Articulated

New Fave

I’ve been working on updates to the design of this blog. I recently sat down and thought about the design and finished (at least, in Photoshop) the unfinished parts. Now I just have to deal with the implementation. That’s been tricky. I’m still learning about WordPress and the design I am using is not the most developer-friendly design I could create.

During my evening marathon session of debugging and testing, I came across the blog of the ScriptyGoddess, who showed me how I might customize the search form for my WordPress theme. Turns out, this blog holds a wealth of front-end developer information. One of the more recent posts actually might come in handy in a week or two when I have to develop a website for a television program. Anyway, I know I’ll be referring back to this in the future.

Meanwhile, I have a few more things to implement before the design of this thing is finished. Then, I can move along to some of my other projects.

Struggle

I finally broke open my fresh copy of Adobe Flash CS4 as I begin the process of setting up my website. Normally I am able to quickly work with an update of a software application. The new versions of Photoshop and Illustrator were easy to begin using. The process of adapting to the new interface was quick. After 36 hours of puzzling over both the editor interface and ActionScript version 3 (which I am going to attempt to learn) I realize now that this is not going to be quick or easy. Flash CS4 is a paradigm shift. While many of the familiar interface components have been preserved for the sake of existing users, there are many new ways of working with the system that all users will have to adapt to. There are many new features that will probably be familiar to people who use Adobe After Effects. However, it’s been some time since I had an opportunity to use that.

I am going to need some help. I may want to consult a couple of books, since the built-in Adobe help files have been less than helpful. I finally found one resource which looks to be a pretty good primer for ActionScript CS3: A custom classes tutorial by Christian Cenizal. I may also want to purchase or borrow an O’Reilly book.

Into the Press

This is my first serious experience with WordPress. I have been impressed by some of the features and frustrated by others. When I first installed WordPress, (which is made amazingly simple by my web host, Dreamhost) I was concerned about what would happen with the posts I had on my existing blog on Google’s Blogger service. Fortunately, WordPress is able to import posts from a number of different blogging systems. All I needed to do was authorize WordPress to access my existing blog, and all of my posts were imported. So far, I have not seen any errors in the posts that were brought over. I had coded most of my Blogger posts, so that might have mitigated the potential for difficulties.

Settling on a design for the blog has been difficult. I didn’t want to go with the design I already had. It was made to be simple and effective but it was not terribly inspired. I don’t know that I’m very happy with the new design I have created, but at least there is a concept behind it. I use a blog to practice articulating my thoughts and opinions. I believe that ideas don’t truly condense until they are expressed. Expression, either spoken or “written” makes the amorphous mental energies take on a structured form. In this process, the person expressing the ideas has an opportunity to evaluate those thoughts from an external perspective. My concept, expressed in the typography of the title is about joining the disparate elements of thought.

Finding the information regarding WordPress templates that I needed to execute my design was a little bit difficult. The WordPress Codex is not nearly as bad as the awful Drupal documentation, but it is not the most user friendly resource. Eventually, I was able to identify most of the files I wanted to edit (these are in the wp-content folder under themes). Starting with the right default WordPress template definitely helps. I wanted something simple, so I began with the “Clean Home” template developed by Mid Mo Web Design. My design is not really similar, but their design had all the parts I wanted and none of the cruft. From there, it was simply a matter of throwing out their CSS and writing my own.

Along the way, I also had to edit some additional stuff, including the HTML for the default widgets and some of the WordPress template tags (specifically the calendar template tag). Those were more difficult to find, but the core WordPress files are mostly within the wp-includes folder. Digging through the PHP code (much of which I don’t understand) I can usually find the places where PHP generates HTML. For some reason, the people who wrote WordPress like to use European quotes (some of which look like small arrows) as directional icons. It irks me when someone does this (although I’ve done it before for clients) so I really wanted to remove them.

There is still a bit of work to do, but I am happy with my progress. One ambitious project is to create several different color schemes for the blog that can be randomly selected when a page is viewed. I went with a monotone color scheme – executed primarily with CSS – so I should be able to create several different color sets that can be applied using jQuery or MooTools. I also need to tweak the style of some of the post metadata and the sidebar blocks.

Moving

I have decided to move my blog from Google’s Blogspot. I am not unhappy with their site or service. Blogspot provides a very easy way to set up and publish a blog. They provide users the opportunity to customize the blog template, and there are a number of websites that provide attractive, free templates for blogs. However, as a web designer, I feel obligated to have a more personal blog. Blogspot is a great resource for people who do not have the resources or the skills to manage their own blog software. I possess these things – or rather, I should.

As such, I have decided to deploy WordPress on my personal website. WordPress is a very popular blogging and web publishing system. The company I work for produces blogs and complete websites for customers using WordPress as it is relatively easy to work with and provides adequate content management features for small websites. The software is well supported and has matured. I am writing this post right now in WordPress and am impressed by how nice the administrative interface looks and functions.

By managing my own WordPress installation, I hope to be able to publish a better blog. I also hope to learn more about the software so that I can more capably serve clients in the future. This should be an interesting project.

