CSS and opacity

http://www.impressivewebs.com/css-opacity-reference/

A good guide to how to achieve it.

Important note at the end, to be aware that you won't be complying with with current W3C standards if you use CSS opacity. So might be sticking to the background image on repeat for now...

LIF2 draft uploaded

So, I uploaded the first draft of the LIF home page last night at www.thejct.net/lif2.html

I built it using the 960 grid system, with the 12 column split. After reading Neilsen's article yesterday (see Tot's Jots), as well as listening to my instincts, I decided to shift to the 16 column version and shrink the picture on the RHS (as it turns out, I've shrunk it so it would actually still suit the 12 column split). I did this also because as I was about to start coding the other pages, I realised I was going to have to work with a hell of a lot of text and wanted the RHS column size to be consistent throughout the site (plus the images aren't amazing so I'd rather have the focus brought back to the text).

So far, it's looking much better. I'm definitely preferring the new version. I'll make a final call re the column split number once I plug in the content on the 'Personal Training' page and see how it all best fits...

JQery image slider

http://nivo.dev7studios.com/

I think I'm going to have to start a spreadsheet in google docs for all of these useful resources I've been stumbling across...

Colours and shades

So I'm checking out if/how I can achieve what I want re the background of the LIF2 home page. I wanted to achieve a gradient shading using CSS. I found this handy site re how to make transparencies happen cross browser:
http://css-tricks.com/css-transparency-settings-for-all-broswers/
which is great - except it shades out the content as well as the background. When i apply it to the div. Maybe I could just apply it as a class to the background image? Not thinking clearly, rather tired...

Anyway, another alternative is to have a repeating shade image, which is what I've figured most sites seem to do. If I'm interpreting things correctly...

In the mean time I'm looking at shades of colours, so I can just use a gradient of the key colours on the site (so I don't have too busy a palette). A couple of handy sites:
http://www.december.com/html/spec/colorshades.html A list of colours and for each, 3 shades lighter in hex
http://slayeroffice.com/tools/color_palette/ Awesome tool, creates 10 shades of a base colour, with degrees of opacity

Now, back to fun and games with vertical alignment...

LIF2 redesign update

OK, so I'm trying to stick with the 960 grid design (I keep coming across articles all over the place re designing with grids, so I figure it's probably a good thing to get used to working with). The 960.gs CSS/HTML generator seems like it would be useful for mock-ups and prototyping (which I might use it for next time, instead of ppt) but not so much for a short cut build (although I suppose you could. I just don't like the idea of so much redundant code sitting out in the wild...). The gridder bookmarklet is great, for quick placement checks (although annoying it's not accessible offline - at least I've got firebug handy).

I downloaded a trail version of Photoshop as Gimp, while useful and an awesome free program, just wasn't cutting it for what I needed to to (including designing my business cards, which I needed to CMYK colour design for the print peeps). I'm just going to have to bite the bullet an buy the CS4 package... It's been fun having the freedom to easily work on images again, I have to say...

So I've started pulling together the first draft of LIF2 and it's been way more difficult than i anticipated (of course :-) I've been stuck trying to get things to align all over the page like I want them (another reason why 'll be mocking up in code from now on...). I decided to go and have a sticky-beak at how other people achieve what I'm trying to achieve, to try to get some idea of what I'm doing wrong. I popped over to a similar site built by a design agency who shall remain nameless (they've been on my radar re future employer) and discovered that they built the whole thing using tables. Tables within tables. I can't tell you how disappointed I am. It's exactly what I've been taught what NOT to do. I understand it's probably a quick/dirty way of building (and if a company wants a cheap web presence, it's probably the way things go), but I honestly didn't think that was done anymore.

This being said, I'm now torn. Do I treat this as a learning experience and try to get the most out of it by sticking to my table-less CSS laying out, or do I just get something up sooner rather than later to display my design and focus on flash/job hunting?

And then there's the photo issue - the client sent through some great shots, but none that are really suitable for the front page. We need some that are personal, face-facing, connecting shots, and we probably need to look at organising new ones of her clients or purchasing some stock photos. Which probably isn't out of the question - if that's all this redesign costs her, I don't think she'll complain...

Colour combos

I'm about to start building the nav bar for LIF. Not sure I'm sold on the grey I've used in the mock-ups so I'm doing a bit of colour combo research. Found a couple of handy looking sites:

Colour combo library: http://www.colorcombos.com/ Searchable by colour (in hex)

Colour calculator: http://www.drpeterjones.com/colorcalc/ converts rgb/hex and allows you to tweak the colour incrementally. Cool tool.



ps this looks to be the closest in the bunch - I might try using the blue and grey and see how it looks http://www.colorcombos.com/color-scheme-14.html

pps even more awesome - helps you pick complementary colours!!!

Portfolio site complete (mostly)

OK - so I polished off a fair bit yesterday on the portfolio site:

• Content complete
• new footers on all pages with functioning links
• breadcrumb navigation on all pages with functioning links
• checked and passed W3C compliance (XHTML and CSS) on all pages
• moved css files on server to one folder and now all pages point to only two files

There's still a bit that needs to be done:

• I'm not happy with the navigation, esp the footer. Need to sort that out (incl move the email underneath the main links (and make it look like an email link!))
• Will make sense once I do a content and link audit plus map site structure. I know I should have started with this, but I needed to get something up ASAP for the job hunt, so there are files all over the shop (time for a tidy!)
• Cross browser testing. Just launched it again in IE6 here at work and slightly horrified.
• Link up larger versions of a couple of the Zauron pics
• Refine a bunch of stuff - content, make it only one css file for whole site, get rid of multiple copies of images and therefore links.
• Down the track - redesign the CSS. Make it prettier :-) (after I'm done with the LIF redesign)