Eclecti.ca

linkHive For Mar 11th

Sean — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 11th

Ethan Hein | Music Teaching | The pentatonic box – This is a cornerstone of lead guitar playing because it falls easily under the fingers, sounds good in a wide variety of musical settings, and forms a nice memorable pattern on the fretboard. But many guitarists get trapped in the pentatonic box, not wanting to venture outside of it because they're rightly daunted by the baffling variety of scales and fingerings they see in books. Fortunately, by adding a couple of notes to the familiar box, you can increase your scale vocabulary enormously, without driving yourself crazy.
CSS3-Only Tabbed Area | CSS-Tricks – When you think of “tabs”, your mind might go right to JavaScript. Watch for a click on a tab, hide all the panels, show the one corresponding to tab just clicked on. All major JavaScript libraries tackle tabs in some way. But there is a way to accomplish this same idea with “pure CSS”. Just as we did with the CSS Image Switcher, let’s tackle this traditionally JavaScript project with only CSS.
famfamfam.com: Silk Icons – “Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format. Containing a large variety of icons, you're sure to find something that tickles your fancy. And all for a low low price of $0.00. You can't say fairer than that.
Iconza – Free colored icons for your web site and blog – Customizable icons for your web site. Totally free.
About- Simple Desktops – Do you ever feel like the only good desktop wallpapers you can find are the either the basic 15 or 20 Apple provides or solid colors? Do you often find yourself spending time looking for something that isn't a beautiful photograph but also isn't a gradient and drop shadowed mess with a little lens flare and some annoying copyright information in the corner?

Do you want less, but not boring? Then you want Simple Desktops.

Simple Desktops: a collection of bling, drop shadow, and gradient free desktops to help keep you stay focused but also provide just enough eye candy to not be bored. It's here because finding these around the web is just too hard.

Attribution for the creation of these is given to the creator on the site, but it doesn't extend onto your personal desktop. Use of these desktop wallpapers is for personal use only and shouldn't be sold or reposted without the expressed written consent of the desktop wallpaper's creator.

linkHive For Mar 11th

Sean — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 11th

famfamfam.com: Silk Icons – “Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons in strokably-soft PNG format. Containing a large variety of icons, you're sure to find something that tickles your fancy. And all for a low low price of $0.00. You can't say fairer than that.
Iconza – Free colored icons for your web site and blog – Customizable icons for your web site. Totally free.
About- Simple Desktops – Do you ever feel like the only good desktop wallpapers you can find are the either the basic 15 or 20 Apple provides or solid colors? Do you often find yourself spending time looking for something that isn't a beautiful photograph but also isn't a gradient and drop shadowed mess with a little lens flare and some annoying copyright information in the corner?

Do you want less, but not boring? Then you want Simple Desktops.

Simple Desktops: a collection of bling, drop shadow, and gradient free desktops to help keep you stay focused but also provide just enough eye candy to not be bored. It's here because finding these around the web is just too hard.

Attribution for the creation of these is given to the creator on the site, but it doesn't extend onto your personal desktop. Use of these desktop wallpapers is for personal use only and shouldn't be sold or reposted without the expressed written consent of the desktop wallpaper's creator.
21 Resources Especially for Lovers of Minimalism | Vandelay Design Blog – Minimalism a popular style of design because it keeps things simple and user-friendly. In this post we’ll look at more than 20 websites, blogs and books dedicated to minimalism. Not all of them are related to web design – minimalism can also be applied to other aspects of business and life.

linkHive For Mar 9th

Sean — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 9th

GridMove – DonationCoder.com – GridMove is a program that aims at making windows management easier. It helps you with this task by defining a visual grid on your desktop, to which you can easily snap windows. This program comes bundled with some predefined grid templates, that can be easily swaped, but also has ways of creating custom grids or sharing grids made by others.

GridMove makes moving windows, resizing windows, displaying them on cascade or on mosaic, making them on top or anything you can think of as easy as drag and drop.

