screenflow app icon

When using the ScreenFlow app recently, I came across an issue with black bars appearing at the side of content. This happened when trying to apply a transition - any transition. What I was seeing was a black box on the left side just as the transition started, and it took a support ticket to Telestream to find the simple solution. It turns out this might be a discrepancy between the Document (resolution) and the ...

READ MORE

css3 flexbox grid alignment

Flexbox is great for building 2D grids quickly and easily. It has pretty much replaced the use of the Float property when laying out content. But, one of the issues you might find is how efficiently it spaces your items within the grid... For example, let's say we have a grid of profile cards. We set the flexbox property of display: flex; on their container and use justify-content: space-between; to spread them evenly on ...

READ MORE

MAMP MySQL servers not starting fix

The MAMP MySQL servers can be a tricky thing... I use a mixture of Local by Flywheel and MAMP for my local development work. Sometimes, I have issues when launching MAMP with the MySQL servers not starting. The spinner goes round and round until I get a note offering me the log files to check. Getting the MAMP MySQL servers to play nicely again is actually not so difficult. This is a very quick tip, that was published a ...

READ MORE

steps centre website

I don't add portfolio websites as often as I perhaps should. But here's a site I'm particularly pleased with - the new website for the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University - STEPS Centre. The reason I'm adding this site to the blog, is because it is a site that has taken a few months to design, develop and get online. STEPS Centre I worked closely with Nathan Oxley (Communications and Impact Manager) ...

READ MORE

events calendar wordpress plugin

The Events Calendar is a great calendar plugin for WordPress. It comes in both free and Pro versions and is very flexible. However, by default the events are displayed in chronological order and this might not suit your site. If you want to reverse the order of your events in The Events Calendar, you can add this function to your functions.php file. // Changes past event views to reverse chronological order function ...

READ MORE

WordPress featured images

When you are working with a WordPress theme that relies heavily on the use of a featured image, it is helpful having a visual guide showing where you have used them. I am currently working on a site that uses the WordPress thumbnail as the background image in several places. It's important that administrators can see whether a featured image has been set on Posts, Pages or custom post types, or some of the theme impact ...

READ MORE

MAMP MySQL servers not starting fix

If you want to install WordPress on a Mac, or a PC, for local testing and development, you can do it for free, using MAMP. I recently uploaded a screencast to YouTube showing how easy it is to get started. WordPress is free, MAMP is free* so what are you waiting for? Install WordPress on a Mac - Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGJUffx_tKE In the video I mention where to download the installers. Here are the ...

READ MORE

adobe acrobat dc pro

How annoying is that Acrobat Content Preparation Progress message? It pops up when you open a new document. You then have to wait while it reads and prepares your file. Depending on the size of the PDF document, this can be a bit of a nuisance. On a large file, it can slow down your ability to quickly read the contents of a PDF. It's easy to fix though, just by changing a setting in the Preferences. Open the Preferences on ...

READ MORE

MAMP MySQL servers not starting fix

MAMP Pro recently released version 4. It has not been without issues - more on that later, but here is how to go about updating MAMP Pro. The steps for updating MAMP Pro are similar to those found in the standard/free version of MAMP. An earlier tutorial on upgrading MAMP can be found here, but this time I am covering steps that address MAMP Pro. The steps for updating MAMP Pro differ because the location of the files you ...

READ MORE

Sketch app and Adobe XD comparison

Sketch by Bohemian Coding is an app that I have been using quite a lot for a while now. For my workflow, it has completely replaced Photoshop for designing and building websites. Adobe were slow to respond to the changing needs of web and UI designers and the once go-to tool Photoshop, became strangely jaded. Like many others, I went in search of alternatives. And I noticed that other designers were also sending over more ...

READ MORE