Posts Tagged ‘web design’

How to create a pattern background for your website using PhotoShop

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

I create all of my mock ups for websites in Photoshop. Basically I lay everything out the way I want, work with my clients to get everything approved and then move on to development. One of the things that I have thought has been very helpful in this process is the ability to create cool backgrounds. I will show you how I created the background for this website and how I applied it.

1. Create a New file in Photoshop that is 20 x 20 pixels wide, RGB.

20x20

2. Next, I used the fill tool and fill it with a dark background color.

FILL

3.Use the line tool and make a few lines and such. patterns can be tricky, when they repeat you might not get what you expect. You can also create a grid. Make sure the lines are not too contrasting, otherwise the background may look a little busy. This is an easy way to learn how it works with random lines.

lines

4. Once you have finished your pattern, select Edit > Define Pattern

define_pattern

You will be asked to name your pattern.

5. Once you have defined your pattern, all you have to do is apply it to any background. I usually create a back ground for my webpage, however try it with a new file. Create a new file that is 200 x 200 px. For the background layer, make sure to define it as a layer. You can do this by double clicking on it and renaming it. After it is renamed, you need create a layer affect. Do this by selecting Layer > Layer Style > Pattern Overlay.

layer_style

After selecting Pattern Overlay, you will be prompted to a layer dialog box. Choose the arrow by the pattern and then you will see your pattern in the selectable squares. Select it.

select_pattern

After doing this, your page will have a tile of the pattern you created. This works on any size layer or shape, like a rectangle. Experimenting with patterns is a lot of fun!

pattern_bg

As you can see the tiles just repeats itself over an over. There is definitely a science.

Below are 2 few example of cool pattern from Kaliber10000

Kaliber10000 Pixel Pattern

Kaliber10000 Pixel Pattern

CSS: How to Create a Basic Inline Style

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

One of the easiest ways to change the way a specific <div> <span> or paragraph tag’s looks on your web site is to change the style by doing it “inline”. Inline refers to editing the code directly in the line of line of the HTML, instead of updating an external style sheet, or a style sheet that is defined in the header of the page. This is something that I do not usually recommend, however there are instances that require this on the fly. An inline style will override a style that has already been established in the external style sheet or the header. One good example of this, is if you need to adjust the height of a specific <div> however do not need to update the style sheet. For example, you have an frame for an image that needs to be in a containing <div> that is 400 pixels tall.

In this example, we will simply define the height of a div with inline style.

&lt;div class="someDiv" style="height: 400px"&gt;

The “style” parameter, will begin the style attribute. After the quote marks, you can use any CSS value here, and as many as you like separated by a semi colon. Below, we will use multiple attributes.

&lt;div style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; color: red;"&gt;Some Words You Have Written&lt;/div&gt;

Some Words You Have Written

As you can see it is very easy to add an inline style, just make sure that you do not make a habit of this, however use it when you need to.

Website Review of the Day – Speak Visual

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

speak_visSpeak Visual -
http://www.speakvisual.com

NVIDIA, a computer company that builds graphics cards has recently created a website to promote its technology. The theme, Speak Visual is centered around several [people speaking about how they use NVIDIA cards to “Speak Visual” to the world. The vibrant color, contrast, and use of white space all work together to create a very well rounded site that is full of video clips, graphical imagery, and animation. Basically the company is visually introducing you to some of the things that their graphics processors can do and why you should upgrade your PC. The site is captivating and very realistic, with movement, video of people, and interviews. This is what I believe thaat the web will evolve into, a high definition portal to visually interact with.

Website of the Day: Waterlife, http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Waterlife  http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

All I can say about this website is WOW! This is one of the most beautiful and well designed sites I have seen in a while. This is a work of art in my opinion, a piece that not only captures the audience, but creates an emotional impact as well. One of the most interesting features of the site is the loading graphic. In many flash sites there is a progress bar, a clock, or something of that nature that someone can look at while the site is loading. Waterlife created an interactive wave that enable the user to “play” with something while they wait for the site. I would consider this an appetizer to a spectacular meal. The progress is not only designed well, but is mesmerizing, fluid and organic.

This website was obviously intended for larger monitors with high resolution. The site starts with many different thumbnails that fly around and create large mosaics to represent menu items. For example, the invasive species menu generates a seahorse. The site continues to act alive and ever in motion emulating the bodies of water it is trying to educate us on. There is a story with narrative for each of the menu items. The story for each item includes ambient music in the background which also emulates a peaceful setting. Video plays during each of the menus in a large screen format. There are also silhouettes moving within each of the background carrying content, such as little dredgers digging for the dredging section. Again, like the Lakes, the website is on constant motion.

