Devolio

Friday, November 30. 2007

Transparent PNGs in Internet Explorer 6

Newer breeds of browser such as Firefox and Safari have offered support for PNG images with full alpha channel transparency for a few years. With the use of hacks, support has been available in Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6, but the hacks are non-ideal and have been tricky to use. With IE7 winning masses of users from earlier versions over the last year, full PNG alpha-channel transparency is becoming more of a reality for day-to-day use.

However, there are still numbers of IE6 users out there who we can’t leave out in the cold this Christmas, so in this article I’m going to look what we can do to support IE6 users whilst taking full advantage of transparency for the majority of a site’s visitors.

Google to bid on 700 MHz wireless spectrum

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc was set to announce on Friday it will bid on coveted airwaves to launch a U.S. wireless network, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The Silicon Valley-based company had said several months ago it was considering bidding in the auction of 700-megahertz wireless spectrum due to begin January 24. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission deadline for companies to declare their interest in joining the airwaves bidding is December 3.

Glad to see they're finally in this for sure, I'm curious to see what they're going to be doing with it. Free wireless access for devices would be cool, but there's so many things that they could do... What do you think they're going to do with it?

Thursday, November 29. 2007

Ensuring your HTML emails look great and get delivered

In this article that goes hand-in-hand with the release of Emails-Standards.org, David Greiner explains what you need to do to ensure that your emails not only look great in today’s email clients but also actually make it to where they’re going. A great collection of tips and tricks for sending HTML email, and covers all of the major issues with sending them.

The Pirate Bay adds music previews

Today, the arguably most hated (by the RIAA) torrent site, The Pirate Bay, has added a music player to preview music torrents with. Though I haven't used it, I've been hearing from some of you that it's really neat. Here's the blog post from TPB:

Today we released the first update to the music section we've been talking about.

It's still a beta, but we think it's useful enough now! When you go to a torrent containing a music torrent and we can figure out the artist name it will contain an extra link just below the description box. This link will give you the name of the artist, an image, a list of albums (and linked if we can find them on the site), and the best part of all - their upcoming live events!

You can check out their blog post on the update.

CSS on the fly with Javascript

So, apparently it would be nice to be able to do certain things with CSS. Traditionally, these sorts of things are done on the server side using a server side language (like PHP) that generates CSS every time you hit the page. Wouldn't it be nice to do it on the client side? As the page loads and after, as the user interacts with it? You can do just that with this package, a simple line of Javascript can add styles to your elements on the fly. Check it out here.

Icons for Web Designs (and Desktops)

The value of icons lies in their ability to communicate with visitors or users in a more intuitive and effective way. Jakob Nielsen, the maestro of usability, postulated few years ago that “recognition rather than recall” is one of the basic heuristics for user-friendly design. In fact, it’s necessary to “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

In the overview below we present some of the fresh high-quality free icons which you can use for your desktop; we also showcase free professional icon sets, buttons and vector graphics you can use for your web designs. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them. Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using the icons - they’re changing from time to time. Check them out at Smashing Magazine. You can also find another round up of Free Icons at Design Vitality.

Icons for Web Designs (and Desktops)

The value of icons lies in their ability to communicate with visitors or users in a more intuitive and effective way. Jakob Nielsen, the maestro of usability, postulated few years ago that “recognition rather than recall” is one of the basic heuristics for user-friendly design. In fact, it’s necessary to “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

In the overview below we present some of the fresh high-quality free icons which you can use for your desktop; we also showcase free professional icon sets, buttons and vector graphics you can use for your web designs. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them. Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using the icons - they’re changing from time to time. Check them out at Smashing Magazine. There's even more in this roundup at Design Vitality as well.

Icons for Web Designs (and Desktops)

The value of icons lies in their ability to communicate with visitors or users in a more intuitive and effective way. Jakob Nielsen, the maestro of usability, postulated few years ago that “recognition rather than recall” is one of the basic heuristics for user-friendly design. In fact, it’s necessary to “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

In the overview below we present some of the fresh high-quality free icons which you can use for your desktop; we also showcase free professional icon sets, buttons and vector graphics you can use for your web designs. You might know some of them, but hopefully not all of them. Not all listed freebies can be used for commercial projects, however you can use all of them in your private projects of for you personal purposes. Please read the disclaimers carefully before using the icons - they’re changing from time to time. Check them out at Smashing Magazine. And check out another round up of free icons at Design Vitality.

Wednesday, November 28. 2007

Asus resolves Eee GPL violation, releases code, announces SDK

Last week, software developer Cliff Biffle wrote a blog post pointing out certain discrepancies in the source code archive made available by Asus for the Linux-based software platform distributed on the Eee PC.

According to Biffle, the 1.8GB archive made available online by Asus following the launch of the Eee PC did not include changes made by the company to the asus_acpi kernel module. Failing to provide the public with access to those changes could potentially constitute a violation of the General Public License (GPL), the open source license under which the Linux kernel is distributed. Asus is also announcing an SDK for the Eee PC. Read the rest of the write up at Ars Technica.

HTML and CSS for forms

The Wufoo Form Gallery is a resource for web developers and designers to help get a head start on data collection. They have a nice collection of themes, templates, color palettes, and other stuff as well. Check out their gallery here.