So, for some reason IE7 doesn’t like image inputs, it won’t submit the value properly, which can be a pain for some server side code [in my case, coldfusion: isDefined("form.Submit")]

Solution?  Style the button itself using an image!

Throw an ID tag on it (e.g <input type=”submit” id=”submitButton”>)

CSS it up

#submitButton {
font-size: 0px;
background: url(../images/YOURIMAGE.gif);
display: block;
border: 0;
width: 69px;
height:27px;
text-align: center;
color: #cccccc;
text-decoration: none;
cursor: pointer;
padding-bottom: 3px;
}

True style never ages - collection of vintage logos on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_carl/sets/72157604144345854/

A very interesting post by Scientific American on Creativity

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-unleash-your-creativity

On giving your creative mind a kick

“Capturing” - preserving new ideas as they occur to you and doing so without judging them. You know sometimes you daydream, or awake from a real dream of something ridiculous - and you write it down. That’s what these guys means, capturing those moments when your brain goes into ‘creative’ mode.

“Challenging” - giving ourselves tough problems to solve. In tough situations, multiple behaviors compete with one another, and their interconnections create new behaviors and ideas

“Broadening” - The more diverse your knowledge, the more interesting the interconnections—so you can boost your creativity simply by learning interesting new things.

“Surrounding” - which has to do with how you manage your physical and social environments. The more interesting and diverse the things and the people around you, the more interesting your own ideas become.

“Adventures” - walk out the door for 20 minutes or so and see what happens to your thinking. When people walk, they often begin to integrate the insights and intuitions that they have had through morning pages and outings.

On The challenges of creativity

When children are very young, they all express creativity, but by the end of the first grade, very few do so. This is because of socialization. They learn in school to stay on task and to stop daydreaming and asking silly questions. As a result, the expression of new ideas is largely shut down. We end up leaving creative expression to the misfits—the people who can’t be socialized. It’s a tragedy.

On failure

You have to learn not to fear failure and even to rejoice in it. When I’m failing, I say to myself, “I’m in good company. I’m in the company of some of the most creative and productive people in the world.” The creative individual thinks of failure as a new opportunity: “Okay, why did I fail? What was wrong? Let me try to do something else. Let me go forward with it.”

On some strange techniques

Salvador Dalí made deliberate use of his naps to get ideas for his art, for example. While relaxing on a sofa, he’d hold a spoon out over the edge and place a plate on the floor beneath the spoon. Just as he’d drift off to sleep, his hand would relax and the spoon would fall. The sound of the spoon hitting the plate would awaken him, at which point he’d grab a pad and sketch out interesting images he might have seen in the semisleep state. Thomas Edison used a similar technique to get ideas for his inventions. And the good news here is that we all experience this state—the so-called hypnagogic state.

Happy Creating!

We all know how powerful and great photoshop is. But nothing IMO is faster than designing a website on fireworks, because of the easy of modifying objects. I self taught myself to fireworks when I first began designing - here are some lesser-known tricks I’ve learnt along the way, hope you’ll find them useful.

1) Rounded Rectangle tool hates hard edges

‘Rounded Rectangle tool’ is great if you want anti-aliased rounded corners on your boxes it’s quick, easy to modify and customize.

However, it’s really bad if you want to use it with a hard line edges, especially if it’s smaller shapes. The shape becomes weird and all the lines are jagged and horrible.

However, there IS a way around this, using the normal ‘rectangle tool’. Just draw the box to your size, and input an amount in the ‘Rectangle Roundness’ in properties. You’re smiling again. Please note however, you can’t resize this without the corners being distorted again….

2) Resizing rounded corners

While we’re talking about rounded corners - NEVER resize this tool with transform tools, you will destroy those corners! Use the ‘resize’ on the shape to keep those corners.

3) Lorem Epsom - lest you forget!

CS3 comes with Lorem Epsom! You really ought to have memorized it if you’re a true designer

[Menu ]-> Commands -> Text -> Lorem epsom

4) Export Defaults

Sometimes, fireworks thinks the ‘best’ way to export your image (especially when you batch export frames or page) files using GIFs, or 80% JPEG, but you really want full quality. Deny it of this.

Go to ‘Img Preview’ - Ctrl-Shift-X

Select ‘JPEG’ - ‘Quality - 100′

Click ‘Save current setting’

Then apply all your pages/frames with the setting.

By doing this, the next time you batch export, everything will be full quality, or whatever you set it to be.

5) Optimizing PNGs for web

Sure, you can use tools like PNGCrush for this - but for small files (under 100k), fireworks can get it just as good. The trick is to ALWAYS export your png files (to PNG32 if you want transparency). Expect to save at least 50% file sizes.

Make sure you export to a new file, because you will lose the ability to edit the newly export png. This is actually quite logical - most of that original saved PNG file size is due to all the editable content anyway.

