Radiant Core: rom tag

BrowserSim Updated!

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT

I first posted BrowserSim to the Radiant Core blog nine months ago. After 110 downloads and reports of the PSD being used by a range of interesting firms I decided to spend the time updating and improving it. I'm proud to announce that BrowserSim is now 1.0!

Following months of eager use in our office, version 1.0 has been updated to a PSD/ATN pairing, reducing the set-up to three steps (and less than 500KB zipped):

Substitute your window title and URL in the appropriate text layers
Run the action for either IE 7 or Firefox 2
Get designing!

Download it now!

ROM Photo Diary

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 24:02:00 GMT

If you live in the city of Toronto and haven't noticed the ROM's renaissance, you must be one of those rare Torontonians who doesn't live in a brand new condo and somehow manages to habitate under a rock. Now that the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal has been unveiled in all of its angular glory, the ROM is slowly revealing its other treats, including the completely delicious C5 Restaurant. As exciting as this all is - and as refreshing as it is to watch our city undergo an architectural transformation as our first Gehry and multiple Alsops and Libeskinds pop up around town - one might be tempted to question the relevance of all this construction news to your favourite web shop's blog. Well, question no more! A press release came in over the wire yesterday, trumpeting the launch of the ROM Photo Diary site, a.k.a."Canada’s first museum photo blog". The new building is beautiful to behold (I think so - though others may disagree :), and the site does a great job of profiling it from the inside out. May you find the concept as inspiring as the photos!

The kind of thinking which leads to the creation of photoblogs may not seem all that innovative to our readers who regularly dabble in the Web 2.0 Black Arts and belong to the AJAX Guild, but the concept of blogs is still foreign for a lot of our clients. Our good friend Eli Singer, Web Maverick over at Cundari SFP (watch out for the Flashtastrophe), has been working with the ROM to bring them into the modern age. Sites like the Photo Diary are simple to setup and don't have a big maintenance overhead, especially if the photos are being shot anyway. We highly recommend the addition of freshly updated content to your website, particularly in blog form, as a primary driver of increased organic search engine traffic.

browserSim 0.2 - browser chrome for design made easy

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Many web design types use a masked browser chrome to present their design work to clients - it helps provide a context for the visuals being presented.

I personally find it a tremendously useful technique to use from the very start of a design process - it keeps me aware of how the elements I'm producing will sit within the browser, and ultimately of how they'll appear to the end-user.

I've done several versions over the past half-decade or so, but finally got around to doing one with multiple chrome options, layer group masks, etc., which makes it all ludicrously easy to use. Even better, the chrome is nicely drop-shadowed and pretty much presentation-ready!

All you need to do is grab the .psd and use. Instructions are in the first group. If you find yourself making improvements (such as adding browser versions), do ping me!