Survey says

Also posted online today are the results of A List Apart’s 2008 Web Design Survey. I remember contributing to this survey a while back. Since I’m in this field already, many of the numbers are not going to come as a surprise, but it is nice to get a snapshot of the state of the industry.

Fundraising

I don’t have any good reason for not blogging recently – only excuses. I’ve had several other things taking my attention and effort. The biggest thing has been my work on my interactive travel jounal. The preliminary content population is nearly complete. I’d say it’s about 85% finished. Once that task is complete, I can begin enhancing the content and developing the graphic design.

At work I’ve had a huge number of proposals to develop. That’s how it seems, anyway. The economy may be poor, but there is still work out there. Unfortunately, there is also a larger number of developers completing for the work. I’ve done some work trying to figure out different ways of presenting our services and qualifications. I’m learning ways to improve proposals not only from the repeated opportunities to practice but also from the RFPs themselves. Seeing what a potential client want in a proposal gives me ideas for how to formulate proposals for other projects.

In the process of researching information for my proposals, I came across two very interesting pieces of information. First is the name of the person who designed Barack Obama’s logo. The other is the name of the company that developed the community-building tools on the Obama campaign website. I found these things because the proposals I have been preparing are mostly for non-profit organizations that are involved in fundraising or community building activities. I have seen very few corporate RFPs lately.

Taxes

I don’t make a big issue about paying taxes. I really don’t mind. I understand the concept. There are certain things that individual persons or small groups are unable to do or fund with their own resources. As a country we pool our money so we can have interstates and national defense and power grids.

My issue is with the complexity. It seems like the system could be so much easier. It’s not as if the amount of money we make is a secret. The government has the ability to take money from our paychecks before we even receive them. The whole process of having to “file a tax form” with the IRS seems a bit redundant, and the forms themselves are complicated enough to support an entire seasonal industry of tax preparation specialists – not to mention an array of online and offline software tools. And my taxes aren’t even that complicated.

This year I used on of the online tax services. Here is an interesting study in interface design: how to make a very complex process simple to understand and easy to complete. For the most part, I’d have to say they did a very good job. Some companies have been doing this for a while, and it shows. Their user interface designs are attractive, easy to scan, and implemented with thoughtful touches that minimize common user mistakes.

Found online: a coworker sent me a link to this article about common usability design mistakes. These a basically “common sense” points, but it’s always good to be reminded.

Upgrades

I recently found time to update my personal typeface. It’s the typeface you see on this blog’s page title and post titles. It is also the primary typeface for my portfolio website and business cards. I first designed it in 2004 when… well, let’s just say I had a lot of time on my hands. While in grad school, I had the opportunity to revisit this typeface design as part of my thesis project. However, I didn’t have a chance to apply what I learned to the actual TrueType files. Now, finally, I have combined what I now know about typefaces with the spirit of my original design. I’m very pleased with the results. This website and my Haunts page both look significantly better. I am also in the process of converting my portfolio website design to the new typeface, and the results are (so far) very satisfying.

The other upgrade I made today was to use “sprites” in the implementation of both this blog template and my Haunts page. Sprites are covered very clearly in this article on A List Apart. I was first introduced to sprites by a fellow web developer and I am really beginning to understand their usefulness. The responsiveness of a web page can be improved by using this method.

Potpourri

My girlfriend has been growing fresh herbs. We literally have more herbs than we know what to do with. This requires a new approach to recipe searching. The result of my searching tends to be a set of recipes that, maybe a few years ago, I never would have made for lack of fresh herbs. For example, I plan to make this recipe for Chicken Tagine tomorrow. For those of you like me who do not know what tagine is, here is the answer from the Oracle:

A tagine is a type of dish found in the North African cuisines of Morocco, which is named after the special pot in which it is cooked. The traditional tagine pot is formed entirely of a heavy clay which is sometimes painted or glazed. It consists of two parts; a base unit which is flat and circular with low sides, and a large cone or dome-shaped cover that rests inside the base during cooking. The cover is so designed to promote the return of all condensation to the bottom. With the cover removed, the base can be taken to the table for serving.

It’s hard to use all the herbs she is growing. We cook for ourselves. I would have to prepare a large feast in order to use a significant amount of fresh herbs. The one exception I can think of is pesto. Sadly, my girlfriend is not a big fan of pesto.

In other news, some of my Flash animation work has popped up on the Internets recently. Animated ads I created for Street Fighter IV are showing on the Complex Video website. These were a bit of work but they’re fun. The artwork was already done; all I had to do was figure out how to animate it. During the process I also learned a few new Flash tricks. Also launched today is an animated product announcement for Tekelec. This animation started as an experiment in animation technique that worked out better than anticipated. It’s a technique that I will probably use in the near future for other projects.

Found online: there are some really good things done with maps on the web. The Lonely Planet website has a very cool Google Maps implementation on their website. Take a look at this example on the site’s “Taiwan” page.

Pretty awesome

Today a friend pointed me to the coolest thing I’ve seen on the web in quite some time: Pretty Loaded which the creators, Big Spaceship call a “preloader museum”. I love preloaders in Flash; people always find interesting and fun things to do with them. They also convey a great deal about the character of a Flash website. Some of the ones in the collection (many of which come from Big Spaceship) are really good.