Category Archives: Web Design

Everything about web design. Markup, style, standards, accessibility, etc.

Advanced Bells & Whistles

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Remember back to when you first learnt how to design web sites? Remember adding all those bells & whistles? I certainly do. Why did I add them? Because it seemed cool at the time.

The thing is… I’m still adding bells & whistles! Only now they’re more advanced bells & whistles.

Now that I know how to use the likes of Apache‘s mod_rewrite module or PHP‘s include function, I find myself wanting to make everything search engine friendly or use includes left, right and centre, when I should be keeping things simple. It’s a hard habit to break. When you know you can do something extra special – even though you probably don’t really need to – you find yourself doing it anyway… because it seems cool.

What’s worse is, these advanced bells & whistles can cause you more headaches than just keeping it simple.

The 6 Myths Of Creativity

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“A new study will change how you generate ideas and decide who’s really creative in your company.”

The 6 Myths Of Creativity

Eight years ago, Amabile took her research to a daring new level. Working with a team of PhDs, graduate students, and managers from various companies, she collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries.

An interesting article and one I think is worth reading.

Web Design Moods

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After reading this thread over at the Sitepoint Forums, it got me thinking. What would be a good way to get yourself in the mood for designing?

I think it’s fair to class myself as a “binge developer” like MrLen. Sometimes I can work away for hours on end without a break. Other times I just can’t get going at all

Even with my new outlook on life, it doesn’t make any difference. Maybe listening to some boppy music or watching a tv program where people are building something (American Choppers springs to mind ) would help?

How do you get yourself in the mood?

Bed Time Web Design

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When I go to bed, I go with the intention of actually going to sleep. My body usually agrees, but sometimes my brain doesn’t

Sometimes my mind ends up wandering…. thinking about the web design – of all things! I end up comtemplating what changes I could possibly make to my sites in order to improve them. As you can imagine, it can be infuriating at times.

I generally try not to give in by getting back up and jotting down the ideas, but sometimes they’re too good to pass up. I’ve also noticed that sometimes the best thing to do is to get back up for a few minutes.

Maybe I should cut down on the intake of caffeine before going to bed