| 99 |
A Christmas hCard From Me To You |
So apparently Christmas is coming. And what is Christmas all about? Well, cleaning out your address book, of course! What better time to go through your contacts, making sure everyone’s details are up date and that you’ve deleted all those nasty clients who never paid on time?
It’s also a good time to make sure your current clients and colleagues have your most up-to-date details, so instead of filling up their inboxes with e-cards, why not send them something useful? Something like a… vCard! (See what I did there?)
Just in case you’ve been working in a magical toy factory in the upper reaches of Scandinavia for the last few years, I’m going to tell you that now would also be the perfect time to get into microformats. Using the hCard format, we’ll build a very simple web page and markup our contact details in such a way that they’ll be understood by microformats plugins, like Operator or Tails for Firefox, or the cross-browser Microformats Bookmarklet.
Oh, and because Christmas is all about dressing up and being silly, we’ll make the whole thing look nice and have a bit of fun with some CSS3 progressive enhancement.
If you can’t wait to see what we end up with, you can preview it here.
Step 1: Contact Details
First, let’s decide what details we want to put on the page. I’d put my full name, my email address, my phone number, and my postal address, but I’d rather not get surprise visits from strangers when I’m fannying about with my baubles, so I’m going to use Father Christmas instead (that’s Santa to you Yanks).
Father Christmas
fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com
25 Laughingallthe Way
Snow Falls
Lapland
Finland
010 60 58 000
Step 2: hCard Creator
Now I’m not sure about you, but I rather like getting the magical robot pixies to do the work for me, so head on over to the hCard Creator and put those pixies to work! Pop in your details and they’ll give you some nice microformatted HTML in turn.
<div id="hcard-Father-Christmas" class="vcard">
<a class="url fn" href="http://elliotjaystocks.com/fatherchristmas">Father Christmas</a>
<a class="email" href="mailto:fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com"> fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com</a>
<div class="adr">
<div class="street-address">25 Laughingallthe Way</div>
<span class="locality">Snow Falls</span>
,
<span class="region">Lapland</span>
,
<span class="postal-code">FI-00101</span>
<span class="country-name">Finland</span>
</div>
<div class="tel">010 60 58 000</div>
<p style="font-size:smaller;">This <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard">hCard</a> created with the <a href="http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator">hCard creator</a>.</p>
</div>
Step 3: Editing The Code
One of the great things about microformats is that you can use pretty much whichever HTML tags you want, so just because the hCard Creator Fairies say something should be wrapped in a <span> doesn’t mean you can’t change it to a <blink>. Actually, no, don’t do that. That’s not even excusable at Christmas.
I personally have a penchant for marking up each line of an address inside a <li> tag, where the parent url retains the class of adr. As long as you keep the class names the same, you’ll be fine.
<div id="hcard-Father-Christmas" class="vcard">
<h1><a class="url fn" href="http://elliotjaystocks.com/fatherchristmas">Father Christmas </a></h1>
<a class="email" href="mailto:fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com?subject=Here, have some Christmas cheer!">fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com</a>
<ul class="adr">
<li class="street-address">25 Laughingallthe Way</li>
<li class="locality">Snow Falls</li>
<li class="region">Lapland</li>
<li class="postal-code">FI-00101</li>
<li class="country-name">Finland</li>
</ul>
<span class="tel">010 60 58 000</span>
</div>
Step 4: Testing The Microformats
With our microformats in place, now would be a good time to test that they’re working before we start making things look pretty. If you’re on Firefox, you can install the Operator or Tails extensions, but if you’re on another browser, just add the Microformats Bookmarklet. Regardless of your choice, the results is the same: if you’ve code microformatted content on a web page, one of these bad boys should pick it up for you and allow you to export the contact info. Give it a try and you should see father Christmas appearing in your address book of choice. Now you’ll never forget where to send those Christmas lists!
Step 5: Some Extra Markup
One of the first things we’re going to do is put a photo of Father Christmas on the hCard. We’ll be using CSS to apply a background image to a div, so we’ll be needing an extra div with a class name of “photo”. In turn, we’ll wrap the text-based elements of our hCard inside a div cunningly called “text”. Unfortunately, because of the float technique we’ll be using, we’ll have to use one of those nasty float-clearing techniques. I shall call this “christmas-cheer”, since that is what its presence will inevitably bring, of course.
