PostsDesign
Egīls Pārups (parups.com) running a child theme of Portfolio Racer
Parups.com is the very first website running a child theme of Portfolio Racer. The following plugins are helping out behind the scenes — Google XML Sitemaps, Infinite Scroll, Page Menu Editor, postMash (Filter), Top Level Categories, Widget Context and WP Super Cache.
Open source rocks!
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Twitter’s Success
Twitter’s success is people discovering the excitement of publishing.
The 140 character limit and the overall simplicity is exactly what attracts even those who didn’t think they had thoughts and ideas worth publishing. The rest of it is just a stripped down e-mail functionality.
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No Font Embedding, Please
The limitations of web design are also its most powerful features, when compared to print. Design is all about finding the best solutions within a specific set of scarce resources.
Fonts are designed to deliver information to the reader in the easiest and fastest way. Aren’t the fonts currently available on various operating systems doing this job well?
Digital Britain and USB Flash Drives
Digital Britain logo
While the ideas behind the Digital Britain initiative are really great and noble, its logo is quite the opposite — what is the connection between a flash drive and an open access to information and its distribution networks?
Every letter in the logo is supposed to symbolize a node attached to Britain’s information network, which sounds like a good explanation until you put it on a USB thumb drive. Read more »
WordPress Admin Header Design Tweak, Take Two
After looking at all the submissions for the WordPress Admin Design Tweak Poll I have updated my entry leaving Panel and Help buttons as they currently are in WordPress 2.7.1. The only change necessary in HTML structure would be moving #favorite-actions out of #wphead-info. Read more »
Tweaking WordPress Admin Header
One of the important ideas behind the WordPress 2.7 administration area redesign was to maximize the amount of information and input fields above the ‘fold’. While the current design does the job well, there is still some room for improvements. Read more »
Open Source Logo for Labeling Things and Ideas Made in Latvia
Do you create things and ideas here in Latvia? If so, let the world know where they come from — label them using this open source ‘Made in Latvia’ logo:
Design on April 2009
For future reference: this is how this blog looked on April 2009: Read more »
Bitstream Charter Typeface
Bitstream Charter is a glyphic serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter which I discovered only recently in Ubuntu 8.10 (it ships with X11). It is definitely one of the most beautiful serif fonts that I have ever seen. At first sight it looks similar to Liberation Serif but is more rounded and easier to read. Read more »
Squeeze the Header of the New WordPress 2.7 Dashboard
I love the new WordPress 2.7 dashboard design even despite all the bad things that I have previously said. Back then it was only a prototype and probably even the core developers didn’t have a clear and complete picture of how it is going to look and work in real-word environment.
Now when it is one minute away from the prime-time, I applaud Jane, Matt and all the designers and developers behind the overhaul who carried out the work in such a transparent and feedback driven way.
For me it is the new icon-only-slide-right navigation bar that makes the whole administration section work so much better than I could have imagined. All the administration sections are only one click away. Navigation takes up only 40 pixels of the cheap vertical space and thus saves much of the expansive vertical area where things get done. The result is truly amazing and it makes me wonder if anyone really knew it will turn out to be this good. Read more »
Come and See the New Design
One day I’ll stop pushing pixels and will write.
Is it true that finding solutions to problems in programming is more satisfying than discussing and stating ideas in writing? Or are these simply two kinds of people who prefer one over the other? Read more »
WordPress 2.7 Vertical Navigation
After having used the new WordPress 2.7 (which is not even beta yet) for some time, it is clear that the vertical dashboard navigation has been a bad design choice.
The aim of this revised design was to minimize vertical scrolling and make everything easier for both new and experienced users. The fact is that for me it has made the navigation more complex and has moved every action several clicks and scrolls away.
Why? Because information of equal importance cannot be aligned vertically. Items at the top will always have more importance than the ones at the bottom. Read more »
What Designers Do
Do you know what good designers do when everyone else thinks Helvetica is cool? They stretch and bend Times New Romans and Comic Sans. Thats because message is what is important, not the color or the typeface.
WordPress UI Idea: Menu Item Sorting and Renaming
Don’t like the proposed WordPress 2.7 menu structure? Why not make it sortable and with ability to rename top-level menu items so that those who still prefer Manage and Write instead of Posts and Pages can have it.
WordPress Dashboard menu sorting and renaming
Here is how it works: Read more »
WordPress 2.7 Administration UI Wireframes
Automattic have published WordPress 2.7 user interface wireframes (.pdf) that list and explain the changes planned for the next major release of WordPress.
WordPress 2.7 User Interface proposal (version 002)
I think there are only two things wrong with the purposed user interface and the information architecture: Read more »
WordPress Dashboard UI Idea #3
Fluid width WordPress administration user interface: idea (no.3). Read more »
Open Share Icon that Looks Good at Small Sizes
Here is a modified open share icon with less rounded corners which looks good even at 16px or less. Read more »
WordPress Dashboard — Idea No.3
Here is another take on how to improve WordPress Dashboard. See also the Widget Administration section. Read more »
WordPress Dashboard UI Idea Update
The UI example has been updated to support Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8. Another improvement is the unified HTML/CSS template for the list-type content inside widgets. For example, try dragging the Latest Comments widget from the action column (right side) to the content area (left side column) and see what happens with the widget’s content.
WordPress Dashboard User Interface Idea in Internet Explorer 6
Variable width drop-down menu that works in Internet Explorer 6 (CSS only)
Aside from that, I think I have managed to create the first ever CSS only drop-down menu (that works also in IE6) with the second level links expanding to the total width of that menu. If you are interested, see the source.
WordPress Crazyhorse UI vs. Konstruktors UI Proposal
WordPress Crazyhorse UI vs. Konstruktors UI Proposal
I am a race car driver, engineer and a web designer living in Latvia and working on the web since 2000. 
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