The Markos Giannopoulos Blog

Free eBook for web designers

Markos Giannopoulos — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:04:40 +0000

// Smashing Magazine is promoting it’s Smashing Library service and they are offering a free eBook with a collection of some of their best articles. Contents include:
- Designing For The Reading Experience
- Logical Breakpoints For Your Responsive Design
- Sketching A New Mobile Web
- Towards A Retina Web
- Avoiding The Pitfalls Of Free
- Why User Experience Cannot Be Designed
- Building Something That Your Users Will Actually Want To Buy
- “But The Client Wants IE 6 Support!”
- Passive Income Strategies For Web Designers
- Mastering Photoshop: Unknown Tricks and Time-Savers
- The Art Of Film Title Design Throughout Cinema History
- Teach Them How To Hit The Ground Running And Faceplant At The Same Time?

Follow the link to download it (you also get signed up to the their newsletter – you can opt-out later of course).

OMG, it’s full of cubes!

Markos Giannopoulos — Mon, 06 May 2013 06:45:43 +0000

// More three.js awesomeness: here’s how to stretch test your graphics card: a three.js, WebGL demo by Ben Adams featuring up to 600.000 rotating cubes! How many frames per second do you get? (Firefox/Chrome only)

See it in full screen

No, this isn’t Flash either

Markos Giannopoulos — Sun, 05 May 2013 21:45:48 +0000

// Scary (in terms of the data) / awesome (in terms of the development part behind it) example of three.js, a javascript library for creating 3D scenes.

See it live here

Fillerati: Jules Verne and more instead of lorem ipsum

Markos Giannopoulos — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:45:48 +0000

// If you’re tired of using a lorem ipsum text every time you want to fill up dummy text, here is a simple solution. Fillerati by Michael McMillan offers you:
- choice of 6 classic authors like Verne and Wells
- choice between plain text, list, title and paragraph html
- choice on the amount of words, paragraphs or items

Check out Fillerati.

h/t to Giorgos Grispos for the link.

Jazz up your web page with Spritely

Markos Giannopoulos — Wed, 01 May 2013 23:34:34 +0000

// Apparently, programming, like life, is sometimes going in circles. Almost 30 years ago I was doing my first steps in programming, coding sprites on my MSX2 in some lame attempts at game development :) Today, I’m revisiting the technique for a whole different purpose. Below you can see an elegant approach to a hover animation from the home page of Rafael Gonzalves. Rafael is using jQuery and Spritely, a plugin that eases the development of animations to create a 3D effect.

In effect, the concept is simple: you have an image file with all the requires frames for the animation, and Spritely handles the transition of a div’s background between them. You can play with it and see the source code above. If you have any other examples of such animations, add them in the comments!

This is not how HTML/CSS should be used! Part II

Markos Giannopoulos — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:37:09 +0000

// Is this getting silly? I’d say probably not, we need to push the boundaries of tech, even if it means we end up in hyperspace :) Following “Tunnel Vision 3D” by Peter Westendorp, here is another example of HTML/CSS mastery by Noah Blon.

Check out this Pen!

Enjoy this in full screen! http://cdpn.io/GKflw

“Cute device”

Markos Giannopoulos — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:17:21 +0000

// Legendary science fiction writer Bruce Sterling tried on #googleglass on a Robert Scoble presentation at the NEXT Berlin conference. His response: “Cute device” and “There’s a very 1980′s feeling about it” :)

See the video http://bit.ly/186Tqcg at 8:58′, overall an interesting discussion with the audience on the ramifications on every day life, privacy and the ways we interact with each other.

Logstalgia: Visualising Apache logs

Markos Giannopoulos — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 17:23:43 +0000

// Argh! The moment of anger when you find a cool weekend project but realize you don’t really have a free weekend sometime soon :)

Logstalgia is a website traffic visualization that replays or streams web-server access logs as a pong-like battle between the web server and an never ending torrent of requests. Requests appear as colored balls (the same color as the host) which travel across the screen to arrive at the requested location. Successful requests are hit by the paddle while unsuccessful ones (eg 404 – File Not Found) are missed and pass through.

If you do have a free weekend and some Apache logs, get the source code here: logstalgia – website access log visualization

Blog Redesign, Part II

Markos Giannopoulos — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:12:43 +0000

// I’ve been refining the redesign of this blog (see previous post about it for a screenshot of how it looked in the past) and here is the summary of recent changes:

All pages: Full page width!

Home page:
- More space between boxes
- Very very white background on boxes instead of gray
- Only bottom border on boxes
- Removal of categories and comments counters in boxes
- 30 posts instead of 20
- Removal of recent posts, recents comments and tag cloud

Posts pages:
- Removal of sidebar
- Placement of comments on the right side
- G+ Comments in testing mode! :)

Typography:
- Removal of uppercase titles
- Body changed to Play from Roboto

Your feedback will be highly appreciated! :)

Social media cross-posting with Friends+me

Markos Giannopoulos — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:07:41 +0000

// I’ve recently posted about Fotostat (http://bit.ly/g-fotostat ) , a new service for cross-posting within several social networks, with focus on images. I have been using it with great success for a site I manage. But if your main network is Google+, you are out of luck, because Google has only given write access through the G+ API to selected third-party services like Hootsuite.

An alternative service is Friends+me , currently in beta. The concept is that your source is Google+ and you can cross-post anything you publish on G+ to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Both personal profiles and pages are supported, you automate at the same time your G+ profile as well as any page you administer.

The good thing is that it comes with quite a few settings for customising when and what’s posted. You can set manually to which networks a post will be copied using hashtags or have some networks as defaults. You also have choices on how the post will be made and how it will or not link back to the original post. Finally, links posted through Friends+me on Twitter have support for Twitter Cards, so followers can have a preview of the linked post/URL.

The devil is in the details though. What really won me over to use Friends+me instead of Hootsuite for a site I manage was that links to pages on the website are actually posted as link-type posts on Facebook. Meanwhile, Hootsuite’s automated posting to Facebook creates status-type posts which are less click-friendly.

+Friends+Me is now in beta and free. Some (really cheap) plans will be available in the next months (they are announced on the website but you can’t purchase them yet – an interesting approach). Check it out! http://bit.ly/friendsme