Easy Print Styles

Exploding Boy Chris Ware has a great little tutorial on creating print stylesheets. Some of the tips I had not even given thought to yet, like setting HTML to 100%.

Great tips Chris.

High-Resolution Images From The Web

We have been talking in the office recently about ways to deliver compressed images to a website for fast downloading, while at the same time offering a higher-resolution version for when those pages are printed. This would be applied to situations where you are including diagrams or floor plans in a webpage.

Of course, I had completely missed this article over at ALA dealing with the same issue.

The general gist of what is said in the article:

While we can create images for use on screen, we can also create larger images and force their size down (and their dpi up) for use by printers. We can make hi-res logos and headings, 300dpi photos, and even images specifically needed for printed pages—and serve up these print-specific images using print-media CSS.

Some very interesting stuff in here. 

Free Icons

Christopher Ware, local blogger and designer, has released 2 sets of great looking icons over at ExplodingBoy that are free for anyone to use. The first set is composed of 32 icons, split into 4 sets, each with a different background color. The second set has 25 icons that can be used for toolbars and such.

HTML Stamps

I still do most of my concept designs in Photoshop, but I know that many people (including the other designer at work) like to use Illustrator for concepting.

 So if you are using Illustrator, check out HTMLStamps. They are objects that you can import into Illustrator and use to “markup” your concept by placing which HTML element you will use for various parts of the page (h1 for the logo, ul for the navigation, etc.)

 They have also released an update to the original HTMLStamps, creating versions for Photoshop, Fireworks, InDesign and Visio.