Bedrich Rios

If you are anything like me, there is always a plethora of RSS feeds awaiting your attention every morning. And while it would be great to carefully scan all of them, it is nearly impossible to read anything more than the titles. But titles alone can, many a times, be deceiving; thus, I’m going to make your RSS life a bit easier and give you a list of 20 posts that I fully read last month and can confidently say, were enlightening.

Bedrich’s List

1. Photoshop: Hand Drawn Designs
2. 2008 Design Trends
3. The 10 Commandments of Web Design
4. IE Tester
5. Google, Yahoo To Search Inside Flash Files
6. Spacing Is Everything (read this article before reading the one below)
7. Lost In Spacing
8. Flexible Layouts: Challenge For The Future
9. Favicon Episode 7
10. CSS Editors Reviewed

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You’ve probably heard, read, or watched clips that talk about the importance of using version control when working collaboratively (as well as personally) on a given project. More likely than not, you have Googled version control and come across one of the big names, Subversion. But, whenever you attempted to deepen your understanding of the subject, you were greeted with either confusing terminal commands or badly designed Subversion clients. That is all about to change thanks to Beanstalk (hosted Subversion) and Versions (Subversion client for the Mac).

Versions is the result of a collaboration between SOFA and PICO, which brings a friendly user interface to the world of version control. In case you haven’t heard, Versions has gone BETA so, now it’s the time to give this cool app and version control a test drive. Versions BETA is free for download until the app is released in June 30.

Beanstalk is “version control with a human face.” In other words, it gives its users a clean and visually appealing representation of their subversion repositories. Beanstalk is free but it also provides other (paid) plans for those who may need more from their repositories.

Before we get started, a few things need to be disclaimed, or rather stated. I am by no means a Subversion expert. A basic knowledge of version control is expected from the reader (you). And last but not least, I have no affiliation with the product and service listed above. But enough of that, let’s get started.

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Every creative professional needs a great set of tools and a web designer is no exception. And as if we didn’t have enough difficulty coming up with a design every other week (a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point), more often than not, we find ourselves hunting down needed design elements through Google. Therefore, I have decided to share 15 of my favorite “freebies” sites with you. These are sites that contain free non-commercial as well as for-commercial use icons, fonts, and Photoshop patterns. Please make sure to read the copyright text before using these free materials.

Free Icons

1. Dry Icons
   “All icon sets at DryIcons.com are carefully designed and developed by our team of professional web and graphic designers. We designed the DryIcons website to bring your applications the best professional appearance.”
2. TurboMilk
   “These icons packs is free to use for personal non-commercial purposes. Please give credits to http://www.turbomilk.com in case of public use. We sincerely hope that these icons will make you happy and nobody get hurt.”
3. Free Icons
   “Here you will find the best free icons from the icon artists,The icons copyright belongs original authors, They are free for personal and non commercial use / free for public non-commercial use only mention the authors. If you are an icon designer and want to showcase your Icons, logos , prints , web ui or web design resources, Here is the best place!”

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Every single person I have ever spoken with tends to believe that college is a place to experiment and find your calling in life. And while this may be true, what happens if you figure out your calling too late in your college career? Or worse yet, what happens if you decide that you want to do something your school is not capable of preparing you for? In many ways, this is the situation I found myself early last fall. I was an incoming junior at Carleton College, a liberal arts school in Minnesota, and I wanted to be a web designer. My initial plan was to become a Computer Science major. And although that lasted for a good two and a half years, it was not what I was looking for. I decided to make the switch to the Cinema and Media Studies Department and that has proven to be a bit of a disappointment as well. In fact, most wannabe web designers attending a liberal arts school are likely to be in the same situation. This is simply due to the nature of a liberal arts education, which the Britannica Online Encyclopedia describes as “[a] college or university curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum.” So, what can you do to prepare for a web deign profession?

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Last night, as I watched I Am Legend for the second time, I was interrupted by one of the most exciting Growl notifications I have received in days. Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 is out! That means that it won’t be long until the people at Mozilla release the much awaited (at least by me) final version of Firefox 3. If you haven’t tried any of the BETAs, this is the perfect time to jump in and give version 3 a go. This release is presumably the most stable one thus far. I would specially recommend to take this new version for a test drive if you are a Mac user. The app itself opens almost as fast as Safari and it looks like a very native application on OSX. But enough talking, try it yourself and let me know what you think.

