Blog (page 24)

Bring Back the Sitemap?

I’m doing a small segment on navigation at Responsive Day Out (1st March). It’s an area of responsive design I enjoy experimenting with. You’re probably familiar with responsive patterns that transform a traditional menu into something mobile-friendly. Combinations thereof cover most scenarios. If nothing suffices it might be more apt to focus on information architecture before attacking code again. Table of contents For small viewports […]

CAPTCHAs: Just Say No

A couple of years ago I wrote In Search Of The Perfect CAPTCHA for Smashing Magazine. It was always a wild goose chase (but I knew that). I still get asked regularly how to deal with spam. It isn’t easy. I keep seeing new solutions pop up touted as an alterative to CAPTCHAs. Here’s the deal: replacing character […]

Performance, Varnish Cache, WordPress

When it comes to website performance there’s a lot we can do. As designers it means finding a style that suits the Web as a medium; taking advantage of CSS, avoiding heavy raster graphics, etc etc. As front-end developers, well, Harry Roberts’ has a great round-up of techniques. There’s only so much we can do client-side. It’s always […]

Podcasts

I can’t get enough podcasts right now. I still love the written word but after a full day of design and code my eyes need a rest (and probably a new test, now that I think about it). Fearing I’d been overlooking a few I asked Twitter — thanks for the replies! Below is a compilation of my favourite […]

On Responsive Navigation and Rendering

When I launched my new website earlier this week I implemented the off-canvas navigation technique I’d written about for Smashing Magazine. It uses silky smooth CSS transitions and looks great on mobile (if I do say so myself). A small problem came when I set a high breakpoint. The navigation is always off-canvas up to a width of 60em (that’s […]

A Primer to Front-end SVG Hacking

Using SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) on websites is a lot safer than many front-end developers think. Authoring aside — I wouldn’t suggest trying to hand-code an illustration more complex than a triangle* — the standard is well supported in browsers today and perfect for resolution independence when CSS and icon fonts aren’t suitable. * Quick fire question: […]

A New Home

Welcome to my new website. I haven’t rebranded entirely — what you see bears many similarities to updates past — but I am launching a new stage in my career. 2013 is the year I go freelance. This site now represents my web design and front-end development services. It’s heavily content-centric in design. And responsive, of course! It has a newfound simplicity. That’s not […]

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