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More Free Wordpress Themes!

ReTodd — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:56:12 +0000

Yes! It is that time for some additional Free Wordpress Theme Love! I have created some more looks for all Lunartics out there.

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Free WordPress Themes

Amy — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:06:05 +0000

By Amy Armitage

Our awesome designer Todd Austin has created some additional free WordPress themes because at Lunarpages web hosting we LOVE LOVE LOVE WordPress!

If you have any requests or suggestions for new themes, please post your comments :)

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Get Pownce’d

ReTodd — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 17:20:05 +0000

Author: Todd Austin
originally posted on designreverb.com

I have a few Pownce invites to give away. If you want one let me know in the comments. Are you on Pownce already? If so what do you like/dislike about it?

I thought Pownce would take the place of Twitter. I use Twitter for those quick status updates. Sometimes I just want to post a quick blurb on whats going on, and Pownce just doesn’t seem the place. I’ll use Pownce for anything that requires a bit more thought or if I’m looking for conversation and replies. I have both Pownce and Twitter updates on my new blog now. :)

What is it?
Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.

Here’s a screen of the desktop client. I think its pretty slick, especially since you can do everything from here that you can on the site. The main bonus I see for Pownce is that you can send files.

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Get Patriotic – Free flag header

ReTodd — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 22:12:10 +0000

I’ve had some great feedback on the flag header on DesignReverb. So I have decided to release it to you, the public, for your consumption.

For Kubrick fans:

Enjoy!

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Web Design Survey 2007

ReTodd — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:12:57 +0000

Author: Todd Austin

A List Apart is asking all web professionals to take part in their first annual survey about what it is you do, how you got here, and where you see yourself going.

Designers, developers, project managers. Writers and editors. Information architects and usability specialists. People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles, our skills, our educational backgrounds? Where and with whom do we work? What do we earn? What do we value?

It’s time we learned the answers to these and other questions about web design. And nobody is better qualified than the readers of A List Apart to provide the answers. Participate in our first annual survey to increase knowledge of web design and boost respect for the profession. Selected participants, chosen by random drawing, will win one free ticket to An Event Apart event held in the continental U.S.; an Apple 30GB video iPod, an Event Apart jump drive, or a funky A List Apart T-shirt.1

Depending on how you answer it, the survey has up to 37 questions, nearly all of them multiple choice. A fluent English speaker should be able to complete the survey in ten minutes or less. Hosted by An Event Apart, the survey will remain open until 22 May, 2007. After we close it, we’ll slice and dice the data and present our findings here.

Take the survey. The survey will take less than 10 minutes of your time. The results will be shown sometime after the closing date of May 22. It will be interesting to see the results.

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Google Themes

ReTodd — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 22:18:53 +0000

Author: Todd Austin

If you’re like my wife, you’re not so into the plain vanilla look of your personalized Google homepage. Well fret no more, Google just released some spiffy little “themes” to beautify your Google.

You get six themes to choose from beside the original plain.

You can also enter your locale and the image will change depending on the time of day and weather.
This seems like a big departure from Google’s “Keep It Simple” mantra. As with everything, some will like it and some won’t. What do you think?

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Kuler Colors – Adobe gets its scheme on

ReTodd — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 02:12:55 +0000

Author: Todd Austin

What is Kuler? Will it keep my beer cold? No, it won’t.

Kuler is Adobe Labs’ latest web application geared toward the design crowd. It is a online color scheme creator, for lack of a better term.

Here’s the main page of the application:

With kuler, you can creat your own scheme, search other users schemes, and share your schemes online. You can even download them as Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) files, but those are only usable if you have Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 programs. If you don’t, you can always use the screen color picker in your copy of Color Schemer Studio, or of course you could use the Colorzilla add on in Firefox.

Reminds me a lot of the ColorSchemer.com scheme gallery. Except here you can actually create the color scheme online. Then share it with the world, so that other users may download your creation.

Download others themes, or create your own to let others use. You do have to have an Adobe ID to create or download, but sign up is easy and painless.

The Adobe Labs page says Kuler is being released as a technology preview, free of charge. Now whether that means it will someday be charging for it, I do not know. So for now, check it out for free, download some of the great color schemes available online, and give a try at creating your own.

I personally have been using Color Schemer Studio(shown below) for years, mainly for color picking and some themes, but this may be a great online alternative.

Check out Kuler, or Color Schemer Studio. They are both great applications.

EDIT: Just got this link from Lunarforums:

http://www.colourlovers.com/ – looks like a good resource also!

