Hey y’all, I am back from my vacation (it was great! thanks for asking), but I have been knee deep in projects since I got back (hence the lack of updates).
However, the good news is I am working on some stuff that should yield some sweet tutorials once I figure out how to do it myself.
Again, sorry for the lack of goodies. I will be back on it soon.
So, Sunday I leave on my cruise…
I can’t tell you how excited I am. Its the first vacation my wife and I have had for about 3 years, and it is the first time we have left the little one in the arms of the grandparents (I love grandparents!).
So in that vein, here are some t-shirts that revolve in some way shape or form with “cruise”.
Ok, this shirt is a bit cheesy, but it pretty much sums up how I have been feeling for the last couple of weeks. 
When I was a kid, there was no one cooler than Maverick. I mean seriously…my brother and I must have spent hours perfecting the Maverick/Goose handslap.
“I feel the need…”
Now it is so cheesy, I can’t even finish the phrase. Who knew that Maverick would one day go from wingman to couch jumping weirdo?
This one was just too good to pass up…and it is oddly appropriate.
See y’all in a week.
Ok, so yesterday I detailed the slog I went through to reach the final design of my development firm’s website.
Today the goal is to perform the breakdown of why I believe the site works as a portfolio site.
Now, I know what you are thinking. “Dave, you are completely biased because this is your own site!” And, of course, if you are thinking this, then be completely and utterly correct. The goal of this is not to say how great I am (if that was the point, then this would be a really short article), but rather to go a little deeper into the design than I would normally be able to because I happen to know the designer. Also as we meander through the site, I will break down the essentials of the portfolio site and give a few pointers I have picked up along the way on how to do it right.
So with that…lets dig in. Read the rest of this entry »
Ok, so if you have read the about page you know I run a small web development firm called Visionary Online. Basically it is what I do all of my freelancing through right now, but I have bigger goals for it in the future.
I founded this company when the tech bubble exploded in 2002 - 2003 and I got laid off from the software development firm I was working for (Enron didn’t help either since the company was in Houston). The goal was to see if I could do the “freelance thing” full time.
Since everything tech-related was about as popular as leprosy, this probably wasn’t the best idea I have ever had. However, I did work on some great projects and got some invaluable experience before I was forced to “get a real job” and move to Florida.
Over the years the site has gone through several interations…some good….some bad. Thanks to the Wayback Machine you can see some of the iterations (2003-2004). The last iteration was done quickly when I was changing jobs…I was never really proud of it, but it was better than nothing (the wayback machine doesn’t have that version for some reason, but it basically looked like this).
So being 2007…it was time to do a redesign. Simple right? Well, as anyone who has their own portfolio site knows…it always ends up taking a lot more time than you think it will… Read the rest of this entry »
So our friends at Freelance Switch are running their The First Annual Global Freelancer Survey for 2007.
So if you are a freelancer, check it out. The cool thing is they promise to give the results to all the takers plus you might win a Wii.
I want a wii…
Now here is something interesting. ClickHeat is a free tool that you can install on your own server to track where your users are clicking on your sites.
Now for a blog, this is a no brainer (assuming your host will allow it to be installed) because you always want to see where your traffic is for ads or even just to know where the best place to put your articles are. However, thinking bigger, this could be a valuable tool for just about any website.
Most people design in a vacuum. In other words, they build something they like…the client sees it, thinks it is the greatest thing since Elvis, and you put it online. The customer never sees it until it is live. What if they don’t like it? What if they are focusing on a different part of the site than you expected them too?
If you use a tool like ClickHeat, then you can see what is working and what isn’t and make the adjustments that make the most sense. Sounds good to me.
Now this isn’t the only tool out there that does this sort of thing. Crazy Egg does something very similar, except they do it online and it has a price tag once your site is rockin’ (over 5,000 hits in a given time period).
Diligint is another option. This one isn’t free either (it costs a one time $67), but it is installed on your server just like ClickHeat.
Whichever way you go, knowing what your users are doing is always helpful. If you can do that for free, then all the better.
The good folks at Warpspire have spent a few days with the YUI and they (or rather he) was not all that impressed.
I have written about the Yahoo Interface Library in the past so I was interested in what he had to say about it.
Overall, I think Kyle gives a thoughtful argument and it definitely appears that he has gone more in depth with the framework than I have. However, in his review he gives the YUI a serious kick in the nuts. And while I am usually for a swift nut kickin’ when it is called for, I didn’t think it was warranted here.
In my experience, the YUI has always been a pretty cool framework to work with, so in an effort to stand up for it, I decided to “critique the critique”.
So here is my take on his take… Read the rest of this entry »
Here I was minding my own business wandering around the web when BAM! Ajaxian smacks me with a new framework called Responder. Since I love me some frameworks, I had to go and see what this one was all about.
Basically Responder a javascript framework that is a very clean way to develop things like an in place editor. It combines everyday HTML, CSS, and custom javascript to enable you to do things on the page. When you see the demo on the link at the top you will get a feel for what I am talking about. It just feels…clean.
Not the most technical way of describing it…here is a better description from the author:
Responder aims to help you be more productive in front-end programming that shares in the same kind of ‘good design’ practices that we expect on the back-end; in the same way that we think about models, templates and controllers when writing a web application, we need to have an effective and consistent path to follow when building the user interface.
The author hooks it into Ruby on Rails, but since it is pure javascript, it can be used with any server-side language like PHP, or .NET.
Definitely something I would like to try out on my next project. Let me know if you give it a whirl.
Its been a while since I have done a T-shirt Friday…which is a shame because it is pretty much a direct correlation…if I am not writing T-shirt Friday posts, then I have probably not been perusing any t-shirts. No bueno.
This week is different though. I found this shirt on Threadless, and I think the creativity is great (which is what I think sets Threadless apart from the other companies out there).
It also is good timing because of all the Batman buzz that is flying around (no pun intended). I am as excited about a good batman movie as anyone, but Heath Ledger as the joker? Hmmm…
Course I am biased because I have never been much of a fan…but I digress.
So on the site I am working on, I need some popups. I have used Lightbox before and it works wonderfully, but I wanted to try something new this time. Since I was already knee-deep in the ASP.NET Ajax framework, I figured I might as well try their ModalPopupExtender and see how that works.
Its pretty simple to get a popup to show up, but I wanted something a little prettier than the standard format of a big rectangle. Maybe some rounded corners? As it just so happens…there is a RoundedCornersExtender in the toolkit. So I figured if I put those two together I would get one sexy popup. It wasn’t quite that simple…
