Some years back internet-users were pretty much tired of using over and over again the same fonts like Verdana, Arial or Georgia.
Happily Mide Davidson came up with sIFR (Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) a mixture of Flash, Javascript and CSS to render headline fonts as images. Drawback at that time was low bandwith. Rendering of headline images often took too long. For a second the website looked somehow naked.
Today bandwith speed is much higher and perhaps it´s time to give image replacement techniques a new chance?
Webdeveloper Cory Mawhorter recently presented his PHP and Javascript based image replacement script named FLIR (Facelift Image Replacement) on facelift.mawhorter.net.
Currently FLIR is beta. It is available for free and can be downloaded from the download page.
FLIR is pretty well documented. If you intend playing around with it, read though nettuts.com comprehensive tutorial on how to use FLIR. Below the tut you can find some interesting comments on sFIR and FLIR.
For sFIR you certainly need Flash but can mark and select the headline-text. For FLIR all you need is the script but you can not select the text with the cursor which seems to me beeing the biggest drawback right now. Concerning SEO, both techniques put the headline-text into their correct html tags.
Keep in mind, FLIR is still beta but works already quite well on f. e. brokesanity.com/blog.
If your CMS of choice is Textpattern you can use a plugin (zem_ir) for image replacements. WordPress users can check out the FLIR plugin by 23systems.net.
Do you need inspiration on some webdesign elements like borders, forms or typography? Do you even like a place where you can collect , track and follow screenshots of design detaills for your future project?
Throw an eye on Pattern Tap website. Different from sites like Stylegala, Pattern Tap focuses on single design elements rather than an entire website. It’s organised into collections of elements that go to make a complete website, from articles and backgrounds to buttons and 404 pages.
As a registered user you can organize your personal sets and/or subscribe to other peoples sets. It´s completely free and dead easy to use.
A drawback of Pattern Tap is it will not allow you to simply upload all of your screenshots. You have to submitt them to: yo [at] patterntap [dot] com.
Each submission will be reviewed by moderators. This way the guys behind Pattern Tap try to maintain a high degree of quality.
If you’re really interested in participating in uploading to the tap, you can send 10 examples of screenshots you’ve taken, or the URLs with descriptions. Once done, your name/website will be added to the contributors linklist and to each image you upload.
Pattern Tap was launched this summer. User feedback is very welcome and will be listened to.
If you like to get an impression of what people – and especially design talented folks do with Textpattern, visit the Textpattern driven showcase welovetxp.com.
Designer of this site is Sam Brown, who runs the scottish design agency massiveblue.
Peter Moulding interviewed Sam for txpq.com.
TXPQ is always worth visit if you like to stay tuned with what is going on on Textpattern. Currently there is an interview out with fabulous Nathan Smith, well know from the God Bit Project
Enjoy!
Last month ExpressionEngine relaunched its site with a fantastic new design made by fabulous Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain. You can read all about the design process on digital-web.com where Jesse talks about precisely. A must-read for all designers, i have to say!
I particularly like how Jesse revamped the old EE logo.
But read yourself about it:
Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site
Tom Fadial once again announced the TXP Template Contest. First prize is a brand new Mac Mini! But even if you do not win, there are lots of other prizes to get.
The judges are:
- Andrew Faulkner
- Bryan Veloso
- Jared Christensen
- Jeff Croft
- Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
- Mary Fredborg
- Nathan Smith
Deadline is 27th of June 07!
Get all information on textplates.com and join. Good luck :)
I was browsing through one of my feeds today and ran across a great series of videos available at youtube. These videos showcase some of the great design spawned out of the visionary picture of ‘modern’ living in the 1950s American lifestyle.
The videos:
Its been a bit quiet around here, but we promise there is good stuff around the corner… To keep you hungry for more, here is a great resource from kapitza.com, Check it out
UPDATE While no longer free, the font is still relatively inexpensive for some nice outlines, at only 8 pounds (british). Great for illustration and logo work.
Here is a sunday gift for our dear readers. Get a handcrafted vectorized rhino. Download the path here:
path_rhino.png
Hey, don’t blame me, I didn’t come up with the name. The designs however are great. This is my favorite of their products. Its fully utilitarian, but carries more function than a 3M yellow sticky, for which I have lost taste long ago.
I found these at the illustrious Target for about half the price they are listed here online.
Already in February 06 TXP Mag did point its readers to Thomas Silkjær´s thrilling Webdesign Reference Book Project.
The Web Design Reference Book project aims on publishing a book on the 150s of the internet’s greatest web designs. For months users could submit sites which design they considered to be outstanding. On top of that the sites had to be W3C standard compliant to enter the judging process.
Thousands of sites were submitted, over 700 met the criterias and 355 nominees were selected.
Among the nominees you`ll find such candies like the ModX CMS website, Kemie Guaida`s monolinea.com and Francois Pradignac´s web-atelier site. (All have been featured on TXP Mag already.)
Since last week the nominees are reviewed by a great team of judges: Andy Budd, Tammie Lister, John Oxton, Marco van Hylckama Vlieg, James Archer, Kyle Neath, Chris J. Davis and Thomas Silkjær himself. Their top 150 sites will enventually enter the paper book.
Though the book itself will be a showcase of wonderful internetdesigns, it shall as well contain some comprehensive articles on web standards. Right now Thomas is seeking professional authors who contribute articles on the following topics:
- Why standards
- Learning standards
- What is the British Disability Discrimination Act
- From HTML to XML – differences
- Why DIV’s
You can easily contact Thomas through his website. For now we wish all nominees Good Luck!
Further readings:
Thomas Silkjær got recently interviewed by netmag.
