Heavy Chef Interview
I recently had a chat to the clever folks over at Heavy Chef about Hand Crafted CSS, the South African CSS job market, my heroes in the industry and my business.
The 'Perfect' layout »
I love this kind of layout theory. Seriously, I can’t get enough of the stuff. Just recently I bought two new books on it, ‘Decoding Design’ and ‘Universal Principals of Design’. Both rad.
This link focuses on page layout and the Golden Rule.
Showcase - NoMU Blog »
There it is folks! The new NoMU blog, hot off the press. Im quite chuffed to have NoMU on board as one of my first freelance clients. Be sure to check out the competition they are running together with 2OceansVibe.co.za on their blog.
Ranks of the Freelancer
Now that I have my first week amongst the ranks of the freelancers under my belt I can say with certainty that this is going to be an exciting ride! I feel energised and “ready”. I have tonnes of project work and cash has already started flowing in… and out… Ok so I needed that 27” iMac.
Showcase - Art Revision »
Art Revision is a project that I started together with the good people over at World Wide Creative. I was responsible for the design with input from the team on usability and also some design guidance. Art Revision is a place where you can basically get your favorite images converted into quality hand painted oil paintings. You can also buy replicas of your favorite masterpieces, or even use it as a sell on package if you are a photographer. Art Revision also offer free shipping worldwide and a reseller program that can make you some nice extra income. It’s all right there on the homepage so go check it out and leave your feedback, it would be greatly appreciated.
“CSS is the weakest link in the web developers toolbox. The problem goes deeper than CSS’s lack of variables. Unlike the “function” in programming, CSS has no fundamental building block.”
Sass 3 Beta Released »
If you’re a web developer and haven’t given Sass a try yet, get into it ASAP. It a Ruby gem that abstracts CSS — it empowers the CSS with functions and variables, saves a ton of development time, and even makes it easier to be more consistent with your designs. Here’s a sample of a theme I’m working on which shows off some of the functionality.
Version 3 brings a new syntax to SASS, converting the language to a CSS superset, meaning it actually looks like CSS now (one of my biggest complaints of SASS 2). The new format is called SCSS (Sassy CSS) and is built off the CSS3 spec.
If you want to give it a shot, just install with:
gem install haml --pre
Web Safe Fonts
Here is the list of websafe fonts that I use in my own web development. These fonts are common among all versions of Mac, Windows and Linux.
Just copy and paste into your CSS and shout if you have anything to add to this list.
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Arial Black', Gadget, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif;
font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive;
font-family: Courier, monospace;
font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;
font-family: Garamond, serif;
font-family: Georgia, serif;
font-family: Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Lucida Console', Monaco, monospace;
font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif;
font-family: 'MS Sans Serif', Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: 'MS Serif', 'New York', sans-serif;
font-family: 'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;
font-family: Symbol, sans-serif;
font-family: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;
font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
font-family: Webdings, sans-serif;
font-family: Wingdings, 'Zapf Dingbats', sans-serif;