6) Pages

One great thing about CS3 is the introduction of pages. This means you can have individual canvas sizes, resolutions, and export data for all your separate pages. You can’t do this with frames. Press ‘F5′ for pages.

7) Shared Layers

One very useful tip is the ability to share multiple layers across several pages (or frames). Essentially, it allows you to just edit 1 layer, and the changes will flow through all the rest of the shared pages/frames!

In your layers window: ‘Share layer to pages’

8 ) Shapes

I think shapes are one of the most underutilized things in fireworks. Sure, they’re ugly to look at - but they’re objects. Which means you can customize it anyway you want to once you drop it onto screen. I use tabs alot.

So, looks like there’s a ‘virus’ going around facebook.

Well, while this was the first time I’ve seen this, I have a feeling it won’t be the last. When you have a market where millions of people gather everyday, someone somewhere will find a way to exploit and damage it.

This is what the online community has become - a massive viral monster, a result of the new ‘web 2.0′ era. Facebook, while amazing at what it does, scares the living bejeezus out of me for what it can do. The amount of privacy issues is staggering, and just one slip can lead to many lawsuits.

So why do we do this? Why the need for self-love and attention? Who cares how many friends I’ve bought, or how many vampires have bitten me. Yet, to not be part of this revolution in this day and age means you become an social ‘outcast’. It’s a sad reality, but what we’re seeing is a evolution of how people interact with each other. I realised how differently we’re living now, even compared to just a few years ago. f

While the distances between communication keep growing smaller, our connection with the real world is becoming thinner.

‘Hey! It was nice to meet you, so I’ll see you on facebook?’

After a long discussion with someone to whom I owe much gratitude, I’ve decided that there are some attitudes that I need to change for myself. She told me something that really hit home - many times I have too many excuses for the wrong things I do. Of course we’re not perfect, we all need to improve.

So, here’s a formula that I will be working on … hopefully.

A - Accept your wrongs
P - Put yourself in the other person’s shoes
T - Think, really think, before you speak

Using these three simple rules, I hope that I can be a better person, and deal with the negative things that surround me.

Just a quick note - I just added diggin function on my blog, it’s really easy. And, if you are using wordpress, you can make it totally dynamic so you don’t have to manually add it.

1. Find your index.php in your wordpress theme

2. Throw the following code in there   … near <?php the_content(__(’(more…)’)); ?> if you want it to be below or after your post

<?php the_content(__(’(more…)’)); ?>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
digg_url = ‘<?php the_permalink() ?>’;
digg_skin = ‘compact’;
digg_window = ‘new’;
</script>
<script src=”http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

Done.

We all agree that IE6 has become one of the biggest headaches for web designers/developers alike. With all the technology advances in CSS and web standards, you don’t have to look far to see someone giving undeserved loving to this ancient monster from the dark ages of browser monopoly.

Infact, W3C still reckons 28% of users use it, that’s 4% more than IE7. And this is still after M$ allowed you to install IE7 *without* verifying your product. Thanks to firefox, opera and other players now in the market, this number will continue to fall - BUT NOT FAST ENOUGH. 28% is still a massive user base and these users make up a very important user base: the average john citizen.

So, next time you design for IE6, here are some useful tips:

1) Design for 1024×768. If they choose to use IE6, it is very likely they still use 17″ monitors. Cater for it. Optimal width? 960px

2) IE6 hates transparent PNGs. Fix? Easier than you think.

• First, put this file in your CSS directory. Thanks to TwinHelix!
• Second, paste this code into your CSS file:
  img { behavior: url(iepngfix.htc); }

3) Now, create a IE6 specific CSS to love IE6. Put this before before 4</header>.

<!––[if lte IE 6]><link rel=”stylesheet” href=”YOURCSSFILE.css” mce_href=”YOURCSSFILE.css” type=”text/css” media=”all” /><![endif]––>

Create your YOURCSSFILE.css file, start coding IE6 specific CSS!

That’s the 3 simple things to get your IE6 a bit closer to normal. Even then, I hope it burns in hell, where it belongs..

Well, looks like my website has been successfully submitted to a couple of web design inspiration sites!

CSS Mania

CSS Clip

CSS Loggia

Web Designer is Art

Made In Australia

CSS Here

Ala Brasil

Hope there’s more to come - thanks to all the sites! I’ll keep this updated

A bunch of my mates and I decided to go down to Gold Coast today for a bit of scooter action! The freedom of having a scooter makes you feel, well, free. You go where you want to go, when you want to go..

Lately I’ve been thinking about where I want to go - life shouldn’t be about stressing on work to make money to pay the bills. It should be about taking it, and going where you want to go. I know I love designing web pages, but there are limitations and rules that govern what I’m doing now. I want to be free and be able to do my own things, work on more exciting projects, and leaving more ‘me’ time.

Ah, heck, give me a scooter any day.