Often I come across those articles that tell me how I should use Twitter effectively in order to gain and retain followers and how to better engage the community. There are also the people that tell me what I should and shouldn’t be tweeting. To be honest it’s a load of bollocks.
My Journal
Some ideas, advice, information and the occassional rant
Google Wins
If there was ever a battle for the Internet then Google has won, even if you don’t use any of the various apps and tools they have you more than likely use the Google search. For over 10 years now Google has grown from research project to Internet superpower and has no plans giving up any of the stranglehold it now holds on your online lives. Surely now something needs to be done to ensure the things Google does is in the best interests of the population and individual users, not the bottom line.
Don’t be Evil
Supposedly the motto on which Google was founded, yet it seems on the way to becoming the multi-billion dollar company it is today they seem to have lost their way. If you leave aside all the apps and tool’s that Google produce you are left with their core business, the Google search. It’s become so ingrained in our daily lives that we now use Google as a verb to search online. Amazingly this seems to be something they disapprove of, yet I’m sure secretly love it.
Damn my Britishness
Last week Brendan Dawes posted about the UK design scene and caused a rather heated debate. I was in total agreement with what he had written, but certain comments about positive noise rang true. Is it simply the way we communicate doesn’t allow us to feel as if we can give negative comments, or is it our own view of ‘if you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all’.
This week a website was launched, it was mentioned on twitter and gained a few congratulations. Personally I didn’t get it, the design seemed too simplistic, certain elements of cross browser compatibility didn’t seem well considered and I thought the redesign was no great improvement on the previous iteration. In my opinion the site also looked as if it was designed in the browser, something that is gaining a lot of positive promotion on the web. In my opinion it’s since web designers have been working this way I’ve seen a lack of creativity in some instances, but this is a completely different argument.
I’m an artist godammit
There are some clients that love a design so much they don’t change a thing about it. Some ask for changes that come at a point where they’re easy to do and cause no real problems. Then there are those that ask for changes that take ages to do, remove work that took ages to complete or simply, in my view, ruin a design. It’s at these points that working on a project can be a little soul destroying.
Sure the reaction is extreme and the people I work with have known me long enough to know the kind of reaction I have to some client changes but I’m starting to believe the place the frustration comes from is good, even if the outlet can be a little over the top.
Guest writing at Onextrapixel
I’ve been keeping this one under wraps until it actually happened but today my first guest post on Onextrapixel was published. The article is titled Put Your eCommerce Checkout on a Diet Plan and talks about stripping back a website checkout to improve sales. I’m hoping people find it useful and informative as I really put in some work to make sure it was good enough.
Aidan at Onextrapixel approached me just before Christmas asking if I’ve be interested in writing for a site he helps run. Guest writing is something I was definately interested in but I had to make sure the time and effort would be worth it. As I’d come across Onextrapixel before I was pretty confident the site had a sizeable readership, but once I found it was part of the Smashing Network I was pretty much sold, and rather giddy at the prospect. It really has been a struggle to not tell people but I wanted to make sure it would be happening first and I only let slip to a close friend this past weekend.
Cufon makes IE8 jump a few pixels on hover
The title pretty much says it all. Today I spent the best part of the day trying to solve a problem that I wasn’t even sure anyone had ever experienced before. After hours of wishing a painful death to the site I was supposed to be lovingly crafting I came across an unusual solution.
The problem in a nutshell
For font replacement I use Cufon, and the site I’m currently working on uses it for a number of headings and links. To get the hover effect of links working properly with Cufon you have to add {hover:true} into the cufon.replace function. This is where the problems started.
Continue reading “Cufon makes IE8 jump a few pixels on hover”