For the most part, the website is beautiful and serene, like the lakes that they represent. Each page mode and navigation item is a working piece of art in motion. The site in inspirational, captivating and full of the essence that the Great Lakes carries. Truly a mesmerizing work of art.

Modal Windows for opening images and websites without leaving your website

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

I have been working with and designing Modal windows for quite some time now. For the most part I have designed what I want them to look like and then I have used some type of open source to make them work. There are several different types of modal window javascript library’s to download, however I have chosen to use 2, mainly due to thier flexibility and ease of adaptation.

The first type of modal window is what I specifically use to show images. The beauty of a modal window is that you can open an image or a webpage without ever leaving that page or openinig up a pop up window. The modal window can be closed easily by the user and usually it is very light and easy to work with. For the first type of modal window, I would like to promote the Lightbox JS provided by http://huddletogether.com. This is a javascript library, that is open source to the public. It is customizable and works great. I currently use it on my site for some of my images; check out the logo links on the right hand side of this page: http://scottlassiter.com/logos.php. Here you will see that whenever you click on a link it darkens the screen and opens a box the size of your logo or image on the fly. It is very easy to set up and requires intermediate web developing skills to implement.

The second type of modal window I would like to talk about is called “graybox”, you can download it at http://orangoo.com/labs/GreyBox/.  This is a very powerful modal window that provides the ability to open a window to another website. Lets say that you want to promote a certain website, or want to preview a website you have developed or designed. Implement the graybox code on your website and wallah, you can provide a “window” into just about any website. For example, I use this on my website to provide previews of some of the websites that I have developed and designed. Check out “Web Design” on my portfolio page: http://scottlassiter.com/portfolio.php, to see it working in action. Basically, you have to set it so that the window is smaller that the web page you aqre previewing on. In many cases you will have to use the “scroll bars” in the graybox window, however this works great if you just want to show another site as an example and do not necessarily want the user to leave your page, which is key!

Do you have a modal window application that you specifically like or think is easy to work with? Drop a link here or give me a review

PhotoShop CS4 benefits and review

Monday, September 21st, 2009

So far I have been working with Photohop CS4 for over 6 months. For the most part, I like it a lot. I have worked PhotoShop since version 4 and I will say that this is definitely the cream of the crop and the best version that I have worked with so far. My favorite feature is the ability for the application to have tabbed files. At any given time a user can open up a new file and that file will reside as a tab on the top of the working area. It is then easy to drag and drop the tab to become a separate file that floats on your work area. The great thing about these tabs is that when you move them, they will not minimize until you command them to. So basically you can have a small square of the file you are working with floating over another file for dragging layers, objects, and text. This is great for when you want to copy one layer to another file and such. This makes working with multiple files that much easier.

Another thing I like about the new version of PhotoShop is that it seems to run a bit faster than previous editions, specifically CS2. I believe that Adobe has worked on their core PhotoShop “engine” to run faster and operate better with multiple files open. This new achievement has given me the ability to create more projects faster without hosing my system. There does not seem to be a lot of “lag” time for opening and saving files as with previous editions.

Another benefit of CS4 is the new menu system. You can view all of your menus as icons on one small menu bar. Every time that you want to work with a different menu, you just click the icon to open it. This is more of a convenience rather than a huge breakthrough, however it keeps your work area clean and speeds up production.

There are several other small areas of PhotoShop that I like a good bit, however please leave a comment with your favorite PhotoShop addition to CS4. I am constantly learning new things with this application and I am always looking for a new tip or trick!

PhotoShop CS4 Updates

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

I have been working with computer design applications since around 1987. The first program that I used was Deluxe Paint II. This was an awesome application if anyone remembers.  You could do almost anything, vector, animation, rendering, and many other tricks. The resolution was not that great however the applications seemed to combine several different things. Now, it seems that Photoshop has become the all use application as well. Don’t get me wrong, PhotoShop cannot do all of the things that the other applications such as Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver can do, however PhotoShop CS4 is indeed very versatile. One new thing ability that was added to PhotoShop CS4 was the ability to move your files around the clipboard area as well as have them tabbed across the top. This was such a huge improvement, especially for the designer that needs to move layer groups from one file to another with ease. The tabbed file browsing is much similar looking to what a browser such as Firefox or Chrome does. When you open a new file it is just added to the top as a tab. When you minimize the tab it will float on top of your other tabbed files. The benefit of this is that you can have a file open and compare is with your file behind. The file behind will not move forward when you have a floating file in front of it. In previous versions of PhotoShop, this was the case, since every file was based on being stacked. Previously, you would have to open up the two different files and re-size them to compare and drag and drop layers. This new file browsing has really helped my work flow, especially when moving very large layer groups from one file to the other. It also helps if you have a widescreen monitor or dual screens.

How has PhotoShop CS4 helped you? I would love to hear!

