3×3 the creative edition

March 27th, 2009

3 creative professionals - 3 ideas each

Chris Cashdollar - Happy Cog
Brian Crooks - Razorfish
Michael mcAghon - Electronic Ink

Three design pros share with us three points each on design, the industry or whatever comes to mind.

6pm at National Mechanics
Lecture will start before 6:30 and be over in time for karaoke.

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The event on Facebook

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The PSO on Twitter

Social Marketing with Ron Sansone lecture (wrap up)

March 6th, 2009

Well, this is a little late, but I wanted to thank Ron for a great lecture. Technically Philly has beaten me to the punch and delivered us a great synopsis of Ron’s talk.

Contract/Contracting do’s and don’ts…

March 6th, 2009

Our speaker this month will be Frank Taney. Frank is a shareholder in the center city law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC. Frank chairs Buchanan’s Information Technology Litigation Practice Group and is a member of the firm’s Technology Transactions Group. His practice focuses on complex commercial litigation in a variety of substantive areas, including IT, intellectual property, antitrust and construction. Frank also represents his clients in a wide range of IT-related transactions and provides related dispute avoidance and business counseling.

Frank is going to speak on techniques for “safe” contracting, including:

  • dealing with the “problem” client
  • limiting exposure and liability
  • appropriately defining and limiting warranties and performance standards
  • protecting intellectual property
  • obtaining clarity on the scope of work
  • managing changes in scope
  • minimizing difficulties in obtaining payment
  • remedies for breach and dispute resolution
  • handling requests for non-competes and restrictive covenants
  • other related topics

Frank will give the presentation starting at 6:30 pm at Buchanan’s brand new offices at Two Liberty Place, 50 S. 16th Street, on the 32nd Floor.

Come out for useful information, beautiful views from high above the city in Two Liberty Place, and beer afterward.

NOTE: Please RSVP on the Facebook event listing, or you can let us know you are coming in a comment below (we need to know your name to let you in the building).

Fluid Grids

March 3rd, 2009

The March 3rd issue of A List Apart has a great article about fluid grids and how to use ems for positioning/layout.  Though the article doesn’t contain any particularly new techniques, it’s a great overview of em-based design, and a good reminder about an important user-centric design principle.  Ethan Marcotte, the article’s author, brings up a good point about the fallacy of a “minimum screen resolution”:

Instead of exploring the benefits of flexible web design, we rely on a little white lie: “minimum screen resolution.” These three words contain a powerful magic, under the cover of which we churn out fixed-width layout after fixed-width layout, perhaps revisiting a design every few years to “bump up” the width once it’s judged safe enough to do so. “Minimum screen resolution” lets us design for a contrived subset of users who see our design as god and Photoshop intended. These users always browse with a maximized 1024×768 window, and are never running, say, an OLPC laptop, or looking at the web with a monitor that’s more than four years old. If a user doesn’t meet the requirements of “minimum screen resolution,” well, then, it’s the scrollbar for them, isn’t it?

» Fluid Grids [A List Apart]

Get CSS3 Techniques Today with jQuery

February 24th, 2009

Noupe has a great article on some of the most-wanted CSS3 techniques, and how you can replicate them in most browsers using jQuery.  These techniques include:

  • Rounded Corners (border-radius)
  • Border Image (border-image)
  • Multiple Backgrounds
  • Drop Shadows (box-shadow and text-shadow)
  • Alpha Transparency (opacity)

5 CSS3 Techniques For Major Browsers using the Power of jQuery