Web Design, Discussions on web design, css, html5 and more...

Pure Buildings

Posted by David Smith this morning

Local building experts Pure Buildings had recently undergone a re-branding process. Deep Blue Sky helped them create an engaging new web presence.

Acer X193HQ at 1360x768

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this week

Old graphics card? Blurred text? No 1366x768 mode? No problem.

Nominate FMBIP!

Posted by Jim Morrison last week

We need your .net awards nominations... it only takes a second!

Rant: iOS 4 is BETA!

Posted by Jim Morrison last week

How do I downgrade?

Browser support for HTML5 & CSS with Modernizr 1.5

Posted by David Smith a few weeks ago

We proud to announce the relaunch of the Web Designers HTML5 & CSS3 browser support checklist, now using Modernizr 1.5 for even more tests and improved accuracy.

CSS3 & HTML5 Data available as JSON

Posted by Jim Morrison a few weeks ago

Today we're making our browser support data available as a json feed for anyone who wants to use their data for their own purposes.

Microsoft's IE9 breaks into HTML5 & CSS3

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

The Comic Sans of the web browsers looks like it might just be in for a revival.

When can I use HTML5 & CSS3?

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

We've updated fmbip.com's litmus test results with real-world scores showing when you can start to use specific HTML5 & CSS3 functionality.

Lions of Bath meet Spot the Lion

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

Spot - our lifesize interactive lion sculpture - was, today, introduced to his new pride and a few folk from the BBC...

5 days left to win £10,000

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

You've only got until Monday to put your ideas forward for Deep Blue Sky's 2010 Web Innovation Awards.

Instant QR Code

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

A bookmarklet to help you get the page you have on your browser onto your phone in a flash!

Web Designer's Favourite - New Chrome 5

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

The updated fmbip.com litmus results the new Chrome 5 beta in all its HTML5 glory.

FindMeByIP.com

Posted by David Smith earlier this year

Deep Blue Sky built a free web app to help our fellow web designers/developers find out the current state of browser support for HTML5/CSS3.

£10,000 Prize Attracts Global Attention

Posted by Jim Morrison earlier this year

Entries from across the world as Web Innovation Awards gathers momentum.

Deep Blue Sky is helping Dickies, the leading workwear brand, hunt for the UK's favourite worker. Yesterday Dickies launched "UK Worker of the Year Awards 2010" to find someone worthy of the incredible prize - a Renault worth £18,000.

First ever Tweets by 13 Top Web Designers

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

A complied list of the first ever Tweets by 13 of the industry's finest web designers.

Stop Firebug autofocusing DOM changes

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

Simple steps for stopping Firebug from automatically highlighting DOM changes made via Javascript.

Friday is the New Friday: Discuss

Posted by Ben Hawkes a few months ago

We read somewhere that the weekend actually starts on Thursday. We like to subscribe to this kind of innovative thinking so we simply stopped working on Fridays...read on to see what happened...

SEO Experts; your robots revealed!

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

We've just caught Google, Yahoo and Bing's spiders in the FindMeByIP.com web... and the results are quite intriguing...

Festivus Recruitment

Posted by Ben Hawkes a few months ago

Festivus is an online destination for professionals in the animation industry. Deep Blue Sky designed, built and delivered its original incarnation in 2007 and has recently undertaken a re-design of this popular site.

Opera 10.50 & Firefox 3.6 support for HTML5 & CSS3

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

FindMeByIP.com has been updated to Modernizr 1.1 and now detects HTML5 and CSS3 support for Opera 10.50 and Firefox 3.6.

Blogging for Small Businesses

Posted by Ben Hawkes a few months ago

Blogging is a high impact way of bringing Web 2.0 into your online marketing strategy - walk this way to find out how...

Linking to specific point in a YouTube video

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

Have you ever wanted to link to a specific time in a YouTube video? I've discovered a simple clear method.

CSS3 & HTML5 Availability

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Calling all web designers - we're charting the availability of HTML5 & CSS3 in the wild and would like your help to make the data useful.

