize the key decisions that have the ability to make their projects special and have the courage to make those decisions. Read on to see how.
March 28th, 2013 Posted in Business
Using Checkboxes to Toggle CSS and Create Click Events
More and more lately I’ve seen developers utilizing tricks to create toggle states using pure CSS. This allows you to skip the JavaScript without sacrificing the interaction. How does this work? Is it an acceptable practice?
Today we’re going to examine two distinct methods for utilizing a checkbox to create a click event that swaps between two images using good old HTML and CSS. We’ll finish off with a brief discussion on semantics and the pros/cons of this technique.
March 24th, 2013 Posted in CSS
How to Center Anything With CSS
Recently, we took a dive into the very core concepts behind CSS layout and explored the differences between absolute and relative positioning. We’re going to follow that up with another CSS layout talk, this time based around a fundamental question that almost every new developer asks: how do you center something?
There are a bunch of different types of web elements and layout situations, each calling for a unique solution for centering (both vertically and horizontally). Today we’ll go over a bunch of these scenarios so you can wrap your mind around how they work and come away with the confidence to center anything!
March 6th, 2013 Posted in CSS
Zen Grids: A Responsive Grid System Built on Sass
Building grids was moderately complicated before responsive design, these days they can be downright intimidating. When you dive into a complex layout, it’s easy to get lost in all of the math and percentages. Sure, the hardcore nerds among us love to play with this stuff, but some developers just want to get to work!
Today we’re going to look at an awesome grid system that will help you set up your responsive grids with very little effort. It’s semantic, built for responsive design, completely flexible to the way you work, and powered by Sass. Meet Zen Grids.
February 27th, 2013 Posted in CSS
5 Simple and Practical CSS List Styles You Can Copy and Paste
Who doesn’t love a good list? We use them constantly in our markup for a variety of different situations. Today we’re going to take a look at a few simple and practical examples that you can steal and use in your own work.
We start off with a fun animated vertical list, then style up a list with thumbnails and text, another with just images and finally an ordered list where the numbers are styled differently than the rest of the type. There’s a ton of great things to learn here so let’s jump in!
February 22nd, 2013 Posted in CSSSubscribe
Membership
