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» Friday News Report and Tidbits

Today I do have quite a lot of things to share with you, so let’s get right onto it!

• WordPress 2.6.3 has been released. The main news is just some bug fixes to what’s classified as a "not so important" issue. You can download the new version on the WordPress website.
   
• A very interesting article was posted on CSS-Tricks yesterday regarding if you should host your clients websites yourself. I very much agree with Chris’s thoughts on the subject, which you can read on his site here.
   
• Today is the absolute last day to submit your entries to the iPhone Book Contest that I wrote about a while ago on the blog. For more info, check out Terry White’s blog today.
   
• A fun fact, yesterday marked the 7th birthday for the iPod! It’s pretty remarkable that it’s been around to long now! Congrats to Apple for creating it, it’s really grown to be a truly great gadget and one of my personal favourites.

» Going directly from idea to coded design to show client.

I’ve been reading more and more people who are really advocates for showing clients coded designs and never Photoshop/Fireworks files. Their biggest reason for this is the fonts. You can really never get accurate font preview in a Photoshop file as compared to the final web result. This is an argument that I fully buy. It’s pointless to try to show how a design will look with fonts in a web browser, but in a jpeg file instead.

The real main con, as I see it, with this method is that it is going to take a little more time. It does mainly depend on how fast of a coder you are. It’s so much simpler just to send of a jpeg file to a client with the design in, have them change their mind as usual and then code it. To me that seem like the most logical order (perhaps since I’m used to it by now), partly probably because I’m working faster in Photoshop than I code.

There is perhaps a mid-range option here. What you’ll do is that you do the design in Photoshop as usual, save out a jpeg file (with no fonts) and then just quickly place a floating, absolute div over the jpeg file, previewing how the fonts would look on your design.

I want to bring up just another bit as well; my personal experience with this. I must say I’ve yet to get a client that complains when they get their final version that it differed like the one I showed “before”. If most people know it is sample, or don’t care about the change, I don’t dare to speculate in just now but it gets me thinking if I really need to put that much energy into finding a solution to a thing that isn’t super broke.

In the end, my opinion about this on the whole, is that if you are a quick coder. By all means, do show clients a coded version if the coding for you is one of the heavy parts, then don’t. Showing the designs in a jpeg file seems to work and I’m not sure how much difference it would mean to clients if you showed the coded one.

Now, if Adobe would just get an option in the type tool to render the text as a web browser does, I’d be much happier…
 

» Friday Goodies

There is no hard explanation to why I never posted anything yesterday, I was just so tired after a long day filled with unexpected things. However some Friday Goodies is always needed before the weekend.

• Scott Kelby posted on his blog, Photoshop Insider, today about his latest book, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 for Digital Photographers and said that it was a complete rewrite of his old (about 95% new stuff). According to himself he’s streamlined his workflow, learnt a bunch of new things as well as learnt the most asked questions and how people use it. I can say that it is going to be a killer book!
   
• Mark your calendars, August 23rd. Something cool is coming. Just mark them and be with me there. No info as of now.
   
• A few votes in the poll are telling me that they don’t know what Photoshop World is so I thought I’d end that right now be telling. Photoshop World is a semi-annual convention for all Photoshop users. It’s held in the US once on the east coast on the spring and then on the west coat in Las Vegas every fall. This time it is coming up in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on September 4th through 6th. It’s an amazing conference and to read more, check out the Photoshop World website.
   
• Finally, if you need a mantra for all those times when clients are being a pain curtsey of my fellow NAPP member Michael. "I get paid either way, I get paid either way."

And with that nice mantra have a nice Friday eve and weekend. I’ll probably get some stuff up over the weekend as well.