SkyRocket Design Co

SlickMap - CSS Sitemapping Tool

2009-07-09T23:58:00.001+10:00

SlickMap CSS is a simple stylesheet for displaying finished sitemaps directly from HTML unordered list navigation. It’s suitable for most web sites – accommodating up to three levels of page navigation and additional utility links – and can easily be customized to meet your own individual needs, branding, or style preferences.

Happy birthday WWW - 20 years old!

2009-03-15T07:48:00.001+11:00

The modern day internet, better known as the "World Wide Web", has entered into its twenties today. Its inception dates back to 13 March 1989, when a computer scientist, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN Laboratory, presented a paper containing means and methods by which particles physics scientists could easily share and find out essential electronics documents.

Full story here

IE will come with an 'OFF' switch in Windows 7

2009-03-08T22:11:00.000+11:00

MICROSOFT said today that a control panel in its next-generation computer operating system will let users shut off Internet Explorer 8 and other built-in programs. Full story here

IE6 - time to die

2008-11-11T22:14:00.000+11:00

The clamour of noise on the interweb for IE6 to (dis)gracefully hurry off to the retirement home is growing by the week (links below). PC World have even listed it (no. 8 in the hall of shame) among the 25 Worst Tech Products of All-Time.

It's way past time to drop support for Internet Explorer 6. At SkyRocket we grudgingly still test for IE6 but agree with others that our “official” stance is not to support it and we are actively educating our customers to at least upgrade to IE7 or their IE6 users, still stuck in the last millennium, will not be getting the full interaction & feature-set that folks on modern-generation browsers have.

1. Time to drop IE6
2. The Final Word on IE6
3. Twitter Twits about IE6 hatred

Creating animated Gifs in Photoshop CS3

2008-10-24T23:29:00.000+11:00

Now ImageReady has been discontinued in CS3 the ability to make animated GIFs has been built into Photoshop instead. Good tutorial on how to do this here...

Google Insights for Search (beta)

2008-10-21T00:15:00.000+11:00

Been having a play with the new Insights for Search tool from Google (currently still in beta) and find it very interesting and useful - if you're into nerdy style SEO trendspotting ... :/

BG Patterns

2008-10-16T01:14:00.000+11:00

Useful website to create & download tiled patterned backgrounds. Plenty of configuration options and lots of paisley :)

Web Safe Area - resource

2008-09-05T23:38:00.000+10:00

Useful resource detailing available or 'safe' screen real estate on various OS (Win XP/Vista and Mac OSX) and also different standard browser chrome.

Google launches "Chrome" internet browser

2008-09-02T19:34:00.000+10:00

Google is launching an open source web browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser is designed to be lightweight and fast, and to cope with the next generation of web applications that rely on graphics and multimedia.

Called Chrome, it will launch as a beta for Windows machines in 100 countries, with Mac and Linux versions to come.

"We realised... we needed to completely rethink the browser," said Google's Sundar Pichai in a blog post

BBC News story

Phasing out support for IE 6

2008-07-14T23:37:00.001+10:00

"Phasing out support for IE 6 across all 37signals products on August 15, 2008 On August 15th, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should upgrade to a newer browser"
How about this for common sense...

"Why are we making this change? IE 6 is a last-generation browser. This means that IE 6 can't provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can't optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back."

IETester

2008-06-02T06:50:00.000+10:00

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process. Using IETester, it is possible to test web sites under IE6 without the need of a second computer or a virtual machine with an old XP/IE6 installed. Different IE versions can be opened on different tabs in the same window.

This is how you get sIFR to work...

2008-05-01T08:07:00.000+10:00

Great post by David at Design Intellection on how to get sIFR to work...

"The goal of this tutorial is to distill the information at the official site for sIFR into a simple step-by-step process of how to implement sIFR on your site. After following this tutorial you will have a basic understanding of how sIFR works and will be able to expand into more advanced areas."

Create your own pop art poster

2008-04-19T02:17:00.000+10:00

Nice article from freelance artist Rob Cubbon:

Create your own pop art poster

Open Source Text Editors

2008-04-16T01:27:00.000+10:00

Some open source (free!) text editors to download & try...

