The State of HTML5 Video

DavidM    Design and Development    

Excellent article by LongTailVideo on current (Jan 2012 article, Nov 2011 data) support of HTML5 video features in various browsers.

Keep in mind that this is specific research and should be balanced using your own site analytics (eg. Your site gets mostly Firefox traffic vs IE).

http://www.longtailvideo.com/html5/

Google Magazine?

DavidM    Business, Design and Development     Google, magazine, quarterly, think

Well, sort of. read more…

WordPress Tip: RSS Feed from Specific Category

DavidM    Design and Development, WordPress Tips     coding, feed, rss, tips, WordPress

If you wanted to get an rss feed for a specific category, like Cool Links on GoatMinds all you need to do is add /feed to the category url.

If the category URL is:
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Adding Pizazz to Your Blog Posts

Dale Hogan    Design and Development     Blog Design, Blogging, Blogging Help, Fotolia, Images, iStockpoto, online, Plugins, Stock Photography, web, WordPress

Making your blog posts snazzy can be a chore when you’re an active blogger.  With all of life’s demands, it’s hard enough to just find the time to string together a few coherent sentences and get them published to your blog with any consistency.  What’s needed is a ‘have your cake and eat it too’ solution for adding great, legally licensed images to your posts.  Adding the right images to a post can really make it pop!  Well placed thematic photos and illustrations can aid in garnering the type of attention and traffic you want. read more…

Getting the Most Out of Your Social Media Efforts

DavidM    Business, Design and Development    

So you’ve got a website running and it’s getting some decent traffic but you keep hearing about how social media is the “next big thing”. Sure it’s been around for a while, but now everybody’s doing it. Let’s look at social media as it pertains to online social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, other people’s blogs and forums.

One of the things to consider is that, unlike your own website, social media is essentially out of your control. You can tell people about stuff, offer guidance and even have some success in promoting your product or service but it’s everyone else that is in control. What they say about you, how they share your information and whether they decide to connect with you are major factors in your social media efforts.

First things first. Why are you online? If you are hoping to generate revenue from advertising and affiliate links and you just want big traffic numbers then most of what I’m about to say isn’t likely of interest. If, however, you are promoting your own product or service then the quality of those visitors and the customer service that you provide will be an important consideration.
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Browser Testing Made Easy

DavidM    Cool Links, Design and Development     browser, coding, design, development, testing, tools, web

Any web designer will tell you that one of the biggest headaches in development is making sure that what you code looks good across multiple browsers. We all know the quirks and workarounds for some of the mainstream browsers, but testing a site in several different ones can be frustrating and time-consuming.

To simplify the process you can use a tool like Adobe BrowserLab that lets you see how your design is rendered across multiple browsers. Just enter your URL and select what browsers you want to view and BrowserLab renders it. To compare, you can view side-by-side, switch between single views or overlay using onion skin mode. This is an excellent tool that Adobe offers for free and all you need to do is sign in with or create a free Adobe ID account.

Brands of the World

AWWA    Cool Links, Design and Development     branding, brands, corporate, design, logos, vector logos

Designing a logo? Need an existing vector logo of an existing brand? Find it here at Brands of the World.

PDF Application Settings

AWWA    Design and Development     commercial, design, pdf, printing, publishing, settings, workflow

The Ghent PDF Workgroup is the organization for determinations of professional prepress standards for the best practices of publishing workflows. Creation of pdf files has become standard practice. Why would someone be interested in this? Simple: if you design something and want it to print as you intended, you need to prepare the file properly for the printer. Most publishers will ask you for pdf files and not native files (ones created by a specific application). Do not expect the printer to fix your mistakes. Your client will be charged for their time in order to facilitate printing.
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Site Performance Testing with Pingdom

DavidM    Cool Links, Design and Development     development, error, performance, pingdom, site, testing, tools, web

Whether you are tweaking the design or working on a complete overall, checking how your site is performing is a critical step. Not only can you see where delays are occurring, like externally linked images or affiliate programs, you can also see some not so obvious errors. There are several tools out there to test the performance of your website and it is a good idea to build a collection in your designer’s toolbox.

One such tool is Pingdom’s free Full Page Test which loads the full page and all it’s objects then displays bars representing the time taken for each item to load. It will also highlight items that exceed recommended times or generate errors. Along with the time bars there is also a complete page summary with some very useful information.

Pingdom also offers monthly fee based site uptime and performance monitoring for critical web sites.

Accurate Image Placeholding with Dummy Image

DavidM    Cool Links, Design and Development     design, dummy image, placeholder, productivity, resources, Tutorial, web

Dummy Image is a simple script that lets anyone place a properly sized image into a web design just using a link. Lifehacker calls it the lorem ipsum of images.

Just a simple call to the server using an image source of “http://dummyimage.com/325×123″ alt=”A Dummy Image” or any other image code creates a dummy image of whatever dimension you specify in the url, complete with dimensions inside the box. What’s even cooler is you can download the php files and set up your own image generator on your own site.

It may not be the prettiest image, but it is a great way to mockup a layout without having to create individual images or set width and height values.

Sample 50px by 75px dummy image