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As I was browsing my ridiculously large and disorganized RSS feeds a few days ago, I came across a very interesting article that discusses the “benefits” of using zebra-striping on tables. The article was title Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help? and it was published on A List Apart. In short, the author of the article discusses the use of zebra-striping, its history, and the benefits which are associated with its use. Furthermore, she describes and attempts to make sense of a small experiment carried out by herself in order to test the “benefits” linked to zebra-striping. The article concludes with the author’s assesment of zebra-striping as valuable in terms of visual appeal but with little to no influence on usability. As a concluding statement she writes, “At the end of the day, the decision about whether to use zebra striping probably comes down to a subjective assessment of likely gains versus the cost of implementation.” So, let’s make the cost of implementation minimal by using some simple jQuery and CSS. Before we begin, here is a sneak peak at the final result.

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As a web designer, I spend countless hours designing web pages in Photoshop. Of course, this happens only after thoughtful consideration with regards to the site’s layout and several sketch iterations, otherwise know as the framework. In any case, this process may get overly repetitive as you begin to receive a more steady work flow. So, wouldn’t it be nice to automate some of this process? If you are anything like me, you are thinking: “yes it would be.” Therefore, it is time to turn our attention to one of the greatest features in Photoshop, actions. Photoshop actions can record any given set of steps and store them for later usage. Thus, we can use actions to create a simple yet read-to-use Photoshop file for our web design purposes. This file will contain the “scaffold” for our design. In other words, this file will free us of the mundaneness that comes from setting up a Photoshop environment every time we begin a new website’s design. Note: I use Photoshop CS2. So, some of the steps demonstrated here may vary depending on your software’s version.

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There are many people who consider the W3C valid buttons as good indicators of a web designers’s understanding and attention to Web Standards. Although, this may not be entirely true, it is a reasonable and understandable way of thinking. Thus, almost every site built these days will display a valid link to the W3C’s validation app somewhere in the site (more often than not in the “footer” section). However, most designer will refrain from using the W3C provided valid buttons and will instead cook a textual or visual solution of their own. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could use these somewhat-iconic buttons only when needed? Wouldn’t it be nice if they were less obtrusive and had a place in your design? If these inquiries gave you a sense of excitement, take a look at the demo and read on.

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The header says it all: “I am transfering my domain name.” When I registered the domain name bedrichrios.com several months ago, I was unaware of Yahoo’s domain registrar annoyances. The main one being that you cannot renew an account (domain) manually, instead, Yahoo will do it automatically for you, unless you cancel it of course. This means that if you have the “crazy” thought of securing your domain name for, say, 3 years in one payment, you cannot do so. I find this very annoying because it affects your Google rank. The search engine giant has been known to dismiss many sites whose domain name are registered for only one year. So, after some looking around and advise gathering, I have decided to transfer my domain name to dyndns.com. I am really excited about the move but at the same time a little nervous. I have heard really bad stories from people trying to move away from Yahoo domains. Hopefully the transaction will go smoothly and I will be back posting about web design and other things soon.

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In the last couple of months I have crossed paths with many individuals who still believe web pages are created using only HTML and table layouts. People who have no knowledge of web standards, accessibility, or the work that goes into creating or designing a website. Furthermore, there are those who, in my opinion, sadly still perceive the web as child-play.

I am not the most experienced web designer, far from it actually, but I have spent countless hours (for the past three years) learning about the web in order not to “hurt it.” That said, it is really hard to find higher education programs or classes about web design, mainly do to its “young” nature. At the same time, a simple Google search will return an overwhelming number of links to tutorials and how-tos. So, what’s good out there? There are many possible answers to that question. The following list is one. It will provide you with what worked for me when I began to take interest in web design. They are not all related to web design per se, but they will give you a brief overview of what your are getting yourself into.

The List, But Not “The List”

1. Understanding Web Design
   In this article, Jeffrey Zeldman, writes about what it means to be a web designer and what it does not. He talks about why web design is misunderstood and the dangers the misconceptions carry. Furthermore, he gives an answer to the question: what is web design? This is a must read for anyone interested or involved in web design.
2. The Web Standards Project
   “The Web Standards Project is a grassroots coalition fighting for standards which ensure simple, affordable access to web technologies for all.” In other words, web standards attempt to assure that the exchange and use of information between web based products go “smoothly” regardless of the browser being used.

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