In CSS, there are four ways to visually position HTML elements within your web page. These are static, relative, absolute and fixed. There can be a great deal of confusion when it comes to discerning between these values, so I'd like to help clear things up.
Or perhaps no...
My 'Heydings Icons' font has been doing the rounds for some time now, and I am proud to have been one of the early innovators to release a completely free, embeddable icon font for web UI designers. However, until now I have singularly failed to promote the availability of H...
To say one is a Web Developer is similar to saying one is an engineer. Without further clarification, the label means very little. To help with apprehending the various specialisms within the field, I have created this transparently cynical piece of link bait. My list is by ...
One of the best things about the Perch CMS is its lack of boilerplate. In fact, Perch creator Rachel Andrew is quite opposed to such bloated, polyfill-ridden framework code. Why include a mass of default code you've yet to decide you even need? The performance hit is just no...
Rock and roll has always been a contrary form of music. At once 'the devil's music' and the soundtrack to the American Dream, it has leant itself to as much commercial dogma as rebellious transgression. Rock and roll is both savage and servile. It's sexual awakenings and aut...
In a previous article, I addressed the many advantages of using a web font (in place of images) to render icons into your UI design. In the same article I mentioned a frustrating deficit of high quality, free icon web fonts available for embedding and conceded my own failure...
Benny (@rattegg) and I have been rehearsing and recording for our Wet Face project for some time now and — provided that the venue staff don't get cold feet — our first performance is imminent.
Having 'mastered' (for 'mastered' read 'bathed in distortion and given a perfunct...
Update: Since writing this post, I was finally able to create a web font to my liking. You can read about it and download it in this subsequent article.
Prefixing (or occasionally suffixing) hyperlinks with little icons can be helpful for qualifying the type of action the li...
I was recently asked to design a logo for the Open Data Cookbook; a marvellous organisation commited to helping us make use of all the open data (partcularly government data) that has become available. Their excellent wiki provides 'recipes' for sourcing, preparing, fusing a...
Death and Extreme Metal musicians account for a large proportion of the most accomplished, technically skilled musicians in the world. Although the music is typically dense, fast and heavily distorted, it is also precise and carefully arranged. The accusations (made in ignor...
Following my post regarding the SEO and accessibility issues invoked when using display:none, I am now going to address the text replacement scenario, since I believe this is the only situation where one would legitimately want to hide text from the unassisted visitor (readi...
It occurs to me that some people looking for information on an ailment using the search term Sickly Headache might chance upon this music post. If you are one of these people, I recommend you DO NOT play the post's associated audio track. The title of the post (and track) re...
The display:none property is common and has may uses, as well as misuses. It's not always obvious what effect its use has on SEO and its impact on accessibility can be problematic. I hope this post helps to clarify the situation.
Types of invisibility
'Display none' means ex...
Not to be confused with U Can't Touch This by MC Hammer, this is a grinding piece of punk blues co-created - through correspondence - with my good friend Mickey Fordola for a project (currently on hiatus) called The Hemotions.
The techy stuff: The backing track features my G...
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm fascinated by sea life - especially crabs. I keep two pet hermit crabs called Ian and Phillip and I have written and designed a picture book called Crabs Are Odd. You've probably seen the little ad spot for it floating around on HeydonWorks...
In this post, I am going to explain the benefit of exploiting the 'cascading' part of CSS to solve everyday styling problems more efficiently and effectively. The example problem I have chosen is that of clearing content after floats. For those not familiar with the problem ...
For this experiment, I put my resonator through Gearbox's extraordinary 'Bronze Master' effect and bathed the resulting signal in expansive reverb.
Due to the Bronze Master's perculiar ability to help you create unusual harmonics and the resonator's sensitivity to soft plucking, a broad range of murky, eroded sounds can be achieved. At low velocities the sound is distant and muffled; at high velocities it's lively and sharp.
Notes tend to crackle and disintegrate prematurely, adding some atonal texture. Having opted for a mournful chord progression - cycled extremely slowly - I think the overall effect is reminiscent of an instrumental to be found on a (somewhat progressive) black metal record. Enjoy!
Note: The track is nearly seven minutes long so you may have to wait some time for it to load, depending on your connection speed.
I recently had the privilege of working on a project promoting listening skills amongst primary school children, conceived and curated by Sound & Music and called A Minute of Listening. The project required a desktop application (to be built by NeonTribe) that would be r...
Some time ago, my alter ego 'Bobby Howitzer' made a set of dirty rock 'n' roll mashups entitled New Rock and Roll is the New Rock and Roll. The original tunes were repurposed as the backing tracks for Bobby's high impact kareoke performances.
The live collision of blues h...
Those who are new to using pseudo-classes in their CSS may experience more than a little confusion, and I hope that I can relieve a few headaches. For those who use them frequently, I hope they find a few interesting observations ahead.
I attribute much of the confusion surr...
