WebDesign&Such

As a freelance designer I always have a ton of stuff to carry around with me. Recently I decided it was time to get a new messenger bag that could better meet my needs than the leather one I was using. Now, when it comes to making purchases, I’m a little picky. So of course when it was time to look around at bags it was no different. I looked around at just about every company out there. Most of the bags were either too cheap in quality, or just plain ugly. Then I looked into the company Booq. They have bags that are exactly the style I was looking for. They are made with creative professionals in mind. Tons of pockets, and the style of the bags is classy but not boring. I chose to go with the Folee 2 messenger bag. Keep reading for my full review.
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I’m obsessed with CSS.

There I said it. I have just about every CSS book that has received good reviews. As a freelance website designer I try to make time in between projects to read these books, pick up new tricks, and brush up on what I already know or may have forgotten. If the book is worthy I throw some bookmarks on important sections, so I can easily use it as a reference in the future.

As I finish these books I will be giving my honest reviews, be it negative or positive. Hopefully this will help you decide if the book is a good choice for you to purchase.

Continue reading for my review of CSS Mastery; Advanced Web Standards Solutions by Andy Budd. ©2006

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Well I’m a designer, (duh), so I work with color every day. There are a ton of different tools to make using color easier both on and offline. I was going to make a post about the top 5 sources/ tools that I use for color palettes, picking, etc… but I’ve decided to take them one at a time.. I think they are so important that they are all worthy of separate posts. Then maybe I will create one post summarizing them all.

I’m going to start off with my favorite. This is a Firefox Add-On (mental note.. create a Firefox Add-On post), that I use almost daily. It’s called ColorZilla.

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Yesterday I talked about KeyMaster, a Password Management System. Article Link

Today I’m going to show another quick add on that can help speed up the password creation process. If you have a Mac (if you don’t I’m sorry for you!), you know about widgets. Quick little programs such as a clock, ski report, dictionary, etc. I found a password generator widget, so now creating passwords is as easy as opening the dashboard and hitting Generate. Copy, paste into Keymaster and you are good to go. I love little programs like that.

Download the password generator widget here.

If you’re like me, you have a million passwords and user names for a ton of different websites and services. I decided it was time to organize these into some sort of a system. Sure, they could be put in a Word or Excel doc. But I figured there must be a simple program out there made specifically for this..so I went Google hunting.

After looking at a few options, (crossing off anything that cost money), I found a nice solution. KeyMaster 1.0.2 password manager for Mac OSX did exactly what I needed.

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