mattdetails.com :: Articles

Another redesign

2008-02-29T19:18:00+00:00

It’s been ~~6 months~~ 7 months since I’ve had a blog on here - and I missed it. So I spent those 6 months working on a new design - this is version 9. The last public release was version 3 - so 6 versions were never released. It’s been an up and down roller coaster of a ride trying to gather enough creative inspiration to do something with this space.

2007 Honda Civic EX

2007-08-21T21:22:00+00:00

Just bought my first new car today. It has a total of 9 miles on it (from the trip home from the dealer). I think I’m still in a bit of shock because this marks a very huge milestone in my life. No one in my family has bought a brand new car right off the lot before, and it stands for a lot of hard work that is paying off. We’ll be taking a trip up north with it this weekend, and I’m beyond words of excitement.

Pictures on my flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nowforevermine/sets/72157601587026982/

Flash & JavaScript Dropdown Menus

2007-07-24T23:48:00+00:00

This is just a quick helper for those having a problem getting your JavaScript drop down menus to appear ABOVE you’re embedded flash.

Changes

2007-07-11T20:06:00+00:00

Change is good. No matter how you look at it, change is good. I’m a little late on writing about the changes I’ve made to this area of the web - most of which is pretty obvious I’m sure. And now that I’ve got some things out of the way, I’ll be focusing on it more.

RapidColor

2007-05-17T23:05:00+00:00

You may have noticed (or you may not) that mattdetails.com keeps rapidly changing colors. It’s an ongoing inspirational search for colors, and I’ve got mattdetails.com setup in the background to accept my inspiration with little maintenance or changes.

Advice: Check the date

2007-05-11T18:05:00+00:00

Make sure to check the date of an article before you spend anytime reading it or actually integrating the code that is inside the article. I love alistapart.com and use it for references quite a bit - but if you ever need a suckerfish drop down I would recommend not going to or following the alistapart.com article on it. You’ll thank me later.

This has been a Public Service Announcement brought to you by you’re friend Matt Johnson.

P.S. I might write an article about how I updated the suckerfish script to work with the old ALA article.

Career, passion, future

2007-05-08T14:05:01+00:00

Many of the people that I meet in real life tend to ask me what I do for a living - you know who I’m talking about too - when you try to explain to them they go “oh”. Thats about the end of that. But depending on who it is, would depend on what I say. For someone who is most likely computer literate - you know the younger crowd - I tell them I’m a designer for the web. “A web designer?” - Well yeah pretty much. But I don’t really get to express how cool this fact really is. I mean, I get to work from home on a computer all day, designing really simple, functional yet creative things, for money. It took me 5 years to get where I am today - a full-time designer on the brink of being a creative director over seeing a couple other designers. I think that is the most exciting idea ever - collaborating together with 2 or 3 designers and developers on a single project - all working to achieve the same goal.

Iconbuffet Contest [FAQ]

2007-04-30T22:04:00+00:00

This is where we’ll keep a list of Frequently Asked Questions relating to the Iconbuffet Contest.

If you have a question, just post in the comments and I’ll be sure to help you out - and thanks for playing along and help building the great iconbuffet community!

Designing Sites in PS CS2 - Part I

2007-04-18T22:04:00+00:00

Creating websites in Photoshop is a daunting and tedious task. There are important steps that you should know and remember in order to ensure for smooth sailing. The tips that I�ll highlight are primarily what I�ve found over the years of using Photoshop to make websites to be the easiest ways to do so.

CSS Naked Day: Recap

2007-04-06T15:04:00+00:00

The reactions to CSS Naked Day seemed to have been a mix set of emotions. But I think I was more surprised than anybody else visiting my site. After a couple of minutes tying up a few loose ends (flickr badge using & symbol, and some other minor things) my markup is surprisingly semantic and valid. I guess I’ve been using the same template for awhile now, adapting from some of the best, and reading a couple of the better books on the subject also helped. It’s reassuring to know that if somebody chooses not to view my site using css - that everything is still pretty accessible and readable, not to mention functional.

At anyrate, expect to see the event reoccur for years to come.