This tool was made taking in mind those who own big screens and keep organizing their windows. This program is specially useful for anyone that keeps more than 1 window on the screen at one time, because it helps the user to maximize the usable space of the monitor, by resizing the windows in a much easier way than moving and resizing them one by one.

Thanks to its simple interaction methods, GridMove becomes intuitive and fast, helping you to improve your workflow.

linkHive For Mar 8th

Sean — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 8th

Web Browser Grand Prix: The Top Five, Tested And Ranked : Introduction – We decided that somebody needed to look at these browsers. So, we put all five major Web browsers through a gauntlet of benchmarks and time trials. We did this to conclusively answer the question: which is the fastest browser on Earth (at least until one of these companies launches another major update)?

linkHive For Mar 7th

Sean — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 7th

Design View / Andy Rutledge – Design Questions – You may be surprised, but I never ask design-related questions in design project discovery meetings. Some might wonder at this, as it may seem counterintuitive. The reason I don’t ask design questions of the client is the same reason an architect doesn’t ask the client what PSI the building’s load-bearing foundational structures will need to endure.

In either case, such issues are for the design/architect pros, not the client. The result had better serve the client’s needs and it just better damn-well work. That’s what the client and his customers care abou
I wish I would have known: Answers from 11 top freelancers | Guerrilla Freelancing – Today we’ve got an awesome article for any first time freelancers. I’ve rounded up a few of the top freelancers out there and had them answer the question “What do you wish you would have known starting out as a freelancer?”. Needless to say, this article is full of over 2 thousand words of wisdom. I hope you find use for this article and if you know someone who might benefit from it, I’d love if you shared it with your twitter followers and facebook friends. Thank you
The Future of Wireframes – Articles – MIX Online – As we move into the next decade of web design, it's time for us to reevaluate our understanding of wireframes—a tried and tested user experience staple.
Book: Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig – The untold secrets of the elite JavaScript programmers distilled for intermediate JavaScript programmers, bringing them completely up to speed with the challenges of modern JavaScript development. Explores specific techniques, strategies, and solutions to developing robust, cross-browser, JavaScript code.
jQuery: Novice to Ninja by Earle Castledine and Craig Sharkie – jQuery: Novice to Ninja will show you how to unleash the amazing power of jQuery. In this easy-to-follow guide, you’ll master all the major tricks and techniques that jQuery offers—within hours.

jQuery has quickly become the JavaScript library of choice, and it’s easy to see why. This JavaScript framework dramatically improves how you add interactivity and animation to your website.
‘Good’ Beats ‘Innovative’ Nearly Every Time – BusinessWeek – An obsession with innovation leads executives down the wrong path. Just trying to be good would be a smarter focus
Skyrocket Labs | Web site design, development, blogging, social media, XHTML/CSS templates, jQuery, PHP | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada – CSS3 tricks have been pretty popular in the last while on various design blogs and with good reason. Like many of you, I've caught the CSS3 bug and this afternoon I took a stab at this nifty little method of adding hints to your form fields (as well as some fancy style enhancements) using CSS3. The cool part is you don't require Javascript for the form field hints. Here's a demo and run down of the code used.
How To Design a Clean and Professional Resume / CV Website | Voosh Themes – Earlier in the week I released a new HTML template called Jamba which is a single page resume and CV template. In this post I’d like to show you how I designed the template in Photoshop (check out the Jamba features page and the live demo).
Design View / Andy Rutledge – Design Questions – You may be surprised, but I never ask design-related questions in design project discovery meetings. Some might wonder at this, as it may seem counterintuitive. The reason I don’t ask design questions of the client is the same reason an architect doesn’t ask the client what PSI the building’s load-bearing foundational structures will need to endure.

