September 14th, 2011
So it looks like CSS animation is closer to being a reality than ever before. I found this great article in Smashing Magazine that really does a good job of explaining and illustrating the concept.
September 8th, 2011
This little gem makes up the background image for a very cool designer Jessica Hische’s website. (turn on teen girl mode in her design section)
August 18th, 2011
The Great White North Triathlon is changing ownership and along with new owners, it’s getting new logos, a new website and more. Celebrating it’s 21st year, GWN is apparently one of the more popular triathlons happening in western Canada so I’m very much looking forward to see what I can come up with for this re-invention. Stay tuned for more…
August 12th, 2011
Today I was taking a few minutes to see what’s new at Smashing Magazine, and found this article about Adobe’s online Browserlab. I have to admit, the idea of a one stop, all in one, cross browser site that does the job really well is extremely attractive. What it does is let you choose from a list of browsers and platforms that you want to test for, and then it generates a screen shot for each one for you to inspect. This has been done before, not very successfully (Browsershots).
I decided to check it out and tested this site out in various browsers on various platforms. It does seem to do the job quickly, which I like, and from what I can tell so far, it seems to do what it says. I did however notice some negative online reviews of this “service” that make me want to tread carefully before embracing Browserlab as the new savior and salvation for those of us that have to “deal” with IE.
There were comments saying that some of the generated screenshots were slightly different from the actual thing. Which makes me want to double check what I got as screenshots with the real thing. Which kind of takes me back to feeling that maybe it’s just better to actually test on the real thing. In Browserlabs defense however, there are so many platforms out there and browsers seem to behave differently on all of them, that in my mind it seems almost impossible to get things perfect on them all. My philosophy has always been about the top 5 (Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, IE 7-9). As long as a website looks good in those, I feel, living in North America, that the job is done.
Maybe someday there will be some kind of “across the board” standard that will ensure that all browsers interpret things the same. That would be nice. I’m not going to hold my breath tho.
So what do I think of Browserlab? I think it’s a good tool to have in your pocket for times when you can’t get to an actual computer to test for the browsers you don’t have access to yourself. That’s what I think.
July 27th, 2011
So I’ve been meaning to re-vamp this website for sometime now, but inspiration has been a little less than it should be and spare time hasn’t exactly been ample either. But sure enough, things change and I found myself fully motivated and with some extra time to get it done.
I’m really happy with how this version of jasondouglasdesign.com has turned out. I think it looks pretty professional and fun at the same time. I’m still relatively green at this web design stuff, but with every project that I finish, I see my skills expanding and it keeps me motivated to move upward and onward to the next project.
I’m excited to see what I will have completed this time next year ;)