Blog

• CSS3 text-shadow examples

  19 March 2010 by Clive Walker

  Text-shadow is a CSS3 property (actually, it was introduced a while ago but removed from CSS2.1) that I am seeing more and more on websites these days. It works quite nicely (if used in moderation) and provides a design enhancement for those browsers that support it (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome). Instead of writing a tutorial, like I normally do with CSS3, I thought I’d share a few useful links that provide more information about text-shadow.

• jQuery: Novice to Ninja from Sitepoint

  11 March 2010 by Clive Walker

  I am reading a new jQuery book from Sitepoint at the moment. It's called jQuery: Novice to Ninja and it promises to take you from beginner to expert.

  1 Comments

• Websites with left and right arrow keyboard navigation

  05 March 2010 by Clive Walker

  Over the last week or so I have come across several websites that allow users to navigate using the left and right arrow keys. I think this is an interesting approach and I really like this method.

  4 Comments

• Should I use web templates and themes?

  23 February 2010 by Clive Walker

  One thing that I have been pondering recently is whether to use web templates or (WordPress) themes more regularly in web design projects.

  3 Comments

• How to work with an old logo

  17 February 2010 by Clive Walker

  Here's the story: Not so long ago, I was asked to redesign a client's website that, to be frank, was long past its sell-by date.

  2 Comments

• jQuery links for light reading

  10 February 2010 by Clive Walker

  Some recent articles on jQuery from around the web.

• How to create drop caps with CSS (and CSS3)

  02 February 2010 by Clive Walker

  Drop caps are a nice typographic detail that look great on many websites; I’ve used these myself on several examples including Just Holiday Nannies (main page headings) and Occupational Synergy (leading paragraphs). There are a few ways of achieving this effect but the CSS selector I like to use is the :first-letter pseudo-element. This selector is reasonably well supported across most modern browsers (albeit with a few minor bugs here and there). Here’s how it works.

  2 Comments

• Website case studies are a great way to learn

  27 January 2010 by Clive Walker

  I like to browse a lot of websites with the aim of learning from how others do things. I figure that this is part of my job as a freelance web designer/developer.

• CSS3 box-shadow and image hover effects

  22 January 2010 by Clive Walker

  The CSS3 box-shadow property is a new way of adding drop shadow effects just by editing a style sheet. There’s no need to use Photoshop! Just open your style sheet in a text editor and away you go. Well, it’s almost as simple as that but not quite. There’s one caveat and that is browser support. The box-shadow property is supported by Firefox and Safari, using their proprietary -moz- and -webkit- prefixes, but it’s not supported by Internet Explorer (or other browsers). For this reason, I think the box-shadow property is ideal for adding image link hover effects where the shadow is not absolutely essential but where it provides a nice style enhancement (enrichment) for modern browsers.

  23 Comments

• Using JavaScript for enhancing CSS support in Internet Explorer

  18 January 2010 by Clive Walker

  One of the subjects that I have been keeping an eye on recently is the use of JavaScript to enhance support for more advanced CSS methods in Internet Explorer (IE). We all know that, despite some big improvements, Internet Explorer 8 does not support some of the newer CSS properties used by Firefox and Safari, which tend to lead the way in this respect.

  5 Comments