Useful links: Color functions, table element, weak ties

color picker

A visual guide to SASS and Compass color functions. Very interesting and useful page for people using SASS and Compass.

A Complete Guide to the Table Element is an excellent resource. It’s from Chris Coyier at CSS Tricks.

I found this article in Wired about weak ties in networks like Twitter very interesting. Your Casual Acquaintances on Twitter Are Better Than Your Close Friends on Facebook.

Useful links: Responsive elements, Zeldman on design, web history

Start Up

Responsive elements is a breakthrough idea. Check it out.

You must listen to this interview with Jeffrey Zeldman: Why Designers Need to Craft Words, Not Pixels.

Here’s a wonderful resource for teachers: Web History, a timeline. Thanks to John Allsopp from Web Directions for compiling this and hosting it.

Review: CSS Fonts

CSS Fonts by Eric A. Meyer is from O’Reilly Media (2013). It’s a small book. It’s only about fonts. All about fonts. Everything about fonts. Exhaustively about fonts. If you want to learn things you didn’t even know were possible to do to fonts with CSS, this is the book for you.

The book has sections on font families, @font-face, font weights, font size, font style, font stretching, font kerning, font variants, font features (the font features section was all news to me), font synthesis (another new idea for me), the font property, and font matching.

I read an iBooks version which came in at 120 pages, but the Amazon listing for the paperback lists it at 68 pages. That sounds like not many pages for a tech book, but every possible detail about using and controlling fonts with CSS is in this book. There are many code examples and many screen captures of what the code does in the browser.

Summary: Absolutely everything about fonts.

A review by Virginia DeBolt of CSS Fonts (rating: 5 stars)

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher for this review. Opinions are my own. Links to Amazon are affiliate links. Here is my review policy. You can buy the book from O’Reilly, as well as Amazon. The link to O’Reilly is not an affiliate link.

Useful links: Women, @media queries, Responsive, Twitter in Edu

What Women Don’t Want is from Ladybits. Spoiler alert – women don’t want TitStare.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Media Queries is an excellent recap of the UX Summit closing session.

Responsive Design is Not About Screen Sizes Anymore is from Speckyboy.

Using Twitter Effectively in Education is a talk from Alec Couros.

Happiness Engineers Deliver ARIA Joy

WordCamp Albuquerque included a Happiness Bar stocked with Automattic Happiness Engineers. I went in with my problem about wanting to add ARIA roles to my new blog.

I was thinking it would have to be done in the functions.php file in the child theme.

Nope.

Turns out you can copy theme files such as header.php, footer.php, sidebar.php and others into your child theme folder, add the ARIA role where you want it, and that version of the file is what gets served. Updates to the parent theme don’t cause the ARIA roles to disappear.

Look at the beautiful ARIA roles on my blog now. And I have role=”contentinfo” in the footer, too!

aria roles
ARIA Roles displayed on Old Ain’t Dead

Thanks to Automattic for running a Happiness Bar at Word Camps!

A Few Notes from WordCamp Albuquerque 2013

Traffic building for beginning bloggers

with Elizabeth Urello, Automattic
@eurello

 

1. Find your people. Readers who share your interests or need the information you have.  Readers who share your voice, your perspective, your sense of humor.
How do you find them? Browse, read explore, search for keywords you think people would use to search for you. The wordpress.com reader topics pages helps you find a network of people.
The daily post at wordpress.com is a place to build community and a network.

2. Introduce Yourself. Comment, interact, reblog and respond. Intrigue people where they are already reading. Traffic building is a little like dating.

3. Prepare for company. Give people more of what they like. Blog about others are talking about. Reply to comments with substantial comments. Capitalize on a traffic spike.

4. Spread the love. Know how your social networks differ. Don’t exhaust your followers with irrelevant information. Write original material for each service. Publicize sharing buttons.

There’s a filter for that

by Drew Haynes, 10up

A filter takes a function, applies it and spits it out on the other side. It’s like the telephone game. 1300 or so filters in WordPress core now.

More Than one filter can be applied to a filter hook, based on a priority system.  Filters can also be removed.

Content filters. Can write filters to polish titles, post info or other messages you normally see. Filters can repurpose featured image meta box.

Workflow can be customized with filters. Can filter the appearance of the post content editor.

