So I’ve been sat on this project for a few months now, with all sorts of important and pointless activities distracting me from launching these sites. This did however mean I didn’t rush the projects to launch and find myself with two broken websites that quickly needed putting right (although that may yet happen).

The sites are When is Mother’s Day and When is Father’s Day Continue reading “When is Mother’s Day?” »

After a pretty frantic and awesome bank holiday weekend I’ve decided to show off a little teaser of the two sites I’ve been developing for the past couple of months. Continue reading “Personal Project: Teaser” »

Last year I decided I would create a WordPress theme as a little personal project to do. This lasted for all of a couple of weeks. My main problem I was trying to create a theme that would be flexible enough for a wide range of users. Thinking this way just drove me nuts and I wasn’t able to create a design that I thought could suit this goal. So the project started to drift. Continue reading “Personal Project: An Update” »

The other week I attended the Future of Web Design conference and must admit to having come away a little disappointed. Personally I think there were mistakes made by both the organisers and the speakers that resulting in a conference weaker than the one I attended last year.

Registration

Due to late attendees last year and subsequent queuing the registration period was extended by an hour this year. For early arrivals this meant a fair amount of time waiting around as well as a reduction in the overall time for the conference by an hour. Given the costs involved in attending conferences you hope to have as much time as possible listening to the speakers. I’m of the opinion that if you’re late then you miss out and you should have arrived earlier. Continue reading “Future of Web Design 2009″ »

Early this year we were approached by the guys behind www.floorheatingonline.com who are specialists in Underfloor Heating to design, build and optimise their website. A couple of weeks ago the site went live.

From a design stand point the website provided little room for experimentation or innovation but then for heating products you don’t need this. These products are not luxury items or impulse buys so when someone visits the website they need to be able to find and buy a product as quickly and simply as possible. To ensure the website does this we removed the need to register in order to buy, simplified the navigation and rebuilt the Room Selector present on the old website. Continue reading “Website: Floor Heating Online” »

Tomorrow I’ll be taking the forever long trip down the East Coast mainline from sunny Yorkshire to London for the Future of Web Design 2009 conference on Thursday.

Following last year’s conference I was straight in when it came to getting tickets for this year’s conference. Although this year I’m not attending the workshop day as I did last year I am massively looking forward to the conference day and the couple of extra days hanging around the capital. Continue reading “Future of Web Design 2009: The Beginning” »

One of the issues many web designers face is that of the limited number of web safe fonts that can be used to display standard text. Now Cufón has entered the game are we a step closer to a new world of web typography.

Previously the only method of using a wide range of fonts on the web was to use image replacement. This however can be time consuming, difficult to maintain and bad for SEO, especially if used for all the text in a website. Over a year ago I came across Sifr as a more workable solution but found it to have a number of downsides mainly to do with its dependence on Flash and its inexplicable ability to resize text depending on the size of containing elements. All this frustrated me, limiting the situations I felt comfortable in using it. Continue reading “Cufon” »

The final version of Internet Explorer was launched on March 20th and yet a month has not even passed and it has been announced that the browser will be made available as an automatic update. Of course web developers around the world are rejoicing as this seemingly marks a move towards a simpler life with a more standards compliant IE. But it’s not all so simple. Continue reading “IE8 Automatic Update” »

Today I managed to pick up the first issue of the new Wired UK magazine that launched on April 2nd. Essentially it’s the same as the US version but run by Brits with content and adverts tailored primarily for a UK audience. When hearing that Wired would be crossing the pond I must admit I was concerned about how different the magazine would be from the US version.

The design of Wired has always been very unique compared to other UK magazines using a rough matt cover and being very design focused from cover to cover. Although I’ve yet to start reading the magazine it seems all these seem intact, but one thing concerns me at the moment. Continue reading “Wired UK” »

Recently a few things have made me reflect on my working life one of these being my good friend Scott Mallinson’s re-entry into the full-time working community as well as Becky Naylor’s (my boss) new blog where she’s been writing about her experiences of running Bronco.

When you speak to people about work you seem to get a large percentage driven by the salary they earn or some by how enjoyable their job is. Unfortunately you can’t measure happiness so a person’s salary can become a marker for a person’s success. When asked about my salary I’m fairly forward about what I earn, and at times am met with the response ‘I earn more than that’. I know there are people doing a similar job to me that earn more and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that a higher salary is tempting. However when I think of what I’ve got at Bronco I realise how lucky I am, and that to get the same elsewhere would be difficult. Continue reading “My working life” »