Bedrich Rios

It is Monday again and that means another list of great web design related articles from this past week. Enjoy!

The List

1. Powerful CSS techniques. Smashing magazine has released a list of 50 great CSS techniques ready to be used.
2. Gallery of Date Stamps and Calendars. A look at different treatments when it comes to displaying date.
3. CSS Type Set. I saw this tool on WebAppers and I thought I would share with you. Enter text, view CSS, “Letterpress for the digital age”.
4. Resetting Again. A second pass at the famous reset style sheet by Eric Meyer.
5. Monofactor Released a Set of 25 Vector Icons for Free. Title says it all.

Until Next Monday

Hope this list added some tools to your web design box. Please feel free to leave your own finds in the comments section. Until next Lunes!

Any good web designer should know what he is designing for, so here is a bunch of information that I compiled from the W3schools and Adobe. Hope this helps your decision making for that next project.

Browser Stats

Supported Technologies Stats

Operating System Stats

Display Stats

Remember

Although some browsers, OS, and technologies are much more common than others; the more scenarios you take into account, the more people you will ultimately reach. Just something to keep in mind.

Drupal aficionados rejoice! 6.0 is out. After a year long wait, this great Content Management System has released its latest edition. In case you are new to Drupal here are a few simple steps that will help you with the installation:

1. Download Drupal 6.0.
2. Open your favorite FTP client and move either the entire folder or its content to your web server’s root.
3. Once all the files have been uploaded, go in to the folder called sites and right click on a folder called default. Under properties or get info depending on your FTP client make the folder writable or 777. This will allow the installation to go smoothly. Note: if you moved the whole folder to your server on step 2 and not just its content, you will need to go to drupal-6.0 > sites.
4. Almost there, now create a mysql database and make sure to add a user for the newly created database. Note: most hosting services will allow you to do this through a CPanel like interface which you can access by typing http://yoursitename.com/cpanel.
5. Now you are ready to install Drupal 6.0, simply go to http://yoursitename.com or http://yoursitename.com/drupa-6.0 if you uploaded the entire folder not just its content in step 2. From here on, follow the on screen instructions.

Hope this was helpful but please do not blame me if something breaks or gets lost on your server, I am 99.9% confident that won’t happen though.

If you are a web designer or developer, you test your work several times a day across several platforms. But, not everybody has enough money to buy more than one computer or virtual machines such as Parallels or VMware Fusion for that matter. No need to worry, there is another way.

Free Solution

There has been a new trend in the last couple of years to move most software (web-based applications) to the browser. And what better place for cross browser testing software then the browser itself. Websites such as browsercam allow you to test your design across an array of browsers and operating systems. This, however, comes at price.I’m a broke college student and spending any kind of money makes a very big hole in my pocket. So, I’m always looking for cheaper or, better yet, free alternatives. This is where browsershots.org comes in. Browsershots “is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl” and it works more or less identically to  browsercam.

Pros and Cons

Browsershots is obviously not as mature as browsercam, as far as features and support go. But then again a lot of the features in browsercam are not at all necessary and don’t get me started on the interface. In any case, the biggest draw back to browsershots is the wait (anywhere up to 30 mins.), that is if you are not paying for the service. If you wish to get your screenshots faster you can pay a 10 euros or 15 dollars fee.  Or you can take the time it takes for browsershot to generate your screenshots to grab a cup of coffee.