Articles - Page 197

Business / 3 Nov 2009

The Ultimate Guide to CSS Gallery Inclusion

Design Shack started out as a simple CSS gallery, featuring well designed websites that caught my eye. Tens of thousands of designs have been submitted over the past few years, and each one has been considered carefully for inclusion. The sad fact is that only around 5% of submissions stand out from the crowd.

This could be due to any number of factors; the site didn’t get the basics right, didn’t have anything remarkable to show, or (occasionally) was let down by content. This guide will walk you through how to make sure you stand a great chance of inclusion, avoiding all the pitfalls so commonly stumbled into by designers. At each stage, we’ll take a look at one great example, and one that’s not so good.

Graphics / 2 Nov 2009

50 Outstanding Free Design Textures

A few good textures can take a boring design and turn into something stunning. As a designer, you should seek to build a library of all kinds of textures to complement a range of styles. Here are 50 completely free and ready to download textures to get you started.

JavaScript / 28 Oct 2009

20 Simple jQuery Tricks

jQuery has quickly made it’s way into nearly every web developer’s bag of tricks. The simplicity with which jQuery allows us to handle complicated events and perform smooth animations makes it the perfect tool for both beginners and experienced developers to add professional flair to their sites.

Here are 20 simple jQuery tricks to get you on your way to JavaScript bliss. The keyword here is “simple” so even if you’ve never used jQuery before, this is the perfect place to start!

HTML / 26 Oct 2009

HTML5: Get It Working Today (4 of 4)

This will be the final article in our series on HTML5. This go around we’ll have a brief look at which new HTML5 technologies major browsers are officially supporting and go over some techniques you can use to take advantage of the new elements in your coding today. Finally, we’ll discuss how you should start preparing to support HTML5 in all the sites you build from here forward.

HTML / 23 Oct 2009

HTML5: Semantic Changes (3 of 4)

In the last article, we looked at a number of new elements introduced in HTML5 and how to implement them properly. In this article, we’ll again be discussing a set of new elements but this time we’ll be examining only those HTML5 elements that represent a significant semantic change to the way you structure your sites. This article will cover how to use each of these new elements in a way that will bring much needed relief to the div-itus that plagues the structure of so many sites today.

HTML / 21 Oct 2009

HTML5: New Elements (2 of 4)

A couple of days ago we posted an introduction to HTML5 and briefly covered some of the content we’ll be outlining in this series. Today’s post, which is the second in the series of four, will take a look at how to use six of the new elements in HTML5: canvas, article, audio, video, meter, and mark.

Keep in mind that HTML5 is not exactly ready for widespread use – so don’t go changing anything on your site quite yet. Be assured that HTML5 is in fact coming soon, therefore these concepts may prove useful in the near future.

HTML / 19 Oct 2009

HTML5: The Basics (1 of 4)

The next iteration of HTML has been met with excitement by some, loathing by others and confusion/fear by everyone else. Love it or hate it, HTML 5 will soon define how you build websites. This is the first article in a four part series that will introduce HTML5 and its basic features as well as explain the key differences from HTML4.01 and XHTML 1.0 so you can start preparing yourself and your sites for the transition. Over the next week we’ll be focusing on three major areas:

1. New Elements
2. Semantic Changes
3. Getting it Working Today

This article will briefly introduce each of these topics to prepare you for the in-depth articles ahead.

CSS / 14 Oct 2009

How to Use TypeKit on Your Site: Step-by-Step

Several options have cropped up recently for adding custom fonts to your website by utilizing the @font-face selector. TypeKit is an exciting new player in this game because it stands out in two key areas: ease of use and richness of fonts available. This tutorial will take you through several small, super simple steps to get TypeKit up and running on your site. You won’t find any advanced techniques or scripting here, so even if you’re a novice web designer this should be a cinch!

CSS / 26 Feb 2009

Correctly Displaying Your Logo With CSS

Every site has a logo, and whether it’s a page filling feature or a small design element, it often forms the primary title feature of your page. This article will show you how to implement a logo using correct semantic markup and simple HTML code, with all the presentation done via CSS.

It’ll ensure that those browsing your site without images will see a decent alternative, and provide search engines with a correct representation of your page title.

PHP / 9 Feb 2009

Smart File Type Detection Using PHP

In most web applications today, there is a need to allow users to upload images, audio and video files. Sometimes, we also need to restrict certain types of files from being uploaded – an executable file being an obvious example.

Security aside, one might also want to prevent users from misusing the upload facility, e.g. uploading copyrighted music files illegally and using the service to promote piracy! In this article, we’ll look into a few ways in which we can achieve this.

Graphics / 8 Dec 2008

Creating Fading Site Dividers

You might have seen these fading dividers/separators on various sites, which seem to fade both horizontally and vertically. Here is an example of what I mean:

They provide a great way to split content up, doing so in a subtle and non-intrusive manner. I would like to share a simple way to create these fading dividers using Photoshop.

JavaScript / 22 Oct 2008

Creating a Virtual jQuery Keyboard

For those of us who travel often, we often end up accessing our emails and other confidential web accounts on public computers. In such circumstances, we are completely at the mercy of keyloggers and other malicious software that track our keystrokes and record our passwords.

Yet, very few websites provide their users with the option of using a virtual keyboard to key in (at the bare minimum) their passwords. Yes, a few banks do it, but considering how much personal information we store in various web applications these days, the safety of these accounts are of no less significance to us. This tutorial will explain how we can implement a simple virtual keyboard with some (well, okay, lots of!) help from jQuery.

Before I begin, let me show you how it will all look in the end.