In either case, such issues are for the design/architect pros, not the client. The result had better serve the client’s needs and it just better damn-well work. That’s what the client and his customers care abou
I wish I would have known: Answers from 11 top freelancers | Guerrilla Freelancing – Today we’ve got an awesome article for any first time freelancers. I’ve rounded up a few of the top freelancers out there and had them answer the question “What do you wish you would have known starting out as a freelancer?”. Needless to say, this article is full of over 2 thousand words of wisdom. I hope you find use for this article and if you know someone who might benefit from it, I’d love if you shared it with your twitter followers and facebook friends. Thank you
The Future of Wireframes – Articles – MIX Online – As we move into the next decade of web design, it's time for us to reevaluate our understanding of wireframes—a tried and tested user experience staple.
Book: Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig – The untold secrets of the elite JavaScript programmers distilled for intermediate JavaScript programmers, bringing them completely up to speed with the challenges of modern JavaScript development. Explores specific techniques, strategies, and solutions to developing robust, cross-browser, JavaScript code.
jQuery: Novice to Ninja by Earle Castledine and Craig Sharkie – jQuery: Novice to Ninja will show you how to unleash the amazing power of jQuery. In this easy-to-follow guide, you’ll master all the major tricks and techniques that jQuery offers—within hours.

jQuery has quickly become the JavaScript library of choice, and it’s easy to see why. This JavaScript framework dramatically improves how you add interactivity and animation to your website.
‘Good’ Beats ‘Innovative’ Nearly Every Time – BusinessWeek – An obsession with innovation leads executives down the wrong path. Just trying to be good would be a smarter focus
Skyrocket Labs | Web site design, development, blogging, social media, XHTML/CSS templates, jQuery, PHP | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada – CSS3 tricks have been pretty popular in the last while on various design blogs and with good reason. Like many of you, I've caught the CSS3 bug and this afternoon I took a stab at this nifty little method of adding hints to your form fields (as well as some fancy style enhancements) using CSS3. The cool part is you don't require Javascript for the form field hints. Here's a demo and run down of the code used.
How To Design a Clean and Professional Resume / CV Website | Voosh Themes – Earlier in the week I released a new HTML template called Jamba which is a single page resume and CV template. In this post I’d like to show you how I designed the template in Photoshop (check out the Jamba features page and the live demo).
Pure CSS speech bubbles – Nicolas Gallagher – The demo page for Progressive enhancement: pure CSS speech bubbles.

For a detailed explanation view the CSS file. It is heavily commented.

All examples use simple, semantic HTML. No empty elements, no unnecessary extra elements, no JavaScript, no images (apart from that Twitter logo). Have a look at the source code.

linkHive For Mar 5th

Sean — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 5th

cforms II » delicious:days – cforms is a powerful and feature rich form plugin for Wordpress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.
10 Free Beautiful Calligraphic Fonts – Noupe – The word “calligraphy” is derived from two Greek words, denoting “beautiful writing”. Calligraphy or the art of writing has thousands of years in its history and development, and indeed calligraphy fonts, which we often use these days on our PCs to create a postcard or a wedding invitation card, are absolutely about aesthetics, refinement, creativity, and pure beauty.
10 Free Beautiful Calligraphic Fonts – Noupe – The word “calligraphy” is derived from two Greek words, denoting “beautiful writing”. Calligraphy or the art of writing has thousands of years in its history and development, and indeed calligraphy fonts, which we often use these days on our PCs to create a postcard or a wedding invitation card, are absolutely about aesthetics, refinement, creativity, and pure beauty.
10 Free Beautiful Calligraphic Fonts – Noupe – StumbleUpon – The word “calligraphy” is derived from two Greek words, denoting “beautiful writing”. Calligraphy or the art of writing has thousands of years in its history and development, and indeed calligraphy fonts, which we often use these days on our PCs to create a postcard or a wedding invitation card, are absolutely about aesthetics, refinement, creativity, and pure beauty.

