Sacha Greif

For one of my projects, I needed a simple pagination module. The requirements were pretty standard:

• The first and last page should always be displayed
• There should always be the same number of pages displayed for consistency (+- 1)
• There should be maximum code reuse
• It should be easily configurable
• The current page should stand out

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Here’s a good article that tries to explain why “bad” site design succeeds. The typical examples are Google and MySpace. But that article went one step further and included Flickr and Amazon as examples of bad site design. I use Flickr a lot, and I’ve never been shocked by its (lack of) design.
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To celebrate the launch of my newest design, I tought I’d explain how I did it and what tools and plugins I used. Not to say that I did anything special. The blog (Blue China) is pretty simple, and not supposed to make it to the top of all CSS galleries overnight (although it would be cool if it did). But even so, I think designers are always interested in seeing how others work.

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One of the new trends among web designers has to be grid design. While grid design is a simple concept, there are now so many tools and ways of doing it that it might get confusing for newcomers. So here is my way of doing things, i.e. how I would explain grid design to someone who’s never heard about it.

My aim here is not to be exhaustive and shower you with links and fancy tools, actually it’s quite the opposite. I’ll give a few links for each section, but if you’re short on time, just click on the first one !

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More and more portfolio sites have been morphing into blog/portfolio sites, or blortfolios as I call them (I wonder if this word will catch on ?). During the process of designing this site, I compiled a list of my favorites blog/portfolio sites to inspire me. Here are some of them, along with a few observations. (more…)

To mark the launch of my latest project (head over to the portfolio area to see screenshots, go ahead, I’ll wait), I tought I’d give a short overview of the tools I used to do it (in no particular order).

Blueprint CSS
Blueprint is a CSS library that resets the basic styles, provides a grid for horizontal spacing, as well as a baseline for vertical spacing. It also comes with a few other nifty typographical settings, and in the next versions might even include default form styling. I used Blueprint for this very website too, but this was my first time using it for a “real” project.

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