We designer types are a finicky breed. Rarely is something just right and we don’t really like the words time and budget. Good work takes time, a lot of it. That being said, when I launched version 2.0 of eleven3.com I was really excited, I felt I had achieved good work. I’m not sure if it’s just me, or if other designers do this as well, but when I design something I like; I stare and stare and stare.

With any creative work, the longer you expose yourself to it, the more stale it becomes. That’s why, about three months ago, I got the itch to redesign my site.

So here we are, one year ago and change I launched version 2.0 of eleven3. Today I launch version 3.0 - and yes I am just as excited as my last redesign. There are a lot of reasons for my excitement, but mainly it’s just a new look, a new focus, and more flexibility. Gone is the rigid and closed-source Movable Type and arriving is the flexible, fluid, Wordpress.

Continue reading for the off chance of relating to the requirements of the relaunch, the design phase, the challenges of coding the front-end, and the use of Wordpress and a plethora of plugins that now make up the site. A lot of work went into it, my hopes are that it is well received. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 74% [?]

As I was writing up my typical IE conditional statement and creating my IE stylesheet, not necessarily for hacks, but for png fixes and such, I got all emotional and wrote a poem.

Feel free to include it in your IE Stylesheet:

/*

An ODE to IE6 - By A Webdesigner
—————————-
The road has been long,
full of anguish and pain.
How long will we endure,
the internet’s shame.

Once you were nice,
all light and fast.
Then came Firefox,
and lit up your ass.

Get a better browser,
the geeks have been saying.
The internet looks weird,
No PNGs displaying.

Conditional Statements,
feel like dirty code.
With anger and hope,
I write this ODE.

I create thee,
oh you dirty IE stylesheet,
With the hope of the future,
and pressing delete.

*/

Popularity: 43% [?]

Frustrated!

I’m throwing this post out as a last resort. Somebody throw me a life ring here. Some people post solutions to problems, I’m posting a question.

Does anyone know if the most recent update to IE6 supports the “progid:DXImageTransform…” filter to get PNGs to work properly? Another potential issue could be that I am running IE6 in Parallels on my Mac. Either way, IE6 doesn’t work with any PNGs. This includes an entire backlog of sites that I have done in the past.

I’ve tried multiple things and none of the usual tricks work. Burn M$ Burn. Anyone?
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 18% [?]

I have to say, there isn’t anything more frustrating when the tools you use to work, just won’t work. I can’t imagine if I was building a building and the crane I was using just wouldn’t budge. I guess those workers are being paid on the hour, and are probably getting paid regardless if it’s working or not. Bad analogy.

Anyhow, what I am getting at is a few gripes I have with some of my tools. Today’s culprits are The Mighty Mouse and Firefox. When I first got The Mighty Mouse I fell in love with it. The mini scrollball and the elegance of two buttons in one were both big hits with me. However, as time goes on, I am starting to fall out of love with this piece of hardware. Firefox, when I first got it, had me singing its praises to anyone who would listen, however this too is falling by the way side.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 11% [?]

Ever since I was pushed to figure out the IE PNG filter hack in CSS it has become essential to my website building. Although it does allow a lot more flexibillity when designing and building websites, it has its quirks.

Slowly I have been feeling out the parameters of the png hack. There have been about three times where I must have spent between 3-5 hours trying to figure out why either it wasn’t working, or it was causing other weird issues. Namely the linking issue. There is a thorough guide here, a lot more thorough than anything I would write on the subject. I’m just here to complain, oh and my own solution is listed as well.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10% [?]

Firefox 2.0 officially comes out tomorrow. Unofficially, the Mozilla Foundation offered the download via ftp on their servers. I couldn’t help myself, I had to have it. I stayed away from the release candidates as I really wanted to wait until all of my extensions were up to date. (which at this time leave me del.icio.us and tabbrowser preferences - less)

As soon as I saw the ftp link on this or that blog, I went for it. ** Update - Apparently I am guilty of a little pre-official release downloading.

Is it a significant improvement? Probably not. It definitely looks prettier, not by much, but the icons are shinier, and as we all know, shine adds prettiness to anything. There are a few additional things to note.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 5% [?]