St. Petersburg Web Design Blog

Archive for the ‘Graphic Design’ Category

Every knows that Adobe bought Macromedia a while back. Web Designers in the know have always preferred Fireworks as a graphics and photo editing tool over Photoshop. Alot of Web Designers aren’t actually We Designers though, they are Graphics designers, who have had to adapt to web design. And they were taught in schools (since until recently there were no web design degrees) how to use Photoshop. Therefore they don’t even know about Fireworks usually. It’s one of the reasons you shouldn’t hire Graphic Designers to design web sites.

It’s true you can use Photoshop to make web pages. It’s true, they’re a couple things that Photoshop can do that Fireworks can’t. But there are so many things that Fireworks can do that any graphic editing software should do, that once Designers learn Fireworks, they never go back.

Anyway, the point of this article isn’t to rag on Photoshop (but if one knows both software the comparisons are inevitable, sorry Adobe fans, Photoshop sucks), but rather to say we’re all glad Adobe hasn’t killed off Fireworks!

I looked through Adobe’s web site (what a mess!) to find the “new” features of the latest version of Fireworks, called Fireworks CS3. Sadly they went all republican and most of what they are saying is new Fireworks already did, let’s hope they haven’t broken these features. The few things that are actually new are pretty self explanatory:

• Adobe Bridge integration

• This is a software interface to adobe resold and far overpriced stock photography. Don’t bother you can get the same stuff cheaper from the people who sell it orginally or even better, try istockphoto.com

That’s it, that’s the only actual new feature, and given its spammy nature I feel dirty calling it a “feature”.

Here’s what they say is new but actually already exists in Fireworks:
Continue reading “Fireworks CS3 to be released soon – New Features Reviewed here” »

This is a test of a new WorPress Plug-in called the Lightbox-Plugin. What does it do? It presents photos in the original lightbox script style. Which is to open a photo from a thumbnail without leaving the page and while dimming the rest of the screen.

Here’s the photo:

See I told it was a nice way to present photos! It’s easy to install, easy to use, and really does present photos in a clever and eye-appealing way.
A note on usage:

1. This isn’t a very effective means of displaying large sized photos either. Large size photos don’t fit on most monitors, and if it doesn’t fit, the close button gets pushed off the screen and Noobs (new users) get freaked out. We don’t want to freak out the Noobs do we?

A lot of graphic designers and web designers have been thrust into the video editing arena lately with the rise in popularity of video viewed on the web. While most of them just say “I don’t edit video” (I even heard one say that videos can’t be edited by anyone except a film studio or TV studio – liar!), others are willing to learn. I’m fairly good at it myself, but it’s always a complicated procedure and there are no shortcuts. Here’s a perfect example of how not to edit a video to remove something you’d rather not have the viewer see.

Again, there are no shortcuts. It takes expensive software, patience, alot of tedium from someone willing to spend the time on it and lot’s of computer processor time.

Everyone who’s been embedding flash into a web page for a while remembers last year when Microsoft changed their browser in response to loosing a patent -infringement lawsuit. And then they changed it again soon after because the first change was so awful (Warnings everywhere!). What they ended up with – that white border that appears around a flash object when it is hovered over and must be clicked on before the movie can be clicked on – isn’t very graceful, but it what it is and there’s no way around it for a web designer.

It may seem like, or even be, a blatant and desperate attempt to get people to stop using the non-microsoft technologies like flash, java, etc. But yet we as web designer must come up with a Internet Explorer Active Content Fix. You could choose to follow the instruction from the new owners of Flash, here’s a link to Adobe’s Active Content Update Fix. But dues that’s like 6 long scripts that you need to choose for your particular

You could write your own solutions. In theory it’s pretty easy, for JavaScript writers, just document.write your normal code in. For php programers just echo it in. etc.

But here’s what I’ve been doing lately. Since I almost always use DreamWeaverMX 2004 on web sites, I found a nice Dreamweaver extension called the Softery IE Flash Problem Solver. It inserts a command that works simply. It only has two options, Fix the IE Active Content Update Problem on the current open document or on all pages with flash in the current local site. It works quickly and perfectly every time.

Don’t ya love it when something works just like it should?

Why would someone want to put plain text over an image? For the search engines! They treat any text near the top of the page as far more important and far more telling when it comes to determining what a page is actually about. Therefore in struggle between search engine optimization and web design or the battle between eye appealing sites and sites that get indexed properly by the search engines, every one wants their targeted keyphrases at the top of the page in a heading tag and they want a nice image at the top of the page as well.

Continue reading “Put plain text keywords over an image” »

Bob Sobczak works to translate raw data into easy-to-read graphics

Today, a complex system of spillways, levees, pump stations and canals controls where, when and how the water flows. As the keepers of the new order, the South Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers meticulously have tracked the water’s journey for several decades.

A few years ago, a federal scientist with no prior Web-designing experience got the idea to put the information at the public’s fingertips. The result, www.fgcu.edu/bcw/hcu.htm, has evolved into a weekly peek inside the rarely seen — and even more rarely understood — world of water management.

Just in case the complicated, multi-colored data-filled maps aren’t quite easy enough for you to interpert without a mastrers degree in hydrology, they prominently display a link to the SFL Weekly Watersheds Summary blog which contains update narrative summaries of the data.