http://goldmandesign.com/blog Goldman Design news and design production tips Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:55:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Chris Pels posted a great video tutorial of the ASP.net CSS Control Adapters on the asp.net site. If you've ever wanted to use the ASP.net 2.0 server controls for page elements like menus, tree views, gridviews, detailviews, etc.. but would like the ASP.net process to render semantic HTML then you'll ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/09/08/aspnet-20-css-server-control-adapters-for-menus-tree-views-grid-views/ In the past several years many designers have take to present phone numbers in a format with dots. For example: 206.555.1212. But I have no idea why they do this. It is difficult to recognize as a phone number. This dotted format - at quick glance - looks more like ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/08/21/the-best-format-for-phone-numbers-206-555-1212/ Are you a designer looking for work? If so, contact me; I'm looking for talented designers. We’ll work with large, high profile clients like Microsoft, Intergraph, Online Resources, vFinance and Universal Records. On occasion we’ll also work with smaller, local businesses, indie bands and startups. In all cases we’ll design ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/08/13/goldman-design-is-looking-to-contract-or-hire-talented-web-designers/ Recently I had a potential client ask what sites I've designed. Since I haven't updated my portfolio in almost two years I figured I'd put a short list together here. There are a number of sites that are not public facing - so no links. Some of these include sites ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/07/18/a-list-of-some-web-sites-ive-designed/ The first is called Yumga. Forget the paid services; Yugma works great and is free. I've been using it now for several months and have now become an affiliate to help spread the word. In Yugma's own words: Yugma is a free web collaboration service that enables people to instantly ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/06/08/two-great-new-and-free-web-apps/ "Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/05/12/a-list-apart-web-design-survey/ This is a test post published directly from the new Word 2007.  I'll explain this more later ...  Text Change font Change color Change size H2 Heading (verdana) H3 Heading (default Calibri font)  Bullet Bullet Nested bullet Nested bullet Bullet Pre Code Test  <configuration> <location path="showStockPrice.asp">     <system.webserver>         <caching>          <profiles>             <add varybyquerystring="*" location="Any" duration="00:00:01" policy="CacheForTimePeriod" extension=".asp">          </profiles>         </caching>     </system.webserver> </location> </configuration> </pre> http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/04/27/test-post-directly-from-microsoft-word-2007/ It is common these days to you use the » character on web page bread crumb trails and to call attention to certain links on the page. As a designer the » symbol looks much better than the > symbol. However, if you use these characters in your pages be ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/03/16/arrow-glyphs-what-to-do-laquo-and-raquo-left-angle-quote-right-angle-quote-semantics-and-screen-readers/ I recently had some projects where the client wanted the page layouts and CSS tested in Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2. I can't seem to find any difference in the way Firefox 1.5 or Firefox 2 renders CSS. I haven't found other blogs, forums or Mozilla help docs that talk ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/02/28/css-rendering-differences-between-ff15-and-ff2/ The new IE Dev Tool bar has been released. It now has a button for "find by click" (so much better than the old drop down menu). With this addition it's better than the Firefox developer tool bar extension in a lot of ways. The "trace css" is fantastic, but ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2007/01/14/ie-dev-toolbar-beta-3/ I've been running IE 7 beta on test machines for a while now, but just installed it on my production machine through auto-update. It was a smooth update. The poor bookmark UI in IE 7 however, is the one thing that keeps me using Firefox as my default browser. That's too ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/11/27/update-dreamweaver-8-after-installing-ie-7-fix-for-unsaved-passwords/ (1) Buy more ram for Photoshop. I know many people are skeptical if you'll see much performance difference when using 1 gig of ram versus over 1 gig of ram. But, if you're running Photoshop with large files you will benefit from more ram. I've been running 1 gig of ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/07/26/buy-more-ram-for-photoshop-from-the-chip-merchant/ I started to redesign www.asp.net this week. The project has been in talks for months but was green lit recently. I spent this past week on full scale black and white wire frames / storyboards. They'll be more storyboards of the user experience than abstracted flow charts. Flow charts of ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/07/16/wwwaspnet-redesign/ The last few months I've been designing the Microsoft IIS web site. It was a pleasure to work with Bill Staples, Chris Adams and all the folks at Telligent to pull this site together. We have some new features and design additions coming this summer as well. http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/07/16/iisnet-site-design-is-up-and-running/ Design for the user experience not for technologies and tools Design with semantic mark-up in mind Design for accessibility, you'll get more than just accessibility benefits Make menus from lists Use CSS and image sprites for hover effects or when you need a related set of graphics to be available on the client at ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/07/08/top-10-modern-web-design-techniques-and-methods/ Check out the new (free) beta download of Microsoft Expression Web Designer. It's looking quite nice and heck of a lot cheaper ($0 currently) than Dreamweaver. Vitamin has a good review if you want to see screen shots before downloading. http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/06/24/microsoft-expression-web-designer-beta/ My friend Jeff Prosise at Wintellect referred me to the Government and Securities Division at Intergraph. After an NDA, some talks and a clear statement of work I started a new user interface project with them. The developers at Intergraph are top notch. I'm humbled and eager to work with ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/04/01/new-client-intergraph/ If you've tried to use rounded corners on the ASP.NET 2.0 menu control you'll notice that the control renders a white background behind the entire bounds of the drop down menus (in IE 6). There is no user interface in Visual Studio (or Visual Web Developer) to get rid of ... http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/03/24/aspnet-drop-down-menu-control-white-rounded-corner-issue-fix/ Fun projects are so ... fun. The Made In Express Contest was one of them. The finalists are already chosen, but you can track their progress along with judges Chris Pirillo, Phillip Torrone and Robert Scoble. I'm interested to see how the Community based video remix app (PixelParty) turns out. http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/03/15/express-yourself-contest/ I just started writing this blog. Stay tuned for more nitty gritty on PNG post processing (lets hope Macromedia whips Photoshop PNG output into shape), how to format CSS for ASP.NET 2.0-centric developers, storyboarding rich AJAX UI’s and hopefully some more (no promises : ). http://goldmandesign.com/blog/2006/01/15/where-the-heck-are-the-design-tips/