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Adobe's release of Photoshop 4.0, the latest version of the premiere bitmap editing program, allows users to create Actions- a hybrid of shortcuts, macros and plugins.
Photoshop users are already cooking these image editing recipes and making them available free from their web sites.
Some currently available Actions include flaming or neon text effects, cutout and embossing routines, sepia and vignette photo treatments, and many other one-click button cheats.
Third party filter and plugin makers such as Alien Skin and Kai Krause must be watching apprehensively as professional designers divulge their secret techniques, script them, and offer them free online (see also: Cooltype).
When Compuserve decided to flex it's legal right to the compression algorithms used in the ubiquitous GIF format, it sent the Internet community scrambling to find an open-standard replacement- the result being PNG (Portable Network Graphics).
The specs of PNG are impressive: It allows 24, 48 bit and indexed images, alpha channels, transparency, and 2 dimensional interlacing; compression results are up to 30% more compact then GIF's and are lossless in image quality.
A drawback is that the current popular Web browsers do not support these images inline (although some plugins are available), but they should very soon as PNG catches on. Anyone transferring graphics over networks should have a look at this format.
There are a plethora of viewers and editors for all platforms currently available. PNG offers the quality of TIFF with the portability of GIF. See also: quest.jpl.nasa.gov/PNG.
Disappearing Inc.
(get it?) is a designing/typographic firm's very irreverent
space to promote and sell their typefaces, although the fonts are good what
stands out on this site is some very high level programming and page layout
tricks.
Frames are a html construct to allow multiple pages to be displayed on a single desktop, but they often create confusion and are over used. Here they are used to allow full bleed on the site's graphics (browsers annoyingly offset and inset images arbitrarily on a full page, but not in a properly designed frame).
The whole site is displayed in the central frame, with effective use of animated gifs and java scripting.
Read the source of this site to see a different way to deal with "weaker" browsers that can't handle these higher level design options; Disappearing Inc. uses a browser redirect within the frame tags to display a different site to the browser-challenged that is far more humorous and more effective than the ubiquitous "Netscape Now!" buttons festooning most high concept sites.
Iomega, makers of the popular storage peripherals (Zip and Jaz drives) retained Utah based agency Dahlin Smith and White to create a "Webmercial" for their products.
The site leaps off the screen at you, flashing
and vibrating with animation and prime colours.
The Mondrian inspired layout of the opening page, plays fast and loose with the spirit of the Dutch painter's work- but his formalism lends itself well to a Web layout.
The table on the opening page has individual cel's that are trapped by thick black lines, and then filled with rotating content. The table also serves as a navigational device using each cel to transport you to different pages within.
The colour palette on this site is bright and consistent throughout, the copy irreverent and cheeky, and the movement on the pages very busy- all this leaves the viewer feeling they just experienced a very sophisticated sales job.
Although not too modem-friendly- it's worth a drive over just to ogle high level conceptual dazzle, great Web illustration and photography and topnotch layout.
Arguably, Mr. Mondrian would have been chagrined.
Net Notables appears several times a year in Applied Arts, Canada's premiere graphic design magazine
