Archive for the ‘website design’ Category

One Less Reason To Hate Flash?

Posted by Eric on July 2, 2008  |   3 Comments »

As some of you may know, Adobe just recently announced that Google and Yahoo will now finally be able to index flash files (read press release).  So, I was thinking about this and reading about this just recently.

Ran across this quote:

“As anyone who has had the pleasure of doing web design and development through marketing agencies knows, Flash tends to be wildly popular among clients and wildly unpopular among, well, pretty much everyone else.”  (from ars technica)

I loved the quote and I think it is basically true.  Flash is really loved by designers in hip marketing agencies (I know of a couple in my area – Fort Wayne).  But, just about everyone else hates it.  Why?  

  1. It’s slow – I HATE that – please wait – loading – bar that shows up on Flash sites – I usually leave
  2. It’s violates “normal” navigation and usability standards.  It’s flexibility is one of it’s weaknesses.  It allows designers to put navigation anywhere – breaking all normal conventions.  Making us wonder – just what does this do?  I wonder where the navigation is on this page – I usually just leave
  3. It has to be updated by a designer.  Need to change text in a flash site?  Great – hire the designer.  There really aren’t any good Content Management Systems for flash – no way to have authors, editors, etc.
  4. It’s not searchable – If you want a cool looking site, great – go with Flash.  But if you want visitors, go with something else.
But, no number 4 is no longer an issue.  My worry is that it will just encourage people to make bad use of what is a nice technology – just not for developing sites.

Making The Admin Better…

Posted by Eric on April 6, 2008  |   No Comments »

I really love working with WordPress. I’ve been using it for quite a while now for clients. I think it gives one of the easiest, cleanest interfaces for Content Management.

But, I’ve always thought that the admin interface was kind of boring.

Now, I’ve found a list of admin interfaces that jazz up the boring old interface quite a bit.

Here’s the link (with 9 different admin plug-ins):

http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2007/12/28/9-wordpress-admin-themes/

My personal favorite is the NiceAdmin (http://www.douglaskarr.com/projects/niceadmin/).

This new admin coupled with the Admin Drop Down (http://planetozh.com/blog/2008/04/admin-drop-down-menu-202/), make a great interface.

I think the admin drop down is almost a must have – it creates exactly what it says – admin drop down menus. So you have to do half as much clicking.

I want Sandy…

Posted by Eric on February 24, 2008  |   No Comments »

I just signed up for a new service that I find really, really interesting. It’s at iwantsandy.com.

Basically, it’s a personal e-mail assistant. I can e-mail things that I need to keep track of, reminders, to-do’s, etc. and Sandy will remind me of them.

It’s great for things that don’t really fit into the calendar time slots or the normal to do sort of things. For things that you want to remember, but you don’t want to fill up your calendar or to do with, I Want Sandy is the perfect solution.

I’ve just started using it – sort of testing it out.

All I do is send an e-mail to a special address set up for me. The e-mail may say something like this: “Print Flight Confirmation tomorrow”. Then Sandy will send me an e-mail reminder tomorrow – at 5:00 AM (the time I picked to send me information that does not have a time tagged to it). Or, I can e-mail “Print Flight Confirmation Tomorrow at 5:00 PM”. Sandy the will send me an e-mail reminder at 4:45 PM to remind me to print out the confirmation.

It can also do reminders via text message if that is more to your liking.

Finally, in another awesome integration – it has two more features I haven’t explored yet.

1. It can integrate with Jott.com – another service I use. This means I can use my cell phone to call in reminders, then Sandy will grab the info and e-mail it at the appropriate time. Very cool!

2. It can also provide an iCalendar feed that you can subscribe to via Apple’s iCal or Outlook.

http://iwantsandy.com

WordPress Conditional Tags

Posted by Eric on February 7, 2008  |   No Comments »

Just reading through this article to learn a great deal more about conditional tags. Some great stuff. Conditional tags really give us the ability to put on dynamic content, titles, queries, etc…

All the stuff that makes the web site work.

http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/wordpress-theme-hacks/

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