Oh, and let’s add a bit of text to give the page context, too:
<p>Send your Christmas lists my way...</p>
<div id="hcard-Father-Christmas" class="vcard">
<div class="text">
<h1><a class="url fn" href="http://elliotjaystocks.com/fatherchristmas">Father Christmas </a></h1>
<a class="email" href="mailto:fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com?subject=Here, have some Christmas cheer!">fatherchristmas@elliotjaystocks.com</a>
<ul class="adr">
<li class="street-address">25 Laughingallthe Way</li>
<li class="locality">Snow Falls</li>
<li class="region">Lapland</li>
<li class="postal-code">FI-00101</li>
<li class="country-name">Finland</li>
</ul>
<span class="tel">010 60 58 000</span>
</div>
<div class="photo"></div>
<br class="christmas-cheer" />
</div>
<div class="credits">
<p>A tutorial by <a href="http://elliotjaystocks.com">Elliot Jay Stocks</a> for <a href="http://24ways.org/">24 Ways</a></p>
<p>Background: <a href="http://sxc.hu/photo/1108741">stock.xchng</a> | Father Christmas: <a href="http://istockphoto.com/file_closeup/people/4575943-active-santa.php?id=4575943">iStockPhoto</a></p>
</div>
Step 6: Some Christmas Sparkle
So far, our hCard-housing web page is slightly less than inspiring, isn’t it? It’s time to add a bit of CSS. There’s nothing particularly radical going on here; just a simple layout, some basic typographic treatment, and the placement of the Father Christmas photo. I’d usually use a more thorough CSS reset like the one found in the YUI or Eric Meyer’s, but for this basic page, the simple * solution will do.
Check out the step 6 demo to see our basic styles in place.
From this…
… to this:
Step 7: Fun With imagery
Now it’s time to introduce a repeating background image to the <body> element. This will seamlessly repeat for as wide as the browser window becomes.
But that’s fairly straightforward. How about having some fun with the Father Christmas image? If you look at the image file itself, you’ll see that it’s twice as wide as the area we can see and contains a ‘hidden’ photo of our rather camp St. Nick.
As a light-hearted visual… er… ‘treat’ for users who move their mouse over the image, we move the position of the background image on the “photo” div. Check out the step 7 demo to see it working.
Step 8: Progressive Enhancement
Finally, this fun little project is a great opportunity for us to mess around with some advanced CSS features (some from the CSS3 spec) that we rarely get to use on client projects. (Don’t forget: no Christmas pressies for clients who want you to support IE6!)
Here are the rules we’re using to give some browsers a superior viewing experience:
@font-face allows us to use Jos Buivenga’s free font ‘Fertigo Pro’ on all text;
text-shadow adds a little emphasis on the opening paragraph;
body > p:first-child causes only the first paragraph to receive this treatment;
border-radius created rounded corners on our main div and the links within it;
and webkit-transition allows us to gently fade in between the default and hover states of those links.
And with that, we’re done! You can see the results here. It’s time to customise the page to your liking, upload it to your site, and send out the URL. And do it quickly, because I’m sure you’ve got some last-minute Christmas shopping to finish off! |
2008 |
Elliot Jay Stocks |
elliotjaystocks |
2008-12-10T00:00:00+00:00 |
https://24ways.org/2008/a-christmas-hcard-from-me-to-you/ |
code |
| 145 |
The Neverending (Background Image) Story |
Everyone likes candy for Christmas, and there’s none better than eye candy. Well, that, and just more of the stuff. Today we’re going to combine both of those good points and look at how to create a beautiful background image that goes on and on… forever!
Of course, each background image is different, so instead of agonising over each and every pixel, I’m going to concentrate on five key steps that you can apply to any of your own repeating background images. In this example, we’ll look at the Miami Beach background image used on the new FOWA site, which I’m afraid is about as un-festive as you can get.
1. Choose your image wisely
I find there are three main criteria when judging photos you’re considering for repetition manipulation (or ‘repetulation’, as I like to say)…
simplicity (beware of complex patterns)
angle and perspective (watch out for shadows and obvious vanishing points)
consistent elements (for easy cloning)
You might want to check out this annotated version of the image, where I’ve highlighted elements of the photo that led me to choose it as the right one.