HTML Kit
Bluefish
Komodo Edit
NVU
SeaMonkey Composer

The Web in Charts

2008-03-25T03:56:00.000+11:00

Interesting post on TechCrunch

"Today more than ever, the Web is a global game. Below are charts from a new State of the Internet report from comScore that paints a picture of global competition on the Web. In 1996, two thirds of all people online (66 percent) lived in the U.S. By last October, that had completely flipped, with 77 percent of the online population living in the rest of the world and only 23 percent in the U.S. The U.S. still has the largest total number of Web surfers (162 million a month), but China is catching up fast (with 96 million)"

IE8 Beta

2008-02-29T06:48:00.003+11:00

Microsoft prepares to release IE8...

IE8 will replace Internet Explorer 7.0, Microsoft's current internet browsing software program. IE7 was introduced in October 2006.

Following some criticism of IE7, version 8 is expected to more fully comply with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. W3C attempts to ensure cross-browser and -platform interoperability. RIval browsers such as Mozilla's Firefox already comply with W3C standards.

Website Law - Privacy Policy

2008-02-05T21:22:00.000+11:00

Good Privacy Policy for UK websites. Free version allowed if you keep their author credit intact otherwise there is a standard licence fee.

"Our privacy policy document is intended for use in England and Wales in relation to websites which collect and process personal information. It may be used to help website owners fulfil their obligations under data protection legislation."

W3C Pushing for Better Web on Mobile Devices

2007-11-19T03:21:00.000+11:00

Increasingly, people are connecting to the Internet through mobile phones, video-game consoles, or televisions. The problem is that a lot of Internet content isn't available for all of these devices, and many websites crash when loaded on a mobile device. Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and father of the Internet, worries that this is effectively cutting some people off from the information that is freely shared on the Internet. Speaking at the Mobile Internet World conference in Boston earlier this week, Berners-Lee said that the W3C is working on defining a set of standards that developers can use to build websites that work with mobile devices, as well as with desktop computers, so that the mobile Web doesn't break apart from the World Wide Web. This week, the W3C also launched a new tool that developers can use to test their websites for compatibility with mobile devices.

Free Document Templates

2007-11-11T21:33:00.000+11:00

Useful post on makeuseof.com...

Once in a while we all need some kind of document, it may be a business plan presentation, rental contract, non-disclosure agreement, or even a name change request form. In most cases, Googling the document may ultimately get you what you need, but it’s both time consuming and frustrating. Here are 3 excellent resources that can provide you with any professional document or form template for free.

1. Docstoc
2. Gazhoo
3. Scribd

Current Web Style

2007-10-29T07:53:00.000+11:00

Interesting article on current style trends in web design land...

"This is where I try to sum up the current state-of-the-art in graphic design for web pages, and identify the distinctive features that make a web page look fresh, appealing and easy to use. I'm glad to say that web design in 2007 is better than ever. And it's not just because there are more web sites out there, so more good stuff to look at. There's still an awful lot of crud too. I just think that more web designers know more about how to design than ever before"

SkyRocket awarded - Most Creative Favicon

2007-10-03T03:43:00.000+10:00

Checking my web stats log and was interested to see that SkyRocket has taken out another interweb gong. This time the good people at Smashing Magazine have voted our Favicon as one of the best they've seen in their article Creative Favicons - When Small is Beautiful. Thanks Smashing people! :)

Web 3.0

2007-09-20T20:59:00.000+10:00

Web 3.0 - a rather acidic & cynical article by Sir Jeffrey Zeldman but anything penned by him is well worth reading.

"Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005..."

Logopond

2007-09-11T23:38:00.000+10:00

Logopond - identity inspiration. Great website + beautiful showcase of logos and branding concepts.

BETSIE Text to Speech Internet Enhancer

2007-09-10T18:21:00.000+10:00

If you've ever used a screen reader, you'll know exactly what I mean when I say that the web isn't always all it's cracked up to be. Some sites work when you have the computer reading out loud exactly what's on the screen, from left to right, and top to bottom, but not all of them. Not even many of them. Most sites come out like gibberish.

Betsie stands for BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer, and is a simple Perl script which is intended to alleviate some of the problems experienced by people using text to speech systems for web browsing.

Betsie has been officially approved by the RNIB, and received the RNIB accessibility award for January 1999.

Tartan - the new black!

2007-07-18T19:29:00.000+10:00

Stop using stripes for your site backgrounds and get into something errrrmm... even trendier. That's right. No self-respecting web designer should be without this site which makes custom-made Tartan backgrounds. Didn't you know that Tartan is the new black?