Link: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/get-ready-for-html-5/

I do love the website A list Apart. One of the many reasons why is because they keep me up on the latest web design geek news, even if I'm not intimately engaged with other in-the-know creatives on a daily basis.

So I was extremely happy to see that ALA contributers J. David Eisenberg and Lachlan Hunt did some awesome in-depth articles on the upcoming HTML 5 specification, which I am of course very excited about. But like I feared, IE is lagging behind in it's support of some key features like the new CANVAS element. Disappointing, but not too surprising.

In any event, it's time for me to start playing around with the spec so that I'll be ready to use it immediately for new customer content!

Click on the image for a full-res version

I've been struggling a lot with my redesign of the ajtone.com website redesign. Initially, I was thinking of a very minimalistic website that would sink into the white background of the browser, using a very conventional page structure. The more I worked on this the more I realized just how disgusted I was with the thing as it just seemed to be a shoddy and bland version of too many other sites on the web.

But the other day while driving with Cate I had an idea flash into my head for something a little more unique, and so luckily I had a pen and an old envelope handy with which to secure my vision onto paper. (lest it be forgotten!) Today, finally, I had a chance to complete the above Photoshop mockup of my idea and Amanda at AJTone has seen it and is very enthusiastic about my 'version 2' interpretation of the site.

Although this new design would be an ideal candidate to take advantage of Flash, I am going to code it up as straight XHTML/CSS to save time and achieve the required animation affects with the use of some neat Javascript code I've been eyeballing like JonDesign's SmoothGallery. The flourishes are basically placeholders, as these came from tutorials I had on hand to quickly knock out the mockup. So while those will change, the general look will be quite the same.

What do you think?

Link: http://www.ajtone.com

Here is a mockup for my latest project, a complete redesign of AJTone.com:

To view at full size, click here.

Photography by Mandi Jane, new logo, layout, etc. by me.

Comments?

Link: http://csshowto.com/layout/psd-to-csshtml-in-easy-steps-part-1/

If you're a website front-end designer who is unfortunate enough to depend on others for the actual coding piece of the site development puzzle, then this tutorial is for you!

The folks at CSS How To.com have a massively-extensive 4 part series dedicated to the task that will help get your skills up to par.

Check it out by clicking on the link above!

Link: http://www.helpthehoneybees.com/

A friend sent me the link to this Flash site today, and I was really impressed with the complexity and simplicity of the site Häagen-Dazs® put together for their save the honey bees initiative.

The colors are soft and natural, very balanced and in tune with the subject matter. And while it has a good degree of interactivity, it doesn't overdo it on the visuals at all.

Check this great site out when you get a chance!

I'm a gigantic tutorial whore when it comes to any of the Adobe apps... It can be the simplest thing, or the most complex task, but I love reading them and trying out new techniques all the same.

I can across this excellent tutorial today that discusses how to create the glossy navigation look for your site in photoshop.

Its short and sweet, and if you've never used these techniques before, quite cool...

I'm going to try and register for at least one day of this conference, which should be well worth the money spent to register for it.

If you're a web designer and live in (or can make it to) Orlando between October 13th and 16th, you should check it out if you can.

View the schedule of events here.

One of my favorites, the Flash Blog, posted a link a few days ago to this great tutorial on creating a very simple Actionscript 3 based Flash preloader that I think you'll find useful.

The tutorial is clear and concise, and as an added bonus its a video...

Check it out!