flow14 » tips

Learning to Love Leopard’s Spaces

Kyle — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 17:14:13 +0000

So you’ve upgraded to Leopard and you’ve heard Spaces is soooo handy—it’s guaranteed to change the way you use your Mac! You check it out, but you don’t believe the hype. Until recently, that was me. As a web designer, I spend a lot of time with my browser (obviously); using one browser in multiple spaces — one space to scan feeds in Google Reader, another to check e-mail in Gmail and another to develop websites — doesn’t work. Until now.

Be like water.

Fluid came along and suddenly you can make any web app or web page a stand-alone desktop application. It’s also known as a site-specific browser (or SSB for you nerdy types).

What can Fluid do for you?

How does it work, you ask? Using the example above, maybe you want to follow Google Reader (i.e. play) in one space and develop websites (i.e., work) in another. If you’re using a single browser for both tasks, you’re seemingly SOL. Sure, you can open two windows and place each one in it’s own space. But when you quit the browser (or it crashes), all your careful window-shifting gets the shaft. With Fluid, you simply make Google Reader (or Gmail, Facebook, or any other online app) a standalone app and launch it in its own space (making the most of application assignments, natch).

7 steps to subtle suede

Kyle — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:40:41 +0000

There’s a new soon-to-be-overused web design technique making its way across the internets. I don’t know if it has a name yet, so I’ll dub it… subtle suede. (Sandpaper would have worked too, but it doesn’t sound as sexy.) I first used it on a work project, then this blog, but I think the technique received its widest acclaim thanks to Blue Flavor’s tasty Leaflets site.

It super easy to create… all you need is Photoshop and a few minutes to kill. Here’s the how-to:

1. Create your canvas. This texture repeats fairly seamlessly, so size doesn’t matter. I’ve selected 100×100 to make things easy to see here.

2. Fill your background layer with your favorite color.

3. Add a new layer and fill that with any ol’ color.

4. With your new layer highlighted, make some noise. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise…

5. Leave Monochromatic checked, then tweak the Amount and Distribution values to your liking. My favorite values are picture here.

6. Time to make it subtle… set your blend mode to Soft Light and crank the opacity way down. I usually set mine to 8% — anything over 15% and the subtlety is lost.

7. Done. If you’re using this for a background, add it to your stylesheet and repeat appropriately. See the finished result here and here.

Wordpress + YouTube

Kyle — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 04:36:05 +0000

Much to my consternation, WordPress and YouTube do not play nice togther. A quick Blingo search reveals this is a common frustration.

There are several plugins available which presumably solve this issue, but I’ve had a lot of coffee tonight and I’m can’t sit still long enough to install a plugin. So with a with a few tips from the WP community and a little trial-and-error, I think I’ve figured out a no-plugin solution.

First and foremost, shut down the visual rich editor. If you are the sole author and admin, go to Users > and uncheck “Use the visual rich editor when writing”. If you have additional users, you will need to uncheck the same checkbox under Options > Writing. “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically” should also be unchecked.

Finally, there should be no line breaks in the YouTube URL, something WordPress has a tendency to add automagically.

That’s the trick. If you’re a fellow ‘Presser, give it a shot and let me know if it works for you.

PS: If you’re a star on You Tube, tell it to the world with our exclusive “As Seen On You Tube” t-shirts.