Posts by Wes Baker
Workspace
To some of us, workspace seems unimportant. A desk where we place our papers, a lamp to light our desk and generally a place to stash our stuff. Yet, we are there for somewhere near eight hours a day. It's this realization that got me thinking about how little we care about it and how our desk just serves as a big shelf.
When I recognized this I began to look at my desk differently. If you come and look at my desk, it's typically a very good indication of how busy and stressed I am. If I've…
Craftsmanship
Craftsmanship is:
The skills, knowledge, and dexterity involved in creating works of art. Generally refers to skill in producing expertly finished products; fine workmanship.
Workshops, not Factories
A factory is a production house which is built purely for results and minimizing costs. These are typically fluorescent-lit, taupe-painted, and boring. They manage to remind the employee that they are not smart, they shouldn't make decisions and that they are very expendable.
Contrast this with a…
Using Opacity
Opacity used to be the domain of flat images made to look transparent. Then came along 24-bit PNGs with their alpha layer and things were a lot better. Now there are several options for opacity:
- Transparent PNGs
- The opacity CSS property
- RGBA color
Transparent PNGs
Transparent PNGs are probably the most used of the lot because they're the most consistent. There are were two downfalls: IE6 incompatibility and image size. Image size is still a problem, but IE6 no longer gives me any problems.…
Fun with Z-Indexes
Over in Production we are seeing more and more designs with a very layered look. In the past, these have been taken care of with a rough mix of combined images, fixed height and width blocks and lots of luck. But as we move these looks to clients with more dynamic sites, we now have to worry about content growing in one direction or another.
The Setup
For example, here is a comp that came to me:
A few points worth noting about the design:
- The menu on the left hand side of the page needs to…
