Michael Rohde

If you want to create your own Joomla! template from scratch, you need to download and install the latest version of Joomla!, most preferably to your localhost. There are a few reasons to do this. First, you need to have Joomla! installed so you can see what you’re creating. When you design your template files […]

HTML5 video looks like the future but Adobe’s Flash is still the de facto for presenting video on websites. Adobe doesn’t want to be left behind when the world eventually moves past Flash and embraces new standards. After all, if you’re not growing and evolving, you’ll eventually be left behind and forgotten. This is especially […]

When you first start working with Joomla!, you’re likely to start with a pre-designed template. After searching through the thousands of choices out there, you probably found something that fits your needs–whether that be a real estate template, a news template or a basic blog setup. You could even find templates specifically designed for hotels […]

Working with CSS in Joomla! can be a bit daunting at first. But like anything new, after you study and learn the different aspects of it, you’ll be updating your CSS files with ease. To become familiar with Joomla! CSS files, it’s important to learn how they differ from the typical CSS layout that you […]

The Joomla! content management system can be as basic or as complicated as you want it to be. For most people, you start off with one of the templates provided as part of the installation. Then, you might branch off and start exploring third-party template clubs. Eventually, you’ll want to start customizing your site to […]

Hover effects are an effective way to let the visitor know their mouse is positioned over a button. Techniques in the past have included changing the color of the button or using opacity to diminish color. Recently, I learned from Tutorialize how to use CSS3 to create animated buttons. The tutorial that I learned from […]

Using CSS3 transforms to style the hCard microformat provides a powerful means to design your web pages while at the same time providing contact information that, according to Microformats Wiki, “enables applications to retrieve information directly from web pages without having to reference a separate file.” Transforms are made up of four different properties: translate […]

HTML5 is changing the landscape on how video is presented on web pages. New formats, codecs, screen sizes, devices and browsers are being developed on a continuous basis. What’s one to do? Do you follow Microsoft and continue coding for H.264? Or do you follow Google, Mozilla and Opera in the direction of WebM? The […]

You only have to look as far as Twitter’s relatively new interface to see that stylized text boxes are still a popular design choice for input fields and forms. When a visitor clicks on a form field, visual clues letting them know which box they are about to type in are handy and helpful effects. […]

I belong to a design group on LinkedIN and a while back someone posted a question asking what size do you design your web sites? That discussion grew to hundreds of responses, each one of them saying something different. There was some consensus among the majority of designers who stated that they design their pages […]

Last year I wrote a few CSS3 articles and lamented the fact that these cool graphical effects are rendered useless in Internet Explorer; at least until IE9 is officially launched. Then along came PIE (Progressive Internet Explorer), who made a valiant effort to make IE compatible with CSS3. One of the more widely used CSS3 […]

In 2008, WebKit–an open source project–introduced gradient support for CSS. Back then there were two types of gradient, linear and radial. The syntax follows: -webkit-gradient(, [, ]?, [, ]? [, ]*) That code has been simplified over the years through feedback from web authors. Currently, it has been expanded to include four types instead of […]