Calling all FindMeByIP users!

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

FindMeByIP.com is a free service... so I hope no-one minds a shameless plug to ask some of you to sponsor me in exchange??

Web Designers meet Firefox 3.6

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

We've updated our Browser Support Checklist to include the new, faster Firefox browser.

Announcing the Web Innovation Awards

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Deep Blue Sky announce the launch of the Web Innovation Awards to find the most exciting idea for the web.

Love at first site - choosing a (web design) partner

Posted by Ben Hawkes a few months ago

Choosing a web partner is a difficult business; get it right and you will forge a relationship that will breed understanding and success. Love your web partner, and they’ll love you right back.

Adobe Fireworks keyboard cursor keys broken

Posted by David Smith last year

Recently I had an issue with Fireworks where all the keyboard keys (nudge, delete...etc) stopped working. Luckily I was able to find this simple fix.

iStylista

Posted by David Smith earlier this week

iStylista.com is the ultimate personal shopping experience to be found on the web. Run by a team of professional stylists it has become THE destination for tailored clothing and fashion advice based on the personal style profile inputted by the user themselves – and Deep Blue Sky were asked to build it!

Bryn Melyn Guesthouse

Posted by David Smith last year

Owners of the Bryn Melyn Guest House and ex-Bath residents Heather and David Brown were frustrated that their website failed to portray the beautiful location in which their property was set.

FindMeByIP.com has been updated!

Posted by David Smith last year

Great news! The longer overdue updates to the browser testing service FindMeByIP.com have finally gone live. We now test support for HTML5 Forms, Web Applications and CSS3 Selectors.

Clients from Heaven

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

A word of warning to any client who might speak before they think... ;-)

The 3 golden rules of SEO

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

3 simple rules to making a search-engine success of your website.

Basic principles of effective web copy - a beginners guide

Posted by David Smith last year

Writing good web copy isn't easy and it requires skill to get it right. I've compiled a short list to send to your clients when they need basic advice on writing their own web text.

Top 5 Apps of 2009

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

A quick round-up of 5 great web-applications that have rocked our world in 2009...

Quickly find your clients' IP address and HTML5 and CSS3 browser support

Posted by David Smith last year

FindMeByIP.com updated! Send a URL to your clients to find their IP address and check their browser support for HTML5 and CSS3 features.

Top 10 ways for hotels to embrace social media.

Posted by last year

Guest blogger Hayden Allen-Vercoe discusses social media in the hospitality industry and delivers 10 great tips to help hotels, spas and conference venues embrace social media and engage with their guests.

Google Analytics Custom Variables

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

Google have just released some much more powerful customisable tracking for Analytics but sadly it's not available for all....

Backwards compatible Silk Set icons with Fireworks

Posted by David Smith last year

Do you use the Silk icon set? Frustrated with the "blue border" in IE6? PNG fixes getting you down? I'll show you how to avoid both of these using Fireworks to create a "backwards compatible" version of the Silk Set library.

Browser support for CSS3 and HTML5

Posted by David Smith last year

We've tested all the A-grade browsers for their CSS3 and HTML5 support using FindMeByIP.com. The results have been very interesting.

FindMeByIP.com - our latest afternoon project

Posted by David Smith last year

A cute little app that presents your browsers' support for advanced HTML5 and CSS3 features in an easy to read format using Modernizr.

Express your mood with Gravatar + Gmail

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

Give more passion to your blog comments and express your true feelings!

5 Reasons why every business needs to embrace social media

Posted by last year

Social media seems to have firmly cemented its position in modern society... If you are not already using Facebook, twitter or perhaps one of the other social networks out there I bet you can name at least three people who are!

The Problem with Opera

Posted by David Smith last year

Opera web browsers have always been some of the most advanced around, often setting the trends and advancing the technology. Despite this I can never find a use for it on a regular basis.

