Archive for the ‘Brew Time Titbit’ Category

Brew Time Titbit: Layer Tennis. Fancy A Game?

Thursday, June 4th, 2009
layertennis

The genius concept for layer tennis was created by Coudal Partners and regular games are played on a Friday afternoon to keep the guys over there entertained. It involves two people adding elements to a document using all the usual Adobe packages in volleys – each player trying to out play the other. They usually play for about 5 rounds and each player has about 15 mins to prepare a volley. After all the rounds a winner is picked! You can follow the matches live at layertennis.com

It sounds like much fun and I would like to organise a game with you guys – with rounds spread over a few weeks rather than an afternoon!

So here is how to play:

  1. I’ve created a photoshop file, put a little something inside and posted it below.
  2. Download the file and add something to it in which ever program you like.
  3. Change it all you like but try to keep it on a theme.
  4. Send your volley back to me at dialdfordesign[at]googlemail.com, tell me why you made the changes you did and links to any attributions you need to make for elements you used.
  5. After a bunch of files get submitted I’ll post pics of all the entries and pick 3 to put back up for the next round.
  6. Bring it on and spread the word!

Click Here To Download Round 1!

A few things to remember:  Try and keep the layers intact, don’t worry about making it look too fancy and have fun!

Keep up to date follow me  on twitter or add me to your RSS feed.

(original image by zoomar)

Brew Time Titbit: What is Doctype?

Monday, May 4th, 2009

dd4dmug

What is doctype?

Doctype basically tells applications like your browser or online code validator what type of markup you’ve coded the page in. The majority of users will either use HTML or XHTML, Transitional or Strict versions. Transitional is used for old markup which has been coded for older browsers. Strict requires the markup to be well coded and standards compliant moving the page towards working with more browsers and screen readers.

Why do we need it?

If a browser is given a doctype it can interpret the markup you’ve used to render the page correctly. If it’s not given a doctype it will try to interpret the markup as best it can and therefor the page may not render correctly. For example: If IE6 isn’t given a doctype it works in ‘quirks’ mode and doesn’t honour CSS auto margins. If you start designing your pages with XHTML strict in mind you are giving yourself a helping hand to code more elegant, robust and standards compliant markup.

Where can I get it?

To add a doctype to your document it’s as simple as copy and paste. Below are the doctypes for XHTML transitional and strict. Paste them above your HTML tag in your document:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

To view more types of doctype to add to your document check out the W3C recommended list of doctypes.

For further reading I recommend:

University of Minnesota Web Design References
Transitional vs Strict Markup by Roger Johansson
Fix your site with the right DOCTYPE! by Jeffery Zeldman

If you found this helpful add me to your RSS reader! Thanks.

Supporting Browsers With Javascript Disabled

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

dd4dmug
Welcome to the first Brew Time Tidbit design tip! What do you do if the person enjoying your content on your site gets stuck because they can’t use the flashy functionality you’ve spent ages sticking into your website? Hell you <noscript> those suckers!

That’s right – it just so happens HTML has an awesome little tag for you to place content which will appear to those who don’t have java script!

<noscript>damn you, now you can't use my light box</noscript>

But remember don’t just use this to inform your users that they have javascript disabled but include it in your content so in case they have a good reason for not wanting javascript working then they won’t miss out on your goodness as well.

The average percentage of people with javascript turned off in 2008 was 5% but you can get a more accurate, personalised value by looking at your own stats as different websites attract different people.

Even if your website has a very low percentage of people with javascript disabled this is so easy to implement then there’s no real excuse… or is there?! Let me know what you think