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.

I have always been very fond of this little logo bird of UK based web agency Erskine Design. Well, you may not know Erskine but probably the owner Simon Collison, author of the book Beginning CSS Web Development.

Recently Simon posted a photograph of some badges with this cute bird to Flickr and not surprisingly people asked to get one. Instead of posting badges around the world, Simon/Erskine offers a really funny deal i happily join:

If you want one, you have to send us (Erskine) something first. It is easy really. Send us a sticker, badge, mug or t-shirt (cheeky me) of your company or employer, or if that isn’t possible just send any old crap. Its the gesture we’re excited by, not monetary value. I’ll ready a load of badges and the moment I receive your ephemera, we’ll post ours out the same day.

What happens to the crap?

Here at Erskine Design towers, we’ll build a wall of received ephemera and blog/Flickr it and get you linked up. Actually, we might also do some crazy image-map madness at a custom URL that all the cool people will be aching to be featured on. Maybe.

Ha, i joined today and sent something… :) over… something especially proteine undernourished Brits can use.

You`ll never guess what it is. Hey, that´s real fun…

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 :)

On del.icio.us`s blog Nick Nguyen announced a new bookmark extension for Firefox. I just tested it and am completely blown away. The extension comes with a sidebar you can sort and search your del.isio.us bookmarks instantly, view tag intersections, and even modify your bookmarks. It´s dead-easy to tag a link and add it to your linklist. As the extensive sites directories of our Site Collection is managed with del.icio.us the extension comes just very, very handy.

Extension Qick Tour.

Download the extension

It´s quite a while ago since Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast posted her article on TXP vs EE – but it is still a nice read.

I really like EE and considered it once for a project. It is a bit like TXP but has a wider functionallity and a better rights management system. The key question is: do you really need that for a project? If not, your clients are surely happier with TXPs administration surface.

Well go over to Andreas site and read her write-up.

Links

• Textpattern vs ExpressionEngine

• ExpressionEngine

On juicystudio.com Joshue O` Connor published an highly interesting article on accessibility of various CMSs such like:

• Jadu
• Mambo
• Joomla
• Quick and Easy
• Expression Engine
• Plone
• Drupal
• Textpattern
• Xoops
• Typo3

Each of those CMSs was tested by an screen reader user performing some basic tasks, as well as the same tasks being performed by a user with no Assistive Technology/Special User Agent requirements and with an average computer skill level. These tests were facilitated and observed by an experienced CFIT accessibility consultant. To me absolutely unexpected Joomla! is doing a very good job. Some problems were encountered but the testers conclude: If these problems could be addressed, we would recommend Joomla. Expression Engine as well as Textpattern lack of some accessibill key features (f. e. Title and edit boxes are not marked up well and tester found it [backend] unintuitive.

Read the complete article
Choosing an Accessible CMS

anf if you like, follow the discussion on the textpattern forum.

If you’ve ever used Textpattern for your CMS of choice, then likely you have found or used at least one of the plugins available from designer/developer Rob Sable of Wilshire One

Rob (under the name of Wilshire) has supplied the community with an abundance of plugins since August 2004. His plugins have included public side archive and tagging tools, as well as numerous admin side plugins like a scaled down database management tool that allows you to copy your TXP install