The original image purchased from iStockPhoto.
The Photoshopped version used on the FOWA site.
2. The power of horizontal lines
With the image chosen and your cursor poised for some Photoshop magic, the most useful thing you can do is drag out the edge pixels from one side of the image to create a kind of rough colour ‘template’ on which to work over. It doesn’t matter which side you choose, although you might find it beneficial to use the one with the simplest spread of colour and complex elements.
Click and hold on the marquee tool in the toolbar and select the ‘single column marquee tool’, which will span the full height of your document but will only be one pixel wide. Make the selection right at the edge of your document, press ctrl-c / cmd-c to copy the selection you made, create a new layer, and hit ctrl-v / cmd-v to paste the selection onto your new layer. using free transform (ctrl-t / cmd-t), drag out your selection so that it becomes as wide as your entire canvas.
A one-pixel-wide selection stretched out to the entire width of the canvas.
3. Cloning
It goes without saying that the trusty clone tool is one of the most important in the process of creating a seamlessly repeating background image, but I think it’s important to be fairly loose with it. Always clone on to a new layer so that you’ve got the freedom to move it around, but above all else, use the eraser tool to tweak your cloned areas: let that handle the precision stuff and you won’t have to worry about getting your clones right first time.
In the example below, you can see how I overcame the problem of the far-left tree shadow being chopped off by cloning the shadow from the tree on its right.
The edge of the shadow is cut off and needs to be ‘made’ from a pre-existing element.
The successful clone completes the missing shadow.
The two elements are obviously very similar but it doesn’t look like a clone because the majority of the shape is ‘genuine’ and only a small part is a duplicate. Also, after cloning I transformed the duplicate, erased parts of it, used gradients, and — ooh, did someone mention gradients?
4. Never underestimate a gradient
For this image, I used gradients in a similar way to a brush: covering large parts of the canvas with a colour that faded out to a desired point, before erasing certain parts for accuracy.
Several of the gradients and brushes that make up the ‘customised’ part of the image, visible when the main photograph layer is hidden.
The full composite.
Gradients are also a bit of an easy fix: you can use a gradient on one side of the image, flip it horizontally, and then use it again on the opposite side to make a more seamless join.
Speaking of which…
5. Sewing the seams
No matter what kind of magic Photoshop dust you sprinkle over your image, there will still always be the area where the two edges meet: that scary ‘loop’ point. Fret ye not, however, for there’s help at hand in the form of a nice little cheat. Even though the loop point might still be apparent, we can help hide it by doing something to throw viewers off the scent.
The seam is usually easy to spot because it’s a blank area with not much detail or colour variation, so in order to disguise it, go against the rule: put something across it!
This isn’t quite as challenging as it may sound, because if we intentionally make our own ‘object’ to span the join, we can accurately measure the exact halfway point where we need to split it across the two sides of the image. This is exactly what I did with the FOWA background image: I made some clouds!
A sky with no clouds in an unhappy one.
A simple soft white brush creates a cloud-like formation in the sky.
After taking the cloud’s opacity down to 20%, I used free transform to highlight the boundaries of the layer. I then moved it over to the right, so that the middle of the layer perfectly aligned with the right side of the canvas.
Finally, I duplicated the layer and did the same in reverse: dragging the layer over to the left and making sure that the middle of the duplicate layer perfectly aligned with the left side of the canvas.
And there you have it! Boom! Ta-da! Et Voila! To see the repeating background image in action, visit futureofwebapps.com on a large widescreen monitor or see a simulation of the effect.
Thanks for reading, folks. Have a great Christmas! |
2007 |
Elliot Jay Stocks |
elliotjaystocks |
2007-12-03T00:00:00+00:00 |
https://24ways.org/2007/the-neverending-background-image-story/ |
code |
| 170 |
A Pet Project is For Life, Not Just for Christmas |
I’m excited: as December rolls on, I’m winding down from client work and indulging in a big pet project I’ve been dreaming up for quite some time, with the aim of releasing it early next year. I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for pet projects and currently have a few in the works: the big one, two collaborations with friends, and my continuing (and completely un-web-related) attempt at music. But when I think about the other designers and developers out there whose work I admire, one thing becomes obvious: they’ve all got pet projects! Look around the web and you’ll see that anyone worth their salt has some sort of side project on the go. If you don’t have yours yet, now’s the time!
