Designer, Idea, Client & Feedback
Yup, pretty much sums it up
-
Things Web Designers Shouldn’t Do Pt. 2
As promised I’m continuing with my list of Things Web Designers Shouldn’t Do, here are more things I hate to see/use when I’m browsing:
Links that don’t open in Tabs (or in a new browser window for that sense): Tabs are an integral part of my browsing experience, whenever I’m reading, see a link I want to check out, I middle click it, boom new tab it’ll be there when I’m done reading whatever it is I’m reading.
Images that don’t open in Tabs: Using Javascript on Image galleries is ok if you want to give it some pizazz, but hey, I want to click the image and have it load in a new tab, if your gallery doesn’t do this = FAIL.
Making your code work ONLY in IE: I don’tgive a f*&k about IE, don’t make me use it, I don’t care if you want to be old school and Active-X the shit out your application. A while ago I was trying to use a feature on my bank’s website, guess what? activex only… yeah that sounds secure.
Don’t base your design on a picture: I’m actually guilty of falling for this one a few years back. Pictures are great… some are even fantastic but please don’t base your design on a large picture up top and some content below it. Sure, it will look awesome but I did no browse to your site to look at a picture. An example, the people at thiswebhost.com have a nice website, but is it really necessary to have a huge picture of a hot chick up top? Yeah, cause when I think hosting… I think hot chicks. NOT. This is what I’m expecting from a web hosting company.
-
Email templating crash course
Today I was working on some email templates, I had my beautiful design ready since last week, the only thing left to do was code it and send out some spiffy emails to customers. No problem, a little css and html later, my nifty new email template was ready to use… NOT. It would just look weird in hotmail, parts missing in gmail, would’nt show up at aol… you get the picture.
So I was back in textmate trying out code… these are a few design tips for email design:
- Keep your design as simple as possible
- Don’t use background images
- Embed the necessary css directly to the tags using the style attribute
- Don’t go overboard with div’sOnce I was done with the new, simpler design I had to go back and test around, here are some coding tips you should keep in mind:
- Most email providers strip out everything outside the <body> tag
- Don’t use <style> elements
- Don’t use <link> elementsProvider specific notes:
Gmail
Gmail wont support these css tags: background-image, background-position, background-repeat, bottom, clear, clip, cursor, display, filter, float, font-family, height, left, listy-style-image, opacity, position, right, top, visibility and z-index.
So that practically rules out most of the css you would use to make something nice. This is why my first step was to make something really simple.
Hotmail
They wont support: background-position, border-spacing, caption-side, empty-cells, filter, list-style-position, margin, opacity and position
Yahoo
The soon-to-be-bought provider won’t support the following: background-position, list-style-position and position.
In conclusion, between the three providers we’re ruling out most of the everyday css rules we would normally use, so basically I would recommend using css for a bit of styling and some color here or there but don’t rely on it. (hey, I’m not pusing you into usign tables =P).
My suggestion, as I said earlier, go for something simple, and test it while you’re working on it, beware of email clients too, they don’t speak good css (ahem outlook… ahem).
-
As seen on your local css gallery
Wow I was browsing around my site stats and I noticed I was featured in welovewp.com and cssclip.com. Thanks guys for adding my site to your galleries! Oh and welcome all new visitors!
Don't mess with me, or I keel youuu =)
What I'm up to...
Life in Pictures