FormBuilder: HTML forms made simple

Important: I no longer maintain FormBuilder. If you need a standalone PHP form builder I recommend Swiftmailer.

Even though HTML forms tend to be much of a muchness, each is different enough to require customized markup, styling, and validation. Sometimes it feels like reinventing the wheel. Over the past year I have been progressively streamlining the way I build my forms, and recently got to a point where I realized it wouldn’t take much more work to create an all-in-one PHP class that generates form markup, validates input, and displays error messages to the user. So that’s what I did, and I’m sharing it here in the hope someone else finds it useful too.

Styling links

A couple of months back I wrote a post about the importance of making links look like links. From the comments left by readers it was clear that peoples opinions differ widely on the best way to style links, so I thought I’d follow up with a brief survey of the various ways it is possible to make links stand out on a page.

Validation: a pragmatic approach

Recently the web standards debate has taken an interesting turn, with many standards advocates re-evaluating the role of validation in their daily practice. Most recently Ethan Marcotte contributed an article titled Where Our Standards Went Wrong to A List Apart. Marcotte concluded that validation is still a vital part of any web development project, but the fact that the opposite side of the argument was given serious consideration is significant.

Behind the ExpressionEngine redesign

I’ve long been a fan of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain’s design work, and appreciate how openly he talks about his design process. Jesse was responsible for the recent redesign of the ExpressionEngine website, and over at Digital Web he gives us a warts-and-all walk through of the project. The article provides a fascinating insight into the workflow and problem solving methods of a talented web designer.

Expression Engine wireframe

Time management tips for freelancers

Since beginning work as a freelance designer I have found managing my time effectively to be one of the biggest challenges. In previous fulltime jobs I had the luxury of project managers who established timelines and made sure that projects were delivered under budget and on schedule. These days I am responsible for those aspects of my business, as well as winning pitches, meeting with clients, doing the books, paying the bills, and manning the phone. And that’s not to mention actually doing the design work! Fortunately I’ve discovered several time management techniques that help me keep my business – and life – on track.

Ditch your meta keywords

One of my clients is currently optimizing their website for search engines. As part of the process I met with a rep from an SEO firm, who suggested ways the website design could be tweaked to be as friendly as possible to search engines. Most of the ground he covered was not new to me, but one tip was an eye opener: he advised me to entirely remove the meta keywords tags from the website.

Creating black & white images with LAB

Everyone loves a good black and white photograph, they have an immediacy and elegance that’s hard to resist. But converting a color photograph to grayscale in Photoshop will often produce a lackluster result. Here’s a tip for creating black and white images that really come to life.

swfIR – a new twist for web images

You’re probably already familiar with sIFR, a technique that replaces boring HTML text with spiffy Flash text, without messing up your HTML markup. In the same vein comes swfIR, which uses Flash to perform a host of desirable modifications to images: borders, rounded corners, rotation and drop shadows.

swfIR example

Flash + Web 2.0 = yourminis

yourminis is Goowy’s foray into the ‘customizable homepage’ space, a veritable smoragasbord of RSS feeds and widgets. The service is very similar to Netvibes, but with one big difference – yourminis is a Flash application.

yourminis screenshot

Link hide-and-seek

An article on the importance of making hyperlinks stand out might seem like an exercise in stating the obvious. I would have thought so too, until I came across the portfolio site of a reputable web design firm last week and found myself playing a game of link hide-and-seek.