Remarkable and mesmerizing Flash motion graphics by Jim Bumgardner of coverpop.com. These animations are a digital realization and homage to the early work of John Whitney, famed motion graphics pioneer of the 1940’s through the 1990’s. Amazing!

And while we’re at it, take a look at coverpop.com…What an amazing interface! You can spend some serious time browsing through just a few of these great magazine and book covers! This guy really knows his Flash actionscript!

Jim Bumgardner is an amazing guy. His website, krazydad.com, is filled with a bunch of Flash–based games and “software toys”(his term)…my kind of guy! His mazes (in his Fun and Games area) and “springy titles” are awesome! He is also the author of my favorite screensaver ever…MetaScope! It is a virtual kaleidoscope on your pc that searches the internet for images of your choosing, automatically creating a kaleidoscope on your desktop. If you thought those fishtank screensavers were cool, what until you see this…totally mesmerizing!

“Who’s Roger Bradfield, you say?” Anyone who has eaten Kix, Trix, or Wheaties cereals should know! He created the great graphic art for the cereal boxes in the 1960’s, among many other projects. For a great blog post on Mr. Bradfield, see this article by Dan Goodsell. Very cool. Gimme some Trix!

What a beautiful website and a great cause. The Hope Garden is an inspirational website focussing on people with cancer, their families, and friends. In this beautiful Flash–based “garden”, you can “plant” a beautiful flower with an inspirational message for a loved one that is battling this implacable disease. Visitors can also browse through the garden and read messages left by others. What a beautiful, thoughtful, and well–executed website. Kudos, Paul!

Here are links to David Court’s great work on the Indiana Jones Trilogy. Enjoy everyone!

The new year started off really well when I received a nice e-mail from David Court, of Star Wars Pixelmash fame. In a previous post, I said that I hadn’t figured out who the creator of these great Star Wars animated GIFs was. Well, David was kind enough to let me know, and now you do too!

David also let me know about his new Pixelmash collaborations…Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade! The Indiana Jones animations are in the same familiar, although slightly taller 129 x 94 pixel format as the Star Wars offerings, and if anything, they are even cooler and more detailed in their animations. There are tons of small animated figures and even more detailed facial expressions. The opening “Raiders” scene where Indy is being chased by the natives had me cracking up!

Finishing the Indiana Jones Trilogy, we have the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade pixelmash, “live and and in living color!” I love the zeppelin! Awesome job, David!

Needless to say, I’ve really been impressed with David’s efforts. Who knows what great stuff he’ll come up with next? Thanks again for the “heads up,” David!

Back in 2005, David Court created a sensation on the web by recreating the Star Wars Trilogy in animated GIF form. These are works of art and deserve to be kept out there for everyone’s viewing enjoyment. In that spirit, here are links to the original Trilogy, as well as some I am housing here on my website, in the spirit keeping this great web–based art available to everyone.

I’ve corresponded with David from time to time and have enjoyed our brief conversations. He is a nice guy with a delightfully sardonic sense of humor. I wish him well.

This is too cool for words! I found a link to this on another blog and just had to mention it. This animated GIF file contains all of the main scenes from Star Wars IV: A New Hope, all in a 168k file! Awesome! My kudos to the designer, David Court!

Another fantastic GIF animation, this time it’s Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back! Man, it takes a lot of work to animate something like this, especially to do it this well!

The final piece of the puzzle! And once again, a fantastic GIF animation, Star Wars VI: The Revenge of the Jedi! Awesome!

This is a great html/css list how–to I used back in 2005. It still is a great tutorial and set of examples.

I have to mention a great article and set of examples that really helped me tame a list navigation problem I was having on a website design I was working on at the time. I was trying to set apart a “current” item on a list as a visual cue as to what page the viewer is on. For example, if a viewer is on your home page, make the “Home” bullet on the list white with a white bar. I was able to come up with a solution, but ran into problems with, of all browsers, Camino. (This used to be a Mac–only browser that compete with Firefox.) Anyway, with my method, it set all visited bullets on the list as white with a white bar! I visited Digital Web Magazine (great site) which led me to CSSVault (another cool site). Finally, following a link from CSSVault, I came across the perfect solution to my problem on Max Design’s Listamatic. This solution, authored by Project Seven, worked perfectly with Camino, as well as with all of my other testing browsers. Thanks a lot Project Seven! And thanks a lot Listamatic!

As a dedicated Mac user, I’m used to (i.e. spoiled by) the superior display technology that OSX gives me. And, as a web designer, I’ve always been frustrated by the pixelated, “jaggy” display of italic type on PC-based displays running Windows XP. Well, for those less familiar with the PC, here is a helpful (built–in!) little software utility by, gasp, Microsoft called ClearType that will help ban “the jaggies!”

Although this utility is built into Windows, it is set off by default. It also seems to me to be accessed in an almost “hidden” way, so you’re unlikely to run across it unless you are actually looking for it. To activate ClearType, access this FAQ and follow the instructions under “How do I turn it on?” The caveat is that you are not actually able to adjust ClearType settings with this method of activation. Its either on or off. Kind of bogus if you ask me.

Two better methods of ClearType activation that allow “tuning” of the settings are:

• via a web interface
• via a downloadable Windows Control Panel

I personally prefer the latter. ClearType anti–aliases text, making “the jaggies” appear much smoother. Although designed primarily for laptop users with LCD displays, it also does a decent job at improving displays using traditional CRT (tube) displays. Be aware, though, that this is accomplished by decreasing edge sharpness, (i.e. blurring the edges of the characters) so try it and see if you like it. To me, the better display of italics outweighs the decrease in crispness.

As I stated before, I much prefer downloading and installing ClearType as a windows control panel. Why should you have to access a website to change your settings? I also had some problems on a couple of windows machines where ClearType wouldn’t activate via the website. Downloading and using it as a control panel worked like a charm. My big question is, why doesn’t Microsoft make this software completely accessible, in terms of both activation and tuning, in the first place?

Another great web design tool I have used off and on since 2005.

Here’s a great utility website from Marko Dugonjić. It’s called Typetester…and you’ll like it! With it, you can compare up to three online typefaces at once, then copy the resulting CSS code for use in your own websites. Cool!