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About Thomas Lewis

Thomas Lewis is a Developer & Designer Evangelist for Microsoft Canada. Although originally from the US, he is learning quickly the ways of Canada. He brings a passion for HTML5, CSS3, horror movies, death metal and coffee. He also uses the term "brutal" a lot, but don't worry, its a good thing.
Author Archive | Thomas Lewis
April 8

Why Are My Design Skills Weaksauce?

By on April 8, 2013 in Uncategorized

There is not a day that goes by while perusing the Internet and all its glory (ok, excluding all the haters, trolls and evil) that I find something really well-designed and think to myself: “Why are my design skills so weaksauce?” I see amazing websites and apps that really nail the design and when I [...]

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March 18

The Role of Grids in Web Design and Beyond

By on March 18, 2013 in Uncategorized

Have you ever seen a printed flyer, or a confusingly aligned web page or an app that just looks… off? More than likely it was due to the fact that the creator didn’t apply a fundamental of design called the grid. Grids are a effective way of aligning elements such as text and images on [...]

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October 15

Ignoring UX Guidelines at your own peril

By on October 15, 2012 in Featured

The Situation It is not unusual for me to talk to people about the Windows Store apps they are building. These meetings are one of the best parts of the job as a Technical Evangelist. I am usually asked to give my thoughts and opinions about their apps. The challenge is that many times I [...]

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September 10

Getting Paid In Full Like Eric B. & Rakim with Windows 8

By on September 10, 2012 in Featured

Back in 1987, I was just a shorty just trying to get mine. I threw a CD in the player (we did that back then) and Eric B. & Rakim laid out the beats on getting Paid in Full. At the time, that album was the benchmark of golden age hip hop. But it spoke [...]

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February 7

Common Patterns of Markup and Style–Introducing Pears

By on February 7, 2012 in Uncategorized

At An Event Apart in Atlanta yesterday, Dan Cederholm announced the availability of Pears. If you are not familiar with Dan, you might be familiar with the cool design preview site called Dribbble. Pears is an open source WordPress theme that allows you to easily post HTML and CSS so that you can create a [...]

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January 9

Tyranny of the OR

By on January 9, 2012 in Geek Speak

Back in the day when I thought I knew everything, it was easy to make sweeping declarations such as: technology x is way better than y only real programmers use x x is much better because it has feature z that y does not WHAT’S WRONG WITH THAT So one day when I thought I [...]

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