Sharpening the Blades: Firebug and Landing Pages
Master Sensei,on the topic of  Browsers, Business, Design, Tools, Usability, Web Development
11.08.2011   |   0comment

Chad, Firebug Guide for Web Designers
Firebug is one of the most common developer tools used out there. I know that for me it is something I use to try to discover what is going on with a clients site and try to give some insight to the developer to fix it. So last week I came across a great article that gives a good introduction to using firebug.

Mark, Your Landing Page Sucks!
When we do our planning here at Code Greene we always wait until the end to do the homepage with our clients. The homepage of any website in my opinion is often the very most important page of the site. The homepage acts sort of like the grand unification of the website. I see the purpose of the homepage is to be a place that user’s initial reaction is “oh this is a good site” and secondly its used to point them to the most important parts of the site. In some cases a site can be really flat and the homepage  or landing page may do almost all the work of the site, in those cases it has to be perfect. Recently I saw an article on landing pages and thought it further delved into some good examples. Check it out and rethink your homepage or landing page if it sucks.

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Internet Explorer Drops Below 50 Percent Market Share…So What
Chad,on the topic of  Browsers, Web Development
11.04.2011   |   1comment

I remember when surfing the web consisted of either using Netscape or Internet Explorer. Those that were new used “AOL” and the great joke was that at least I used a browser that supported JavaScript. Oh how the times have changed, and they have changed for the better. The tools we use today to build websites are better, more powerful, and are built to accommodate what the public wants. With better and more powerful tools to build websites, the browsers have to keep up and for the most part they have.

When I heard the news that IE has dropped just below 50 percent market share on the desktops, I reflected on when I started to develop for the web. When I started web development seriously, I was working for the Davis School District in Utah. We were required to use IE5, but when IE5.5 came out I was so excited. So hearing this news brought back memories (some good and some bad). continue reading “Internet Explorer Drops Below 50 Percent Market Share…So What”

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Recent Work: Pan Am
Tim,on the topic of  Magento, News, Portfolio, Web Development
10.31.2011   |   0comment

Pan Am Category Landing PageMost of the sites we work on are already existing and we spice them up and make them more modern. However, every now and then we get to build a site from the ground up such as one of our newest projects, Pan Am.

It’s not everyday we get to work for a high-profile client such as Pan Am, but Keathley Ad, who did the design, came to us and wanted to test our Magento skills and we were up to the challenge.

continue reading “Recent Work: Pan Am”

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Sharpening the Blades: Client Relations and Steve Jobs
Master Sensei,on the topic of  Design, Project Management, Web Development
10.18.2011   |   0comment

The Sharpening the Blades series is back! Every week, we will provide articles that we have found useful to help us improve our skills.

North Temple BlogLuke – “Find the Twin Sumo” or “No, Your Client is Not an Idiot”
This is an article I need to read often to remind myself to calm down when going back and forth with clients about design. The North Temple clan put a great analogy on the process of working with a client to create a great design. I think the strategy that they propose is something that many designers know and understand, however knowing what you should do when working with a client and putting that knowledge to practice can sometimes be difficult. Give their article a read and apply what they propose next time you are designing for a client.

Unmatched - Steve Jobs, SupermanChad – Steve Jobs, Superman
With the passing of Steve Jobs lately it seems that the every article is about him. I have learned more about him and his style. He was truly an amazing man. I like this article for multiple reasons. With all the articles out there this one is powerful and short. It also highlights other people not just Steve. But at the end of the article you realize just how powerful of a man he was.

What have you been reading lately?

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Recent Work: Inside Out
Tim,on the topic of  Business, Portfolio, Usability, Web Development
08.09.2011   |   0comment

Inside Out is a interior design firm who researches, designs and executes amazing plans, transforming old school space into hip, modern environments. We partnered with Saxton Horne who is always on the cutting edge, pushing the envelope of what modern browsers can handle.

Saxton Horne came up with the design and user interface, opting to go with a one page site that scrolled vertically. A sticky left navigation helps users get to where they need to go. The Work section displays the latest spaces that have been transformed. It utilizes a hover state and jQuery toggler to open and close the section of content, allowing for a compact portfolio that gives the user only what they want to see.

The Product section utilizes more jQuery to shuffle through some of the products Inside Out uses when they develop a new space. A simple About Us infographic and a simple Staff section, followed by a blog complete the overall user experience.

A footer with a Google Map and social media links round out the site. In just a few moments, a user knows everything they need to with excessive clicking or page views.