Have a pet project to collaborate with your friends
It’s not uncommon to find me staring at my screen, looking at beautiful websites my friends have made, grinning inanely because I feel so honoured to know such talented individuals. But one thing really frustrates me: I hardly ever get to work with these people! Sure, there are times when it’s possible to do so, but due to various project situations, it’s a rarity.
So, in order to work with my friends, I’ve found the best way is to instigate the collaboration outside of client work; in other words, have a pet project together! Free from the hard realities of budgets, time restraints, and client demands, you and your friends can come up with something purely for your own pleasures. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to work with other designers or developers whose work you love, the pet project is that excuse. They don’t necessarily have to be friends, either: if the respect is mutual, it can be a great way of breaking the ice and getting to know someone.
Figure 1: A forthcoming secret love-child from myself and Tim Van Damme
Have a pet project to escape from your day job
We all like to moan about our clients and bosses, don’t we? But if leaving your job or firing your evil client just isn’t an option, why not escape from all that and pour your creative energies into something you genuinely enjoy?
It’s not just about reacting to negativity, either: a pet project is a great way to give yourself a bit of variety. As web designers, our day-to-day work forces us to work within a set of web-related contraints and sometimes it can be demoralising to spend so many hours fixing IE bugs. The perfect antidote? Go and do some print design! If it’s not possible in your day job or client work, the pet project is the perfect place to exercise your other creative muscles. Yes, print design (or your chosen alternative) has its own constraints, but if they’re different to those you experience on a daily basis, it’ll be a welcome relief and you’ll return to your regular work feeling refreshed.
Figure 2: Ligature, Loop & Stem, from Scott Boms & Luke Dorny
Have a pet project to fulfill your own needs
Many pet projects come into being because the designers and/or developers behind them are looking for a tool to accomplish a task and find that it doesn’t exist, thus prompting them to create their own solution. In fact, the very app I’m using to write this article — Ommwriter, from Herraiz Soto & Co — was originally a tool they’d created for their internal staff, before releasing it to the public so that it could be enjoyed by others.
Just last week, Tina Roth Eisenberg launched Teux Deux, a pet project she’d designed to meet her own requirements for a to-do list, having found that no existing apps fulfilled her needs. Oh, and it was a collaboration with her studio mate Cameron. Remember what I was saying about working with your friends?
Figure 3: Teux Deux, the GTD pet project that launched just last week
Have a pet project to help people out
Ommwriter and Teux Deux are free for anyone to use. Let’s just think about that for a moment: the creators have invested their time and effort in the project, and then given it away to be used by others. That’s very cool and something we’re used to seeing a lot of in the web community (how lucky we are)! People love free stuff and giving away the fruits of your labour will earn you major kudos. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making some money, either — more on that in a second.
Figure 4: Dan Rubin‘s extremely helpful Make Photoshop Faster
Have a pet project to raise your profile
So, giving away free stuff earns you kudos. And kudos usually helps you raise your profile in the industry. We all like a bit of shameless fame, don’t we? But seriously, if you want to become well known, make something cool. It could be free (to buy you the love and respect of the community) or it could be purchasable (if you’ve made something that’s cool enough to deserve hard-earned cash), but ultimately it needs to be something that people will love.
Figure 5: Type designer Jos Buivenga has shot to fame thanks to his beautiful typefaces and ‘freemium’ business model
If you’re a developer with no design skills, team up with a good designer so that the design community appreciate its aesthetic. If you’re a designer with no development skills, team up with a good developer so that it works. Oh, and not that I’d recommend you ever do this for selfish reasons, but collaborating with someone you admire — whose work is well-respected by the community — will also help raise your profile.
Have a pet project to make money
In spite of our best hippy-esque intentions to give away free stuff to the masses, there’s also nothing wrong with making a bit of money from your pet project. In fact, if your project involves you having to make a considerable financial investment, it’s probably a good idea to try and recoup those costs in some way.
