26 Miles » graphics

Onion Skinned Drop Shadows

Matt — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 13:37:52 +0000

For many years one of the Holy Grail’s of web design was achieving drop shadows on images without having to manually edit the images to create the effect.

Many tried, and many failed. But one of the best implementations I’ve seen is the Onion Skinned Drop Shadows by Brian Williams (yes, I’m linking to a 3-year-old article again).

From the article:
[...]
“…if you wish to create visual effects that expand and contract to fit any object, require no image manipulation, and render the same across all browsers, then ‘Onion Skinned Drop Shadows’ may be just what you’ve been looking for.”
[...]

It’s not for CSS rookies, but if you dare, give it a shot. It works well.

sIFR Rich Typography

Matt — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:56:05 +0000

Consistent with my “late-adopter” status (recall I’m the guy who switched-back to Windows after throwing up my hands, cursing iPhoto for the last time, and demanding I get my keyboard shortcuts back), I’m just becoming aware of a neat little technology called sIFR.

Developed by Mike Davidson and Mark Wubben um …several years ago… sIFR allows web designers to “…insert rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics…”.

Using a bit of Flash® and JavaScript magic, it gives you the flexibility to use fonts in your web pages that are independent of browser-installed fonts on the user’s machine.

I won’t go into the technical details, you can do that by reading the article. But it’s a nice way to give yourself wide flexibility in designing sites the way you want with little programming overhead.

11 Tips For Better Candid Photography

Matt — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:10:01 +0000

I actually read this a while back, and am just now getting around to posting it.

Digital-Photography-School.com has a good article for “the rest of us” who fill 99% our camera’s SD cards with blurry pictures of the spot our kids were standing just 2 seconds ago.

11 Tips For Better Candid Photography has several “well duh” tips we amateurs may not think about when pickup up our point-and-shoots to capture the latest “DAD! WATCH ME!” moment.