 

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Sharpening the Blades: Useful Tweets
Tim,on the topic of  Browsers, CakePHP, PHP, Web Development
09.03.2010   |   0comment

Below are some tweets that I have seen recently that I have found to be helpful.

Smashing Magazine – HTML5/CSS3 Cheatsheet – http://bit.ly/aj0yfA

Ben Ludman – URL shorteners and CakePHP – Snook.ca http://bit.ly/btTmSP

And this site – HTML5 Doctor – I couldn’t track down the tweet that I found it from, but it is a great resource for HTML5.

I looked for some tweets about Magento, but just couldn’t find any that were appealing.

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Sharpening the Blades: Redesign v. Realign and Better Buttons with CSS3
Master Sensei,on the topic of  Browsers, Design, Usability, Web Development
06.01.2010   |   0comment

After some time off, the Sharpening the Blades series is back with two front-end/design articles.

Luke, Redesign v. Realign
I really liked this article. As designers when we are approached by a client we always start to redesign their project. Sometimes all they want is a realign though. This article defines what a redesign is and what a realign is. The way each is approached is different and when they are followed I think it will lead to more happy clients. The hard part is defining when each is needed. This article will help with that. Web designers give this a read.

Mike, Better Buttons with CSS3
With better browser support, CSS3 is finally starting to get some traction. While IE is still emerging from the dark ages, there’s no reason we can’t start using CSS3. Web Designer Wall recently published an article on creating web buttons with nothing more than CSS. Even though rounded corners, gradients, text shadows, and box shadows aren’t all supported, your buttons will look fantastic for browsers that do, and perfectly usable for the ones that don’t.

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Magento and Stackable Hosting
Master Sensei,on the topic of  Business, Project Management, Tools, Web Development
04.29.2010   |   0comment

Alley-way neighbor, Xmission, wrote a nice little post about Magento and one of their hosting products, Stackable, and happened to mention our CTO, Mac.

Check it out here: Magento and Stackable Hosting, A Perfect Fit!

We have run a couple of installs on Stackable and it truly is a great product. If you haven’t already, check out our Magento specific site – Magento Mavens

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hackUTOS – A Code Festival
Master Sensei,on the topic of  Business, Food, Fun, Linux, MySQL, PHP, Tools, Web Development
04.16.2010   |   0comment

A friend of ours sent us an email with some information about a cool event coming up called hackUTOS – A Code Festival. It looks pretty cool and it will be interesting to see what kind of things can be hacked and created at this event.

For more information:

Event Website
Facebook Event Page

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Sharpening the Blades: Future of Web Typography, Helpful jQuery Methods, April Fools – PHP Style
Master Sensei,on the topic of  Fun, jQuery, PHP, Tools, Usability, Web Development
04.01.2010   |   0comment

This April Fools edition of Sharpening the Blades only has two serious articles and we’ll let you decide on the last one. Luke talks about the Future of Web Typography, Benjam talks about jQuery Methods and Mac, well, Mac is the playful one at the office so he chimes in with his April Fools joke for all you PHP gurus.

Luke, Future of Web Typography
For years typography on the web has been very limited when compared to what can be in the print world. Over the last few years though we have been given more and more tools to help us accomplish good typography on the web. As time goes on these tools will get better and will become more widely supported. There was an article on Smashing Magazine this week that talked about a lot of these tools that are available to web designers. I really enjoyed reading up, refreshing my memory of code I haven’t used in a while, and also learning some new ways of styling type. Read it over, the text on your website will be very happy you did.

Benjam, 20 Helpful jQuery Methods You Should Be Using
While developing a website, I use a lot of tools, both in the creation of the website files (my text editor of choice, file manager, etc.), and within the website itself (CakePHP, jQuery, CSS, etc.), and I’m always interested in finding features of those tools that I might not be very familiar with.  While I have a deep familiarity with the features I use regularly, and a passing familiarity with most of the features of these tools, it’s always good to get a refresher on what I could be using more.  Here is a post highlighting 20 jQuery methods/features (actually 33 methods in 20 groups) that should be in everybody’s familiarity tool box.

Mac, April Fools – PHP Style
This discusses a topic that we often only think about once or twice a year, but it is still worthy of our attention and deserves some practice to improve our skills. Also, while you are there, subscribe to the PHP Developers feed. The main guy, Chris Cornutt, does an excellent job of filtering the best PHP articles.

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