Icon Library

Hello Dear icon junkies! Iconshock begins the year with the third installment of our programmer’s pack, including “registry”, “php”, “javascript”, “pearl” and “html”. Icons come in ICNS, PNG and ICO format. These are very useful icons with good contrast and distinctive symbols for each function.

Click on image to download icons.

Read more…

Php is a must have tool in every web designer’s arsenal. It’s an open source scripting language that can be embedded directly in the HTML, giving web pages dynamic properties and incredible versatility.

The “Web and Designers” blog has posted an entire 10 lesson mini course on php for very easy to follow and perfect if you are starting in design or are a web enthusiast.

Click on image to access first lesson.

Giving your web designs the ability to preload images is a huge help for the millions of users that don’t have a big fat internet access. Preloading is also very useful for image heavy websites like portfolios. Check out this article made by Jeff Starr for Perishable Press, were he shows us how to do it in three methods using CSS, Javascript and Ajax.

Click on image to access full article.

Every developer has to deal with sketching or charting when designing User Interface flows. It is a vital process in order to pre visualize the efficiency of our application. and this is specially true with Web based apps, were everything can go out of hand so easily. Ryan from 37signals, enlighten us with his particular review of flow design, were he approaches communication between app and user dividing it in units of “what the user sees”, and “what the user does”. Simple and effective approach. Check the article for more info.

Click on image to read full article.

I really think custom scrollbars suck. They are generally as ugly as the bottom of a tractor and make navigation clumsy and tedious.

But it is true that there are certain web pages where default scrollbars break the visual design and you have to figure out a way to bring everything together. Designing scrollbars is a very difficult task, so that’s why I’m posting this interesting tutorial by the guys at Hesido where they show us how to make a scrollbar in XHTML.

Click on image to view full article.

There is a general belief that Pc’s are for programming and Mac’s are for designing. And although the market tendencies aimed at that partial truth ten years ago, the tides are turning pretty fast. In fact, we can say today that developers are turning to Mac’s and designers are turning to Linux. My question here is… who’s turning to windows?

This good article by Mark Nutter shows us five good reasons why developers are leaving their trusty, not so good looking Pc’s for the better accessibility and versatility of the always sexy  MacOsx.

Click on image to download.

This is one of the best articles I’ve linked on the Iconshock Blog so far. William Schleifer talks about the inherent responsibilities programmers have in design and user experience, and talks about the necessity for designers and coders to build a common ground to work with.

Overconfident designers and witty coders don’t have to be separated as if they were from different planets anymore. After all, both go to work with Spiderman t-shirts and speak Klingon.

Click on image to view full article.

No. This is not about my broken heart, and it doesn’t have anything to do with none of those dirty thoughts you readers are generating at this instant. This blog has not become a xxx rated fanzine. (to the despair of many I imagine.) Every word in the title innocently refers to web designing and programming jargon, used in the most unsexy of fashions millions of times a day on the internet. I know all kinds of readers come to this blog, both knowledgeable programmers and internet hobbyists. So I figured out it could be a cool idea to unify the two worlds and give some common ground so all of us can enjoy all articles in the same way. I found this very cool blog post by Cameron Chapman titled “Web Design Industry Jargon: Glossary and Resources” in which he gives us an illustrated glossary of all common used definitions regarding web design, surfing and programming. Go ahead and check it out and stay tuned for today’s free icon set. A revoir!

Click on image to read full article

Opps! sorry for the vulgar title. It’s just that I’ve been thinking lately in all the precious seconds we spend daily ordering, cataloging and proof checking things that in reality….no one cares for. Who cares if your images filenames don’t begin with caps? Who in this world will die with you’re duplicate <div> tag if it doesn’t mean any harm? I mean, when you are a perfectionist, you sometimes confuse being a good professional that stands out from the bunch with a tight ass academic-by the book-technocrat that worries about things that don’t really matter in life. I mean, life is comprised of tons of silly formalisms in every profession, that don’t necessarily translate in productivity, or quality of life for all that matters. I mean, what is the ultimate…last, final and conclusive goal of being productive? Why do we have to make workflows more efficient? Isn’t it so we can accomplish our duties faster in order to have more spare time to enjoy the world outside? Don’t you think in the end that we just spend too much time on unnecessary formalisms that really don’t make our life better? Our friend Jacobe Gube from Six Revisions gives us a pretty good reflection about all these matters on his post “Adopting a “Does It Really Matter?” Philosophy”. His thoughts are oriented to programming, but the core of his thought can be applied to every aspect of life. It’s not an advertisement for mediocrity. It’s just a way to value what’s really important.

Click on image to read full article

To understand the true meaning of the process of debugging in a programmer’s life, you have to close your eyes and imagine the most painful, boring and exhausting thing you have experienced ever. Watching your mother in law snoring? Your first week at the gym? Being caught by a commando of nymph Philippinas? Perhaps getting stuck in an elevator with Adam Sandler?

Kieran Masterton made this good post for the Carsonified blog where he gives us tips to lessen the burden of debugging your php code, and even think it’s almost fun. Well, not quite.

Click on image to debug!