Figure 6: The success of Shaun Inman‘s various pet projects — Mint, Fever, Horror Vacui, etc. — have allowed him to give up client work entirely.
A very common way to do that in both the online and offline worlds is to get some sort of advertising. For a slightly different approach, try contacting a company who are relevant to your audience and ask them if they’d be interesting in sponsoring your project, which would usually just mean having their brand associated with yours in some way. This is still a form of advertising but tends to allow for a more tasteful implementation, so it’s worth pursuing.
Advertising is a great way to cover your own costs and keep things free for your audience, but when costs are considerably higher (like if you’re producing a magazine with high production values, for instance), there’s nothing wrong with charging people for your product. But, as I mentioned above, you’ve got to be positive that it’s worth paying for!
Have a pet project just for fun
Sometimes there’s a very good reason for having a pet project — and sometimes even a viable business reason — but actually you don’t need any reason at all. Wanting to have fun is just as worthy a motivation, and if you’re not going to have fun doing it, then what’s the point? Assuming that almost all pet projects are designed, developed, written, printed, marketed and supported in our free time, why not do something enjoyable?
Figure 7: Jessica Hische‘s beautiful Daily Drop Cap
In conclusion
The fact that you’re reading 24 ways shows that you have a passion for the web, and that’s something I’m happy to see in abundance throughout our community. Passion is a term that’s thrown about all over the place, but it really is evident in the work that people do. It’s perhaps most evident, however, in the pet projects that people create. Don’t forget that the very site you’re reading this article on is… a pet project.
If you’ve yet to do so, make it a new year’s resolution for 2010 to have your own pet project so that you can collaborate with your friends, escape from your day job, fulfil your own needs, help people out, raise your profile, make money, and — above all — have fun. |
2009 |
Elliot Jay Stocks |
elliotjaystocks |
2009-12-18T00:00:00+00:00 |
https://24ways.org/2009/a-pet-project-is-for-life-not-just-for-christmas/ |
business |
| 270 |
From Side Project to Not So Side Project |
In the last article I wrote for 24 ways, back in 2009, I enthused about the benefits of having a pet project, suggesting that we should all have at least one so that we could collaborate with our friends, escape our day jobs, fulfil our own needs, help others out, raise our profiles, make money, and — most importantly — have fun. I don’t think I need to offer any further persuasions: it seems that designers and developers are launching their own pet projects left, right and centre. This makes me very happy.
However, there still seems to be something of a disconnect between having a side project and turning it into something that is moderately successful; in particular, the challenge of making enough money to sustain the project and perhaps even elevating it from the sidelines so that it becomes something not so on the side at all.
Before we even begin this, let’s spend a moment talking about money, also known as…
Evil, nasty, filthy money
Over the last couple of years, I’ve started referring to myself as an accidental businessman. I say accidental because my view of the typical businessman is someone who is driven by money, and I usually can’t stand such people. Those who are motivated by profit, obsessed with growth, and take an active interest in the world’s financial systems don’t tend to be folks with whom I share a beer, unless it’s to pour it over them. Especially if they’re wearing pinstriped suits.
That said, we all want to make money, don’t we? And most of us want to make a relatively decent amount, too. I don’t think there’s any harm in admitting that, is there? Hello, I’m Elliot and I’m a capitalist.
The key is making money from doing what we love. For most people I know in our community, we’ve already achieved that — I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone who isn’t extremely passionate about working in our industry and I think it’s one of the most positive, unifying benefits we enjoy as a group of like-minded people — but side projects usually arise from another kind of passion: a passion for something other than what we do as our day jobs. Perhaps it’s because your clients are driving you mental and you need a break; perhaps it’s because you want to create something that is truly your own; perhaps it’s because you’re sick of seeing your online work disappear so fast and you want to try your hand at print in order to make a more permanent mark.
The three factors I listed there led me to create 8 Faces, a printed magazine about typography that started as a side project and is now a very significant part of my yearly output and income.
