Fixing Font Issues in OS X Leopard
December 12th, 2007
I recently upgraded my computer at work to a new iMac running OS X Leopard. I’m very happy with the new system, but today I noticed something strange with how fonts were being displayed on some websites. For sites with light text on a dark background the fonts were displaying as bolded, or “bleeding” onto the background in a not very smooth manner. I tried going into System Preferences > Appearance and adjusting the Font Smoothing Style, but this didn’t seem to have any affect on the problem. ...continue reading
Face Off Extension for Firefox
June 26th, 2007
I find Facebook to be a very useful tool for networking and keeping up with what my friends and acquaintances are doing. However, with the proliferation of optional add-ons for profile pages, I sometimes miss the simpler and more focused Facebook of a few months ago.
To make the site easier to work with, I wrote a little add-on for my favourite browser. The Face Off Extension for Firefox let’s you turn off 3rd party Facebook applications.
...continue readingCSS Facelift for Facebook - Part 1
June 12th, 2007
UPDATE: These techniques will no longer allow you to customize your Facebook profile.
Facebook now has over 24 million active users keeping in touch with friends and colleagues. Some people are predicting that it will become the de-facto social networking tool for the web. It’s certainly a very useful service, but as I spent more time with Facebook looking at all those identically designed profile pages I started to miss the individuality that accompanied personal websites and blogs.
Let’s look at how you can take a Faceook profile and using a bit of CSS and the new Facebook Markup Language, create something a bit more personalized. In Part 1 we’ll look at how to start adding your own xHTML and CSS.
...continue readingReturn of the Blog
June 8th, 2007
We’re back after a short hiatus while moving house, returning to work from paternity leave, and working on a few other projects took the focus away from keeping Design Meme updated. Now that things have settled down a bit, the site should see more regular updates once again.
...continue reading8 First Steps to Fight Cyberbullying
March 29th, 2007
Today is Stop Cyberbullying Day, and like I said yesterday I’m very angry about what happened to Kathy Sierra, and other people who have suffered abuse from Cyber Bullies, stalkers, and trolls. Rather than just write further about how awful cyberbullies are, I’ve decided to offer some tips for helping people fight back.
...continue readingStop Cyberbullying Day
March 29th, 2007
For the past few days, thousands of blogs have focused on the topic of cyberbullying. This comes in the wake of Kathy Sierra cancelling her presentations at the ETech conference and withdrawing from posting on her popular blog due to threats of violence and offensive sexual statements and images posted by bloggers. I feel angered and disgusted by this, and similar patterns of behaviour that I’ve seen and heard about over the past few years.
This Friday May 30th is Stop Cyberbullying Day, and everyone is encouraged to think about ways to address this problem. Whether it’s the incredibly offensive and misogynistic comments many female bloggers receive, high-school students harassed with taunting text messages, or fake websites set up to try and slander innocent people—this is a problem that needs to be addressed.
