A List Apart conducted a survey for web design professionals. According to A List Apart the findings they presented on the survey have never been seen before, because until now, no one has ever conducted public research to learn the facts of our profession. Visit Findings From the Web Design Survey to download their survey. I myself took this survey and was curious about their findings. Over 33,000 responses were collected for this survey.
I have been reading like crazy lately. I have just acquired a thirst for knowledge like I have never had before. Soon I will be adding a currently reading section on my blog and also list books I have read and recommend. From time to time I will also give my review on a book that I have read.
The book I just finished was Mobile Web Design Book which is an e-book written by Cameron Moll. The book recently became available in print.
The book was an easy read and Cameron made it easy to understand with pictures of different phones that were being tested. I never really learned to read and get the books with pictures anyways 
When I bought the e-book I initially thought that I was going to receive loads of code information I needed to get on my way. Though there was plenty of helpful code information, the book was something more than I expected. It is about a way of thinking. I tend to ask the question “Who is your target audience?” when I am dealing with clients and the same has to be asked of mobile users. Who are these mobile users? How will they be accessing the mobile web? and for what? Questions like these came up in the back of my head as I read through Cameron’s book and his book helped make that connection. One example that Cameron pointed out was that a mobile web user is more than likely holding coffee in one hand and his phone in the other to access the web. Now what information do you want to give that person? My answer is something quick, efficient and relative.
I don’t want to give too much information about the book. It was a great read and worth the money spent $19.00. If you do web design or if your company is looking to go mobile this book will help the way you think and gives you some code insight.
Resizing images can be daunting. We provide a content management system for mostly every website we do. The content management system completed now is just version 1.0 and we are starting the works on version 2.0.
One of the things we train our clients is the resizing of photos. When you upload a 2000px wide photo and only mess with the dimensions, it still loads as a 2000px wide photo. The picture needs to be resized at the dimension that it will be used at. Most of the time we suggested using a program called IfranView. Sometimes after coaching a client over at their office or on the phone it was still a difficult program to grasp. I usually use Photoshop to resize my images but I don’t expect the client to have such a program. IfranView is free but can be difficult to understand if you are not use to resizing images.
After talking with a client on the phone I did a quick google search and found about the easiest image resizer I have seen. After showing this to the client she thanked me for the find and I thought I should post it here for others to use as well. The name of the program is called Web Resizer. You upload the photo you want to resize, enter the dimensions you want it to be and it will even crop it for you.
The reason I like the crop function is because it is hard to explain to clients that you can’t just enter the exact dimensions on every photo because it will distort the image. A 10 px by 10 px photo can not be resized to 5px by 2px without looking funky. After uploading the image and processing the new size it will give you a link to download the new image. This is a great free easy to use image resizer and is worth bookmarking or noting.
A friend sent me this post and it about knocked me off my chair. If you do freelance work you will agree. Got to love the clients. Seriously I love you guys. Check out this post.
In between my son’s morning cartoons are commercial ads that tend to stick. When my son was about 3 years he referred to McDonald’s as “Papa I love you”. The reason he would call it this is because at the end of every commercial was the chant “Bop Bop I’m Loving It”. When I want Arby’s I tell my wife “Uhm, I’m thinking Arby’s“. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard “Can you hear me now… Good!” when a call would drop (Verizon). The funny thing about that one is that the people who are late getting it are still killing that joke. I came across an interesting study about how kid’s react to marketing and branding. If you wrap healthy food in a McDonald’s wrapper kids are more likely to eat it. Study is posted below:
Study: Food in McDonald’s wrapper tastes better to kids
My thoughts “You control what your kid’s eat, get over it and by the way GREAT MARKETING!”
I was going to do a tutorial on how I did my own Wordpress Theme. But I will just point you to the right spot instead. The guys over at Urban Giraffe did a great job at explaining everything that it was hard to get lost.
Dissection of a WordPress theme: Part 1
I will blog soon on how I take a photoshop web design and convert it over to css web based design intstead.
I was meeting with a client for a website. Content seems to always be the holdup when it comes to launching the site. Most of these people are in a hurry and we skip the homework we should have done before a site can began to take ground (The Information Architecture, post on this soon to come). When I asked them to show me their content they gave me a stack of papers from a competitor’s website that were printed. I pulled my hands back and did not want to touch them. We were creative enough to come up with our own content in the end. Found this article on the web by Smashing Magazine.
Copyright Explained (link to article)
Bookmark their site they always have great in depth articles.