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RocketDock Rocks!

ReTodd — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 22:17:16 +0000

Author: Todd Austin

I am always looking for cool little apps, especially ones that mimic Mac OS X apps. I love my Mac, but I tend to do most of my design and development work on my PC. Yeah, I know, I know. I should be using my Mac for design. That’s a whole other saga.

Normal:

Hover:

I reported a while ago on my own blog about Y’z Dock, an OS X style application dock, unfortunately they were told to stop by Steve Jobs’ team of lawyers. Well we shall see how Punk Software, the makers of RocketDock, fare. They have come up with a similar type of application as Y’z Dock, but in my opinion have done a better job executing it.

I recently installed this little app, and like the ease of use in adding additional icons. They also have a usable screen to adjust specific icon settings.

You can even have it hold minimized windows like the OS X version:

Definitely check this out if you are a PC user looking for some Mac style.

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Free WordPress Theme!

ReTodd — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:24:56 +0000

Author: Todd Austin:

Yeah, I said it…Free! We here at the Lunartics blog love the WordPress. It makes collaborating oh so much easier.

We also know that many of you also use it for your site, whether it be as a blog or CMS. So, with that in mind we release the “Green” theme for WordPress. A free theme for you to use any way you like.

View the “Green” theme.

Tell us what you’d like to see and we can create more free WordPress themes!

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New Lunarpages Site Design Live!

Amy — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:47:12 +0000

Author: Amy Armitage

It’s so late.. But I couldn’t sleep before letting you all know our new site design by Mister Todd Austin is up!

Thanks to all the wonderful LP staff who sat with us til Midnight making sure this all went smoothly, and of course to Todd (BIG HUGS).

Next week we will spiffify it up and add all the staff photos and the rest of our customer testimonials & pics.

Meanwhile, can you all please buy hosting accounts? I kinda bet my entire year’s salary that the new site would be well received (fast loading, friendlier and higher converting). Think about it.. does your grandmother really need another fruit basket? Isn’t it time she got with the groove and learned PHP? Do your children really want a Wii? Maybe it’s better they start a blog and communicate with all those real and genuine teenagers in cyberland?

Heh..

G’nite ;)

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Look ma…..no frames!

Amy — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 20:55:21 +0000

Author: Todd Austin

I whipped this up in response to a post on a clients forum. They wanted to know how to get a frames page look without using frames. I suggested a css solution. See page here.

**This may be old to some readers, and I realize that. But some newbies may find it useful**

The html is just three divs: header, content and footer. Here’s a quick look at the css for the header and footer:

#header {
background-color:#000000;
color:#ffffff;
top:0;
position:fixed;
height:80px;
width:100%;
}

#footer {
background-color:#000000;
color:#ffffff;
bottom: 0;
position: fixed;
height:80px;
width:100%;
overflow: hidden;
z-index: 100;
}

We use position:fixed so that both the footer and header remain in place as the page is scrolled and to keep the position relative to the browser window no matter what positioning the parent element has. Using the offset properties top and bottom, we tell the browser specifically where to position these elements. Using top and bottom on the #content element, we imply a height for the element.

#content {
padding:0;
margin: 0;
top:80px;
bottom:80px;
position:fixed;
width:100%;
overflow:auto;
}

Then if you like, you could use a server side include (SSI) for the content, as I have done here: http://designreverb.com/test_noFrames.php Here I have the same header, content and footer divs. The content is being called from another page: some_content.shtml. (The page could just have easily been .htm, .php, .html …etc. )

content

This works great, but you’re ‘test_noFrames’ page will have to be a .php file (test_noFrames.php instead of test_noFrames.htm) like this: http://designreverb.com/test_noFrames.php and http://designreverb.com/some_content.shtml (these url’s are live so check them out)

NOTE: This has only been tested in IE7 and Firefox 2.0.

Questions? Comments? Lemme know.

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A List Apart’s Guide for those new to the web profession

Amy — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 20:59:50 +0000

Author: Todd Austin

The ALA Primer: A Guide for New Readers great compilation of artilces for those with some familiarity with html, css and other basic web concepts.

If you’re going to build a house—or a website—you need the right tools. A List Apart offers hundreds of articles on design, markup, style, accessibility, usability, and more. We’ve selected a few that you might want to start with. (Think of this guide as one of those reassuring brochures from Lowe’s or Home Depot, but about websites instead of ceramic tile.)

ALA’s article runs the gambit from design theory and layout to web standards and server-side code. So give it a browse, you may learn something you didn’t already know.