Gordon Brander's Blog

PIE in the Sky

Gordon Brander — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:41:31 +0000

If you’re a front-end developer, you’ve probably been waiting with misty eyes for that far-off day when CSS3 is roundly supported. I’ll bet you didn’t expect it to be today.

CSS3 PIE (Progressive Internet Explorer) is an open source script that gives IE6-IE8 the ability to render the best parts of CSS3. Drop behavior: url(PIE.htc) into a group of styles and a metric ton of CSS3 properties suddenly work:

border-radius
box-shadow
multiple backgrounds
rgba
yeah, there’s more…

Jason was kind enough to let me beta-test PIE. I’ve used it in several projects now, and my first-blush reaction is this is way too good to be true. It’s light, fast, easier to implement than a PNGfix, and it just works with standard CSS properties. It’s now a standard part of my development toolkit.

Designed Behavior

Gordon Brander — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:15:32 +0000

Volkswagen has some cleverly designed interactions for their Fun Theory ad campaign.

It’s a bit like the broken windows theory in reverse.

BDW Intro to Semantics

Gordon Brander — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:08:39 +0000

I’ll be giving an intro to semantics in HTML at Boulder Digital Works tonight. Slides for the class are available for download on SlideShare.

If you’re particular about these things, the focus will be on “semantics” with a lower-case “s”. In other words, the quick, dirty and practical approach of HTML5 tags, well-named classes and Microformats.

View more presentations from gordonbrander.

Gordon Brander — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 23:22:56 +0000

CSS3 Text Lens-blur. Lovely.

Gordon Brander — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:20:33 +0000

8th Continent Soymilk has done a delightful rebranding of their line. Reminds me of one of my favorites, Alexander Girard.

Gordon Brander — Thu, 20 May 2010 16:44:21 +0000

Video JS: an open source HTML5 video player under the MIT license.

The source code is pretty straighforward and the UI is nice. It is remarkable how much simpler it is to create a themed video experience with HTML5, instead of Flash.

Gordon Brander — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:42:58 +0000

You know who does some great illustration work? Dan McPharlin. Year One: a new piece for the Life in 2050 exhibition.

Gordon Brander — Wed, 19 May 2010 17:41:48 +0000

Google is now serving up @font-face web fonts. Paul Irish has the scoop on the API.

They’ve also released a web font loader API, a library developed in conjunction with TypeKit.

Gordon Brander — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:42:43 +0000

Also, this Big Mac is almost as old as Justin Bieber.

Gordon Brander — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:28:02 +0000

A can of Arizona Kiwi Strawberry “juice” has the sugar content of 7 bowls of Froot Loops.