Bookmarks for Mar 2nd through Mar 3rd

Sean — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

These are my links for Mar 2nd through Mar 3rd:

72 Questions to Ask New Web Design Clients with PDF Chart | BonFX – Logo Designer & Freelance Graphic Designer – How many times have you hung up the phone after a chat with a new prospective client and then immediately slapped your forehead and said “I can’t believe I forgot to ask ______!”. Yes, fill in the blank. You have done this, right? If not, you will shortly. Well, I jotted down my own personal list of forgetful-questions, and did a quick survey of the top 20 results for “questions to ask new web clients” and related searches. Aside from semantic fluctuations, there was zero overlap: we all ask the same stuff. So I present below the best 72 questions to ask prospective web design clients, along with a PDF chart
Convert PSD to Wordpress with Divine. Convert Photoshop to Wordpress theme – Your design looks as you created it, not as browsers want it

Forget about relying on HTML coders to get your designs live
Ajax Availability Calendar – an Availability Calendar to show your day-to-day availability – The Ajax Availability Calendar is a php script designed to show availability of whatever you might need it for (eg. holiday cottage, hotel rooms etc.).
Free to use on your website or application and is currently being used (v.2) by hundreds, if not thousands, of websites around the world.

linkHive For Mar 1st

Sean — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveMar 1st

140 Characters » How Twitter Was Born – Twitter was born about four years ago, when @Jack, @Biz, @Noah, @Crystal, @Jeremy, @Adam, @TonyStubblebine, @Ev, me (@Dom), @Rabble, @RayReadyRay, @Florian, @TimRoberts, and @Blaine worked at a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc. in South Park, San Francisco. The company had just contributed a major chunk of code to Rails 1.0 and had just shipped Odeo Studio, but we were facing tremendous competition from Apple and other heavyweights. Our board was not feeling optimistic, and we were forced to reinvent ourselves.

linkHive For Feb 25th

Sean — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveFeb 25th

WordPress Site Maintenance « WordPress Codex – To keep WordPress working like a the finely honed machine that it is, there is some site maintenance we recommend you do frequently. Consider it the lube job you need once every 1000 miles.
Begin by creating a calendar of WordPress Maintenance procedures to remind yourself to get a lube job on your WordPress site on a regular basis.

In the Codex article on WordPress Housekeeping, tips and resources are given to clean house in WordPress. These include cleaning out old plugins, cleaning template files and the theme's style sheet, upgrading WordPress, and other helpful tips for cleaning up and optimizing your WordPress Site.

To ensure you keep your WordPress site up-to-date and working in prime condition, consider adding these Housekeeping steps to your calendar, typically every three to six months.
AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services — AIGA | the professional association for design – This agreement allows you to create customized terms and conditions for different types of design engagements. Updated in May 2007, it is now modular to meet the needs of a growing design community involved in various disciplines.
It does not take a one-size-fits-all approach, and it is not an extensive pre-printed document where you simply fill in the blanks. Instead, this agreement acknowledges that most design firms develop their own custom proposal document for each project and are looking for an appropriate set of terms and conditions to attach to it. When put together and signed, the custom proposal document and its attached terms and conditions comprise the binding agreement with the client. With this in mind, the new focus of the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement is on those terms and conditions.
Sample Web Design Contract, Budget, Timeline & Proposal – Nerdburn – Web application & graphic user interface design blog by Shawn Adrian – In my previous article I offered my thoughts on how to make it as a freelance web designer. One of the things I mentioned was the need for a solid contract and proposal so here I offer my contract and proposal templates, free for your use.
Freelance Contracts: Do’s And Don’ts – Smashing Magazine – In this post, we’ll help you identify the information that should be included in your contract and make sure you have a concrete agreement that leaves little chance of things getting out of hand… as can sometimes happen to those of us in the freelancing crowd.
WordPress Site Maintenance « WordPress Codex – To keep WordPress working like a the finely honed machine that it is, there is some site maintenance we recommend you do frequently. Consider it the lube job you need once every 1000 miles.
Begin by creating a calendar of WordPress Maintenance procedures to remind yourself to get a lube job on your WordPress site on a regular basis.