Like many things that prove fruitful, 8 Faces’ success was something of an accident, too. For a start, the magazine was never meant to be profitable; its only purpose at all was to scratch my own itch. Then, after the first issue took off and I realized how much time I needed to spend in order to make the next one decent, it became clear that I would have to cover more than just the production costs: I’d have to take time out from client work as well. Doing this meant I’d have to earn some money. Probably not enough to equate to the exact amount of time lost when I could be doing client work (not that you could ever describe time as being lost when you work on something you love), but enough to survive; for me to feel that I was getting paid while doing all of the work that 8 Faces entailed. The answer was to raise money through partnerships with some cool companies who were happy to be associated with my little project.
A sustainable business model
Business model! I can’t believe I just wrote those words! But a business model is really just a loose plan for how not to screw up. And all that stuff I wrote in the paragraph above about partnering with companies so I could get some money in while I put the magazine together? Well, that’s my business model.
If you’re making any product that has some sort of production cost, whether that’s physical print run expenses or up-front dev work to get an app built, covering those costs before you even release your product means that you’ll be in profit from the first copy you sell. This is no small point: production expenses are pretty much the only cost you’ll ever need to recoup, so having them covered before you launch anything is pretty much the best possible position in which you could place yourself. Happy days, as Jamie Oliver would say.
Obtaining these initial funds through partnerships has another benefit. Sure, it’s a form of advertising but, done right, your partners can potentially provide you with great content, too. In the case of 8 Faces, the ads look as nice as the rest of the magazine, and a couple of our partners also provide proper articles: genuinely meaningful, relevant, reader-pleasing articles at that. You’d be amazed at how many companies are willing to become partners and, as the old adage goes, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
With profit comes responsibility
Don’t forget about the responsibility you have to your audience if you engage in a relationship with a partner or any type of advertiser: although I may have freely admitted my capitalist leanings, I’m still essentially a hairy hippy, and I feel that any partnership should be good for me as a publisher, good for the partner and — most importantly — good for the reader. Really, the key word here is relevance, and that’s where 99.9% of advertising fails abysmally.
(99.9% is not a scientific figure, but you know what I’m on about.)
The main grey area when a side project becomes profitable is how you share that profit, partly because — in my opinion, at least — the transition from non-profitable side project to relatively successful source of income can be a little blurred. Asking for help for nothing when there’s no money to be had is pretty normal, but sometimes it’s easy to get used to that free help even once you start making money. I believe the best approach is to ask for help with the promise that it will always be rewarded as soon as there’s money available. (Oh, god: this sounds like one of those nightmarish client proposals. It’s not, honest.) If you’re making something cool, people won’t mind helping out while you find your feet.
Events often think that they’re exempt from sharing profit. Perhaps that’s because many event organizers think they’re doing the speakers a favour rather than the other way around (that’s a whole separate article), but it’s shocking to see how many people seem to think they can profit from content-makers — speakers, for example — and yet not pay for that content. It was for this reason that Keir and I paid all of our speakers for our Insites: The Tour side project, which we ran back in July. We probably could’ve got away without paying them, especially as the gig was so informal, but it was the right thing to do.
In conclusion: money as a by-product
Let’s conclude by returning to the slightly problematic nature of money, because it’s the pivot on which your side project’s success can swing, regardless of whether you measure success by monetary gain. I would argue that success has nothing to do with profit — it’s about you being able to spend the time you want on the project. Unfortunately, that is almost always linked to money: money to pay yourself while you work on your dream idea; money to pay for more servers when your web app hits the big time; money to pay for efforts to get the word out there. The key, then, is to judge success on your own terms, and seek to generate as much money as you see fit, whether it’s purely to cover your running costs, or enough to buy a small country. There’s nothing wrong with profit, as long as you’re ethical about it. (Pro tip: if you’ve earned enough to buy a small country, you’ve probably been unethical along the way.)
The point at which individuals and companies fail — in the moral sense, for sure, but often in the competitive sense, too — is when money is the primary motivation. It should never be the primary motivation. If you’re not passionate enough about something to do it as an unprofitable side project, you shouldn’t be doing it all.
Earning money should be a by-product of doing what you love. And who doesn’t want to spend their life doing what they love? |
2011 |
Elliot Jay Stocks |
elliotjaystocks |
2011-12-22T00:00:00+00:00 |
https://24ways.org/2011/from-side-project-to-not-so-side-project/ |
business |