Most well-known filter in WordPress is the_content. It’s often abused. Ask yourself if something really is content before you use it. Can create filters for post_class, excerpt_length, show_admin_bar. There’s a filter that disables captions (why?).

Development filters let you filter plugin or theme installer pages.

Making the leap from designer to developer

by Ray Gulick, Evo @evoweb

Ray calls himself a designer/ developer or developer-like.

Design is not just how it looks. Design is how it works. -Steve Jobs
Coding is part of the design.

Know a good developer when you begin the journey from designer to developer so you can get help.

Basics skills before you can move on are HTML and CSS. For WP you need to know are PHP and WP tags, custom fields and putting them on templates, custom post types, WP_Query to manage listings.

Using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin allows you to create more user friendly meta info and titles so that it makes more sense to the users who are trying to add content to the fields. It also gives you control over what pages, templates or users even see the field types.

Custom post types. Standard are pages and posts. You can define custom post types with particular custom fields. You can create custom templates, too. Display on a single template. The php for it is in a wp_query.

evowebdev.com will have slide deck.

Other Interesting Stuff

 

 

10 Steps on the Path to be a Graphic Designer

design is …

The Internet has undoubtedly changed our world and has become a solid source for research, instant information, and a virtually endless stream of new ideas and thoughts. However, while most people have a basic understanding of how to use the Web as a search tool and to perform basic tasks and many can set up basic websites or blogs, the people who create the means for getting the information to you, provide the graphics, define the search engine protocols, and all the other activities that go on beyond the screen are not as numerous as many may think.

Thus anyone looking for Internet career opportunities that go beyond basic web knowledge has many options available to them. There are a variety of opportunities people can pursue, skills they can learn, and ideas they can explore to become more involved in making today’s Internet even more dynamic.

1. Past Accomplishments—Don’t reinvent the wheel: There are a lot of good ideas for using the web. Some have been implemented, some have not. Take time to learn about trusting instincts, determining what needs to be on the web, and what impact the wealth of information on the web will have on the education process.

2. Graphic Design—Remember a picture can equal a thousand words: The old adage about pictures being worth a thousand words has been somewhat misleading. A picture or a good graphic can convey a considerable amount of information. However, both elements are required in a good design.

3. Design Courses—Teach yourself or earn a degree: Like most professions there are differing opinions over whether a person who is self-taught can provide the same quality of work as those designers who have degrees. Regardless of which view you share, there are a number of free or low-investment graphic design courses online that can enhance design skills. By taking these courses you can bolster up your professional portfolio, whether you’ve obtained a degree or not.

4. Typography—The real foundation: Despite any advanced techniques you may learn, please do not overlook learning the basics. Decisions about typography can make or destroy any design, no matter how good or bad it may be. A free course on typography that was developed by MIT is available on About.Com.

5. Designing Logos—Making it great: An inexpensive course is a great investment. With this course you can explore logo artwork that will help you create unique logos for clients and brand images.

6. Photoshop Basics—Learning the secrets: Photoshop is an outstanding program with countless features, however you don’t need all of them. As a part of the PSD Tuts Plus “Sessions” Series, this course will help you improve your designer skills.

7. Talking Type—Logos influence emotion: A $20 course by Skillshare will explore the role that typography plays in designing logos. The course helps to explain how the designer can learn to select the best logo typography for a particular project.

8. Design School—A MFA alternate: The curriculum of the Graphic Design School covers most aspects of graphic and web design. The fees are higher than the other non-degree options—about $2,000. However, such a fee would be less than the cost of earning a Master’s of Fine Arts Degree.

9. Other Options—Picking and choosing: There are other options that are available that may provide the additional training you need to make your current skills more marketable and make you a better designer. It is important to check out these courses and make certain they will provide training that will be useful to you.

10. Other Courses—Quick overview: There are numerous other courses that can help any person improve their design skills, from basics to mastering such programs as Illustrator and Dreamweaver. The important thing to remember is that you have to find the courses. They are on the Internet, but it is up to you to find and select the courses that will best serve your needs as you move from being just another graphics designer, who does a little design work along with his other work, to a master designer, who creates the concepts that other people will remember.

In other words, you have to design the path you want to take to be a top designer.

Guest Author Ken Myers is a father, husband, and entrepreneur. He has combined his passion for helping families find in-home care with his experience to build a business. Learn more about him by visiting @KenneyMyers on Twitter.