Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

My Photoshop wishlist

Monday, October 25th, 2010

Color variables

Imagine changing the color scheme of an entire design with flick of a switch. This would be a real time saver.

States (like hover states or ajax states)

We’ve got layer comps. Now make them interactive. Maybe something like Axure.
Right now, Fireworks is just too complicated to bridge the gap between prototyping and proper graphic design.

Hide layers (like hide tracks in Logic)

In Logic, every track can be hidden if they’re not used. This drasticly reduces clutter in the arrange window.
Why not make this possible with layers in Photoshop?

Version Control

In code this is indispensable.
I feel like it is in graphic design as well. It’s just not available yet …

Intelligent update of smart layers from separate files

Imagine having a central repository of elements that could be shared between projects or multiple designs within a single project and maintained in a single place.
This is a concept that’s essential in software engineering. Why not let graphic designers benefit from it as well?

How to make CSS3PIE work

Friday, October 8th, 2010

CSS3pie

Countless hours have been lost creating rounded corners, dropshadows and gradient backgrounds for the web.
With Internet Explorer still lacking support for CSS3, until recently it seemed like we would have to keep doing tiny graphic sprites (or implementing dirty javascripts) in order to accomodate the demand for such UI niceness.

Enter: http://css3pie.com/
PIE is a .htc CSS behaviour script that enables support for dropshadows, rounded corners and background gradient CSS3 properties in Internet Explorer – all the way back to IE6!

Of course, I couldn’t wait to try it out.
And it didn’t work.
Bummer …

Fortunately, I found out why:
It only works on positioned elements.

You must specify “position: relative;” or “position: absolute;” on the element that calls the .htc behaviour, and then it works!

Amazing script!
CSS3 future is here now.
Thank you so much, Jason Johnston of 327 Creative LLC, for sharing this little goodie with the world!