1. Authors
  2. Joshua Johnson

Joshua Johnson

Joshua Johnson

Equal parts editor, writer, designer, and photographer. Hit me up on Twitter, or check out my photos.

How to Use Centered Alignments: Tips and Examples

Layouts / 8 Feb 2013

How to Use Centered Alignments: Tips and Examples

Today we’re going to go back to basics with a “design 101” discussion on alignments. Centered alignments are an easy place to go wrong and if you don’t know how to wield them properly, the result is a very poorly structured page.

Join us as we take a look at why centered alignments tend to be weak, where you should avoid them and how you should be using them.

20 Fresh Sites With Amazing Scrolling Effects

Inspiration / 30 Jan 2013

20 Fresh Sites With Amazing Scrolling Effects

Scrolling effects are becoming more and more popular as a means of increasing interaction and user interest. Through clever background positioning, animations and a little JavaScript, you can bring your page to life in ways that will surprise and grab your users’ attention.

There’s a wide variety of tactics that you can use to create a unique scrolling experience on your site. Join us as we take a look at twenty fresh sites and how they use scrolling effects in different ways.

Check Out the New American Airlines Logo

Graphics / 23 Jan 2013

Check Out the New American Airlines Logo

American Airlines has had the same logo for forty-five years. That’s definitely a pretty impressive stretch! They’ve decided to hang up their Helvetica though and look to not only a new typeface, but a new eagle and even a new livery design.

Read on to see the logic behind the new design and whether or not I think it’s another chapter in a long line of recent brand redesigns gone bad.

Build a Fun True or False Quiz With CSS

CSS / 21 Jan 2013

Build a Fun True or False Quiz With CSS

I’m constantly surprised by what you can achieve using only HTML, CSS and a little ingenuity. I love to think outside the box and attempt creative experiments just to see if I can pull it off.

Today’s random challenge is to create a fun little true/false quiz. Questions will be presented to the user and answers will be revealed only on click. To make the magic happen, we’ll turn to some pretty crazy methods and use features like active, focus and even tabindex! You’re bound to learn some quirky stuff so hit the jump and follow along.

6 Awesome Emmet CSS Time-Saving Tips

CSS / 17 Jan 2013

6 Awesome Emmet CSS Time-Saving Tips

Emmet is one of the most useful text editor plugins that you’ll ever come across for developers. It has the seemingly magic ability to turn a tiny bit of work into a ton of code, which can save you an incredible amount of time and effort in the long run.

Previously, we took a look at some of the best features of Emmet from an HTML perspective, today we’re going to follow that up with some tips for how Emmet can improve your CSS workflow.

Code a Spinning Circular Menu With CSS

CSS / 16 Jan 2013

Code a Spinning Circular Menu With CSS

Don’t be a square, break outside your boring box and try on a circle for size. Today we’re going to build a circular navigation menu that spins to different points as the user hovers over an anchor.

Along the way we’ll have to overcome several obstacles like how to structure our HTML to be conducive to a remote hover and how to position all of the elements just right so that everything works. It’s a fun challenge and there’s a lot to learn, let’s get started!

Perform a Split Reveal With CSS

CSS / 10 Jan 2013

Perform a Split Reveal With CSS

CSS can pull of a lot of really great image tricks: size manipulation, desaturation, even blur. One limitation that we run into though is that you can’t really slice an image into multiple parts. For instance, if you wanted to cut a photo in half and animate the separation, you couldn’t really do it with pure CSS. Could you?

Today we’re going to code up a work around that allows us to achieve this very trick without an ounce of JavaScript or extra files. Let’s see how it works.

Generating Placeholder Content in Sublime Text 2

Software / 7 Jan 2013

Generating Placeholder Content in Sublime Text 2

Everyone needs a little placeholder content now and then. Whether it’s a quick dummy image or a chunk of lorem ipsum, placeholder content can help fill the void when you need to flesh out a project but don’t necessarily have your pieces in place.

Today we’re going to take a look at how Sublime Text 2 can help you generate placeholder content automatically so you can save time and move on to the important stuff. Let’s check it out!

Photoshop to CSS Conversion: 3 Methods Compared

CSS / 3 Jan 2013

Photoshop to CSS Conversion: 3 Methods Compared

Converting Photoshop mockups to live web code is an extremely common practice among web designers. We’ve all done it a million times by hand, so it’s pretty exciting when we start seeing solutions pop up that will help us automate this process.

The latest version of Creative Cloud Photoshop CS6 has a built-in feature for converting Photoshop styles to CSS, and if you need another solution, there are two solid extensions that you can check out. Today we’ll compare the results of all three methods: Photoshop, CSS3Ps and CSSHat to see which is best.

Invoiceable: The End of My Search for the Perfect Invoicing App

Software / 31 Dec 2012

Invoiceable: The End of My Search for the Perfect Invoicing App

I love getting paid, but I hate invoicing. It can be tedious, time consuming and even frustrating if you don’t have a good system in place. Long have I searched in vain for the perfect invoicing app that has the features I need without costing me a fortune.

Good news: I finally found it. Invoiceable is everything I’ve ever wanted in an invoicing app. It’s easy to use, the invoices are highly customizable and the service is free. Sounds too good to be true right? Read on to learn more.

Four Custom Icon Font Generators Compared

CSS / 27 Dec 2012

Four Custom Icon Font Generators Compared

Icon fonts are all the rage right now. They make it so dang easy to embed vector graphics into a page that designers everywhere are turning to them as the primary way to handle icons.

The problem of course is, we need more control over which icons we embed. Sometimes we pull from a variety of sources, including our own work, and we need a good way to put it all together. Enter icon font generators. Follow along as we compare a few of our favorites.

CSS Card Tricks

CSS / 26 Dec 2012

CSS Card Tricks

Know any good card tricks? Hopefully, after today, you will! We’re going to build some simple and attractive playing cards with pure CSS, then we’ll learn how to target and animate each card for some added fun.

Along the way, we’ll see how to use before and after to build the cards with minimal markup. Let’s get started!