Category Archives: Design

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October 1, 2013

Setting screen orientations in iOS

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Recently I started a project which required an iOS app to be locked in landscape orientation. The method mentioned below was always the standard for locking/setting the orientation, but iOS 6 deprecated this method. This post will show and explain some other options that I came across when investigating alternative options for locking the screen.
[code language=”javascript”]
[[UIDevice currentDevice] setOrientation:UIInterfaceOrientationLandscapeRight];
[/code]

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August 2, 2013

In search of a better Image Optimizer

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Web users never like to wait for a website to load. As a software company, a long wait time can result in losing potential clients. One of the tricks that can speed up the loading of your website is the optimization of your images. There are several free tools that you can use for this. Here are five that I recommend.

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posted

May 16, 2013

The basics of Cocos2d

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Recently I started work on an iOS game. I decided not to use the Core Animations framework provided by Apple and instead experiment with some third party game engines. I chose Cocos2D as it is an all in one package. It gives you the ability to add and control sprites, add cool graphics and animations, access to a sound engine and also 2 physics libraries.

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posted

April 8, 2013

Create an HTML Signature Including Image Links in Mac Mail (OS10.8)

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You might imagine that this subject would be rather straight forward and hardly worthy of an article of any sort.  Unfortunately, you would indeed be imagining.  Adding an HTML signature to Mac Mail is not as simple as pasting the html directly into the signature field of the client like in Gmail or Outlook.  With Apple Mail pasting HTML or images directly into the signature field just doesn’t work very well. In fact, the process for setting an html signature with images in mac Mail is remarkably un-Mac-like.

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April 4, 2013

Keeping up with web trends.

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Being a designer in the tech/web industry, it is very important for me to stay up to date with trends. If you are new to the industry, you might be overwhelmed by the amount of information you find on the Internet.

I would like to share with you a handful of websites I frequently visit to learn as well as to find inspiration.

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posted

March 27, 2013

Ex2d: A helpful plugin for Unity3D

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A lightweight plugin for Unity.

Our most recent in house project was a fun children’s game called Whack Attack, and was built with Unity 3D and released for iPhones and android devices.  Unity is a great tool, but it is definitely (and obviously) more geared for game crafting in the third dimension.  Our game deals mostly with two dimensional sprites, although they are set in a pseudo 3d environment to attain some basic perspective.

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posted

March 19, 2013

You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want ~ Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch

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The Mystical 9 patch

You Do What Android Want = Android Do What You Want
Part 1: The Mystical 9-Patch

I recently encountered some blank stares from some colleagues regarding certain aspects of the 9-patch.

Granted, there doesn’t seem to be all that much documentation out there explaining the ins and outs of nine patch, possibly adding to the mystique, but then again, maybe there isn’t all that much to explain.

Here I’ll outline the basics of the 9-patch, and you can comment as to whether it indeed makes simple sense… or instead, communicate your own blank stare with some scathing criticism below in the comments section.

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posted

December 12, 2012

Creating Custom stencils for Omnigraffle ( the right way )

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Recently I have been using Omnigraffle for creating wireframes. I like using Omnigraffle because it offers a lot of flexibility in terms of styling the wireframes, while being quite simple to use.

Another great thing about Omnigraffle is the Graffletopia stencil library. This extensive resource includes many commonly used design elements and icons – you can download it from http://www.graffletopia.com.

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posted

November 6, 2012

Turn Your Macbook into a Blender

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A decade or so ago the idea of running a full 3D software suite on a mac laptop was pretty much unheard of. Processor speed and memory were the greatest obstacles, and the aggregate of 3D software for the Macintosh platform was rather limited, as well as expensive.

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April 9, 2012

Grio Comic :)

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In this week post I decided to do something a little different. Being a designer, I am used to drawing more than writing. So, here I am drawing. . . I hope you guys enjoy.

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