Have you ever felt the need for holding an embedded image inside an HTML file, without referring to an external image file? Personally I felt like so many occasions, where the need for a completely self contained HTML page, with all its supporting images embedded within that page itself. This may seem pointless in normal situations, but it can prove very useful when we want to make a standalone page, that we can pass on to other people. We give them just one HTML file. They do not even need to unpack anything, they can simply open the file in their browser, and all the images and embedded objects are immediately displayed. They can do this even without an internet connection.

Below you can see two images first one is included in the traditional way by referring to an external file, and the later by using data URI.

          

Try right-clicking the above images and check the file location in the properties panel. You can see the difference.

With Data URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers) we can easily do this.

What is Data URI Scheme?

Data URI scheme defined in IETF standard RFC 2397, as an URI scheme that allows inclusion of small data items inline, as if they were being referenced to as an external resource. They tend to be far simpler than alternative inclusion methods, such as MIME with cid: or mid: As per the wording in the RFC, data: URIs are in fact URLs, although they do not actually locate anything. Read the rest of this entry »

I am really happy to present my first FREE icon set here, which was actually created to use in my personal blog, but later I have decided to share it online. There are total 18 social media icons including twitter, facebook, linkedin, orkut, myspace etc… and it comes in two sizes of transparent PNG 24-bit format. The photoshop source file (PSD) is also included, so that you can modify and create different versions if required. And they are all free, of course

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Finally! I am done with my blog design. Now I realized the fact that, the toughest task any web designer can take on is ‘designing his own website’.

I have been thinking about starting a personal blog or portfolio for quite long, may be for the last 3 or 4 years. Finally, I have registered my own domain name 4 months back. Thanks to yahoo-geocities for closing their brilliant free web-hosting service, bcoz its after reading geocite’s closure email alert, I started thinking seriously about registering a domain name and starting a blog ASAP. Bcoz its really painful to realize that I am gonna loose my online personal identity which has been silently helping me from behind throughout my personal and professional careers for more than 8 years till now. And after all it’s Aravind, the highly talented young web 2.0 guy who explained to me the vast capabilities of wordpress as a CMS, and now after trying it out, I understand that wordpress is more than just a blogging tool, simply superb!

For the last four months I have been burning all my late-night energy and bandwidth to make my blog design pleasing to myself. I tried almost all color schemes, all possible layout options, but I never get pleased with the outcome. I keep on changing the design every now and then all these days. All that I wanted was a website which is visually appealing, user-friendly, simple & fast loading. I don’t know why I am going through such a dreaded creative block in this case alone. May be because my approach was too much emotional here.

Anyway, at last I have decided to compromise on some of my design ideas and to make the site live as early as possible, and I hope it will soon get evolved as my dream design.