Designers Vs Developers

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Sometimes I like to rant a little about the separation between designers and developers. Some will say that a developer is anyone who can build a web page. Many say that a true developer can write a 2000 line SQL stored procedure in his sleep. Obviously if this was true, anyone less in skill would just be called a Web Editor or something like that. I am not sure what is the right title, I do not really care, all I know is that there is a major rift between programmers and designers – which there should be to a certain degree.
Many of my issues come with territory. Is it a designer’s territory to learn about front end development such as CSS and web page layout, absolutely! In my opinion, there are two types of web designers out there, designers that can develop and designers that are clueless about web technology. From what I understand in many design schools, web technology is not being stressed enough such as PHO, CSS, MySQL, and web server administration. These tools are essential to the web designer! These are the things that a web designer needs to know and continually practice so that he or she can build or know how to design a web page. In many cases there is no design thought of dynamism in Web Pages other than flashy animation and style by the designer. Do we ever think about how text might change to break a layout? D0 we ever think about how a search field should look? Sometimes, but most of the time we just make it “pretty” and go from there.
What do I recommend for up and coming designers? Technolgy will always change so knowing what is hot is good, however the ability to design and creativity will never change, you either have it or you don’t it is not something that can just be learned through a book. Aesthetics are what they are, however the ability to truly combine technolgy and design is not just a skill but a talent.

CSS text kerning for your web pages

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Have you ever felt like you were limited in the things that you could do with your typography on a web page? I have, before I knew what CSS was, one of the things that always wanted to do, but was not available back in the day was apply kerning to my web pages without having to create a custom graphic. A custom graphical text is always going to look cooler, however for particular reasons you may not want to do a graphic for every time you create some text, such as a dynamic photo caption pulling from a database.

The CSS parameter you want to use is called letter-spacing. Yes, it is that simple!

Anyways let begin. Lets say I want to have a caption for my photo that looks cool and well designed. The first photo caption is standard.

CSS Kerning tutorial

Our beautiful lake

Now Check this out!

CSS Kerning tutorial

Our beautiful lake

Doesn’t this look much better?

Anyways, here is the CSS
Take your text and wrap it in a <span> tag. This tag helps you apply a style to the text easily, however this is not the only place to use style. </span>

<span>Our Beautiful Lake</span>

Next add a style and the line spacing:
<span style=”letter-spacing: 5px”>Our Beautiful Lake</span>

The result is:  Our beautiful lake

It’s that easy! Hope this was helpful.

Cropping an image on the web using CSS

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Ever had an image that you could not re-size, or did not want to re-size, however wanted to crop? Maybe the image was too large for your page or, you just wanted to show a small portion of the image. Using this technique you can also position text on top of the image, like a caption, without having to edit the image. This a very cool method to use, if  for  SEO purposed or to be reference the text in the HTML.

The intention is for you to use the CSS in the header of your document or in a linked Cascading Style Sheet (.css)

First lets start with an image as illustrated below:

pontiac_g6

I need to crop this image and I want to give it a caption directly on the photograph. For this particular instance I just need to show the front of the vehicle.

First I will start by creating a DIV contain for this:

<div><img src=”http://myserver/mycar.jpg”></div>

Above is a line of code that creates just a simple container. Next we need to create a class for the image for the CSS. You will actually use the class tag within the image tag to call to the CSS. The CSS class beloow will be added to your stylesheet.

.image {
border-width: 1px;
border-color: #ffffff;
border-style: solid;
width:225px;
height:70px;
background-position:50% 95%;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
}

In the CSS code above, I have created an image class with a 1 px border and and an area much small than the image. I have also told the background not to repeat itself.

Pontiac G6

Above you will see my cropped image with a title at the top in black. To make the image appear you HAVE to put in some kind of text for the image to show.This is what I used for the code:

<div class=”image” style=”background-image:url(http://myserver/mycar.jpg)”><div>Pontiac G6</div></div><br />

Notice that I had to use a little in-line CSS to make the image appear (background-image). This way, you do not have to put the background-image URL in your style sheet, in the case if you want to have several images cropped with a specific size using the .image tag as a reference. Also make sure to have the break behind the last DIV.

Now, how would I make the text in visible in a different position and in a different color? Start by creating a “title” class like we previously created the “image” class.

.title {
font-family: Arial, Gadget, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px;
font-weight: bold;
color:yellow;
position: relative;
top: 25px;
left: 30px;

}

Pontiac G6

Above you will see that I have positioned the text and have styled it to be a different font, color, and weight. By setting the position to Relative and adjusting the top and left, you can position your text to be anywhere within this DIV container.

Again, this is a case where we created a style with the CSS file so that we could create a “template” of sorts that we could reference again. The other method is to put all of the styling within a “style=” tag within the DIV.