In the Codex article on WordPress Housekeeping, tips and resources are given to clean house in WordPress. These include cleaning out old plugins, cleaning template files and the theme's style sheet, upgrading WordPress, and other helpful tips for cleaning up and optimizing your WordPress Site.

To ensure you keep your WordPress site up-to-date and working in prime condition, consider adding these Housekeeping steps to your calendar, typically every three to six months.
AIGA Standard Form of Agreement for Design Services — AIGA | the professional association for design – This agreement allows you to create customized terms and conditions for different types of design engagements. Updated in May 2007, it is now modular to meet the needs of a growing design community involved in various disciplines.
It does not take a one-size-fits-all approach, and it is not an extensive pre-printed document where you simply fill in the blanks. Instead, this agreement acknowledges that most design firms develop their own custom proposal document for each project and are looking for an appropriate set of terms and conditions to attach to it. When put together and signed, the custom proposal document and its attached terms and conditions comprise the binding agreement with the client. With this in mind, the new focus of the AIGA Standard Form of Agreement is on those terms and conditions.
Sample Web Design Contract, Budget, Timeline & Proposal – Nerdburn – Web application & graphic user interface design blog by Shawn Adrian – In my previous article I offered my thoughts on how to make it as a freelance web designer. One of the things I mentioned was the need for a solid contract and proposal so here I offer my contract and proposal templates, free for your use.
Freelance Contracts: Do’s And Don’ts – Smashing Magazine – In this post, we’ll help you identify the information that should be included in your contract and make sure you have a concrete agreement that leaves little chance of things getting out of hand… as can sometimes happen to those of us in the freelancing crowd.
24 ways: Contract Killer – If you are writing a contract between you and your customers it doesn’t have to conform to the seemingly standard format of jargon and complicated legalese. You can be creative. A killer contract will clarify what is expected of both sides and it can also help you to communicate your approach to doing business. It will back-up your brand values and help you to build a great relationship between you and your customers. In other words, a creative contract can be a killer contract.
Jon Combe | Code | HTML clocks using JavaScript and CSS rotation – The two clocks below are pure HTML. There are no Adobe Flash files or my beloved
Jon Combe | Code | HTML clocks using JavaScript and CSS rotation – The two clocks below are pure HTML. There are no Adobe Flash files or my beloved
Home :: IPInfoDB – Are you looking for the geographical location of an IP address? You are at the right place.
We offer a wide range of free services based on our IP address geolocation database :

* Web based IP geolocation lookup
* IP geolocation API (XML, JSON and CSV format)
* API that generate IP CIDR by country for iptables or htaccess blocklist
* E-commerce fraud detection API
* Free version of our SQL database updated monthly!

linkHive For Feb 24th

Sean — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Here are the newest links to join the linkHiveFeb 24th

WordPress › Atahualpa « Free WordPress Themes – Build your own unique, professional and browser-safe WordPress Theme: 1-5 columns, fluid or fixed width, rotating header images and 2 dozen option pages. Support and tutorials at our forum.
WordPress › Atahualpa « Free WordPress Themes – Build your own unique, professional and browser-safe WordPress Theme: 1-5 columns, fluid or fixed width, rotating header images and 2 dozen option pages. Support and tutorials at our forum.
WordPress › Constructor « Free WordPress Themes – Wordpress Constructor Theme, it's many-in-one theme (six layouts, configured colors, fonts and slideshow, widget ready). Build your own theme on settings page. For Wordpress version 2.7+ (include 2.9)
The importance of controling feedback and critique » – Web Design Marketing Podcast & Blog – Any designer who has produced work for anyone other than themselves knows how tricky the design feedback process can be. As designers we have very specific reasons for designing a site the way we do. We have expertise in rhythm, proportion, sizing, whitespace, grids and other graphic design concepts. Many times hours are spent trying different combinations, layout positions, usage of colors, etc… by the end of the work we know what didn’t work and what did.