FSB Breakfast at Homeward Park

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

A lovely morning spent with some like minded FSB members at Homeward Park here in Bath

Grayshott Spa, The Park and Fawsley Hall

Posted by David Smith last year

In August 2009 we were asked by the management team of a chain of 3 hotels to complete a re-design of each of their websites. Effective cross-branding, multiple Calls to Action and online marketing support were just a few of objectives of this project we successfully met.

Powabyke

Posted by David Smith last year

Powabyke are the UK’s premier manufacturer of electrics bikes, a market worth £25 million in 2009. They approached us to design and develop a website that supporting their growing brand, provided a great experience for multiple audiences and would be a framework for future development with out the need for a substantial re-build.

Dickies Workwear

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

When Dickies – the legendary workwear brand - decided to re-design and re-launch their flagship catalogue site they asked us to help.

Piping into MySQL as UTF-8

Posted by Jim Morrison last month

Want a quick, lazy, command line way to pipe iso-8859-1 ( or any character encoding ) SQL into MySQL as UTF-8? Here's a little four-liner for you!

iStylista 2 is coming!

Posted by Jim Morrison last year

iStylista - the new on-line personal shopping service is set to launch next month and boy are we excited!

Change Dash Stroke in Fireworks CS3

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

I always find the "Dash" stroke to be a little odd in Fireworks. I'll show you how to customise it's appearance with Advanced options.

Prototypify - add Prototype.js to any website dynamically

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

We're big fans of the Prototype JavaScript framework. I recently found it very useful to create a bookmark which allows you to dynamically add it to any web page for testing.

Gmail New Message Shortcut

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Create a Quick Launch or Start Menu shortcut for creating a new message in Gmail... without having to open Gmail itself...

Gate54 is back!

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Our online hotel, tour and travel portal - Gate54 - is back.

Converting RGB to CMYK in Illustrator

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

I often find the need to convert RGB files to CMYK (and visa versa) in Adobe Illustrator. The trouble is I always forget how to do it! Therefore I've drawn up a simple 3 step process to help.

Envato style light and shadow text effect using Fireworks

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

In this tutorial I'll show you how to utilize light and shadow to create a subtle, yet effective text effect with Adobe Fireworks.

Styling the File Input with CSS and Javascript

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

Files inputs spoil nice form design as no browser allows you to style them directly with CSS. Fortunately however, Shaun Inman has devised an easy solution involving backgrounds, opacity and a tiny bit of Javascript.

Multiple File Upload

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Oh, I got quite excited to see that Gmail now allows multiple upload of files - in one dialog.... but no, not without a little trick.

The difference between PNG24 and PNG32

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

If you've ever used Adobe Fireworks then you'll know it's image optimiser lists "PNG32" as an image type. But what is this and why does Photoshop not provide it as an option?

Free Function Icon Set

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

I'm always on the look out for high quality icon sets to use in my designs. I recently came across the Free Function Set by Liam McKay and it's brilliant.

8/10 for iStylista

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

iStylista.com - the personal on-line fashion site has recently been rewarded 8/10 for SEO, usability and functionality.

Stop drop down rendering underneath positioned elements in IE7

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

It seems that Internet Explorers' incorrect implementation of z-index means drop downs will appear underneath positioned (absolute, relative) elements. I'll show you a simple fix!

BathCamp evening meetup #1 - Paul Boag and Ryan Carson

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

It's the first BathCamp evening meetup...an informal gathering of interesting people talking about interesting things...

Google Talk Labs Edition

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Want the GTalk Labs Edition interface without all the bugs? A quick Chrome solution for you...

Traditional Boundaries

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

DeepBlueSky is proud to launch an estate and woodland management website for Surrey based business 'Traditional Boundaries'.

Chrome Shortcuts

Posted by David Smith a few months ago

Chrome has some really cute shortcuts to make surfing the net a little cuter and slicker... here's a little table for you....

Synchronising windows time

Posted by Jim Morrison a few months ago

Windows won't allow you to synchronise your windows time? It's very annoying but I've found this life saving little fix which allows you to sync your windows time again.