Archive of: 2011
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Checking out responsive grid systems
27 December 2011 by
Over the last few weeks I've been browsing a few responsive grid systems/CSS frameworks, partly as a means of learning new responsive web design methods
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Learning new things for 2012
01 December 2011 by
The last few months have been pretty busy round here with client work so it has been tough to set aside any time for learning new things
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How I learned to love invoicing
16 November 2011 by
A few months ago I read Grace Smith’s article 8 Services That Power My Business where the online invoicing application Curdbee was described. I took Curdbee for a test drive and I’ve been using it for the last few months. I don’t use every single feature but I think it’s a great invoicing or billing app for any freelancer or small business.
CurdBee is a simple web application that makes billing a breeze. Use it to send estimates and invoices, track time and expenses, and accept online payments. Say goodbye to paperwork!
Curdbee is an app that allows you to manage your invoices and clients via a web interface. It’s not a full-blown accounting app but it has made invoicing a much more enjoyable and quicker task for me. Here’s why I like it…
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An evening out with Points Brighton
17 October 2011 by
I’ve been to a few web conferences over the last 3-4 years and they’re great. You get to see some famous web folks and hear their presentations in large venues and meet with other designers and developers. At the same time, with conferences averaging 500 or more attendees, it’s sometimes easy to feel a little ‘lost’ at such events. For that reason, I also like to attend some informal, more grassroots-style, local events as well. Last Thursday evening, I went to the first Points Brighton event and here’s my short review of the meeting.
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My top five reasons for using Perch as a CMS
30 September 2011 by
In 2009, I described the (then) recently launched Perch content management system in this post. Since that time, I’ve used it on 6-7 sites so I thought I’d share why I like it.
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Quick tip: Making jQuery tabbed content available for users without JavaScript
29 August 2011 by
Most users have JavaScript enabled these days but there may be a small fraction of your website visitors that have JavaScript turned off. In these circumstances, it’s generally accepted good practice to make sure that your website content is available to those users without JavaScript.
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Just a few things I've seen recently
03 August 2011 by
I've been really busy with client work recently but I have managed to set aside some time every day for reading and browsing. Here are some some interesting links I've seen in my web travels
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Allen Watson website redesign
08 July 2011 by
There’s no such thing as a completed website because any website should be developed continuously. However, it has been good to ‘finish’ and launch two website projects over recent weeks. Here’s the first of those.
Allen Watson asked CVW Web Design to redesign and modernise their website and base the design on other marketing materials (for example, a CD featuring 3D animations of their drilling techniques).
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Comments on this blog
28 June 2011 by
I try and operate a sensible comments moderation policy on this blog but I see a lot of blogs that do not do this and that have a free-for-all comments policy.
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First steps with HTML5
01 June 2011 by
I have been wanting to revise and redesign CVW Web Design for a while and also get started with HTML5. So, with some spare time last weekend, I decided to strip down the style sheet for CVW Web Design and rebuild it and my site template using HTML5. I know the site very well so I thought this would be a gentle introduction to HTML5 and start me on the redesign process.
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Transparent borders with CSS3
03 May 2011 by
I’ve seen a few website examples recently (like this one) where transparent borders have been used so that the background image shows through the border. I think this is a really nice effect and it got me wondering how it’s done and if I could use this on my planned redesign of CVW Web Design. Turns out it’s relatively simple but there’s one ‘trick’ you will need to get it to work.
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The Cliff at Bude website redesign
20 April 2011 by
The Cliff at Bude is a medium-sized, family friendly hotel in Cornwall. In fact it's owned by some friends of mine. Basically, I look after their website and they put me up in a room from time to time!
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Getting started with HTML5 and responsive design
14 April 2011 by
Over the next few weeks, I'm planning to learn about HTML5 by recoding CVW Web Design to the HTML5 specification. I want to start with a website that I know thoroughly before using HTML5 on client sites
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Social Hiking - a great web app!
28 March 2011 by
I use quite a few web applications and increasingly I am tying them into my non-web activities away from the office. In that vein, over the last year or so, I’ve been using Social Hiking which is a web application developed by Phil Sorrell (@daylightgambler). I’ve not blogged about this before (except indirectly in ViewRanger GPS for Cycling) but I think it’s a great app. Here’s my description and experiences with it so far.
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Finding time for 'fun' stuff?
21 March 2011 by
These days, I seem to be on a constant work cycle that doesn't seem to allow me much time to do the 'fun' web stuff or the personal projects that I used to do.
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Ideas of March
15 March 2011 by
Today, I read a couple of tweets on Twitter which lead me to Chris Shiflett’s post, Ideas of March, where he encourages a blog revival by asking folks to write a similar post (saying why they like blogs) and to blog more for the rest of the month. So, here’s my post with that same theme
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Review and Revise - How to review your website
21 February 2011 by
I’ve been reviewing CVW Web Design recently. It’s my main site, I want it to work as well as possible, and now seemed to be a good time to assess it (perhaps leading to a redesign). In this post, I’ll describe the process I am using. You may have alternative ways of doing this but here’s what I have done so far.
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New website for Chess Dynamics
10 February 2011 by
At the end of last year, we finished a redesign of the Chess Dynamics website. It was a project that I really enjoyed working on for a number of reasons.
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Website navigation menu examples
05 February 2011 by
Website navigation menus are a fundamental part of any website and it's easy to code these with CSS so that they look attractive and provide accessible links for your visitors and search engines.
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New Adventures in Nottingham
23 January 2011 by
I’ve just come back from the New Adventures in Web Design conference which was a one day conference in Nottingham. The event was created and organised by freelance web designer, author, and speaker Simon Collison and it was the first event (I assume) under the New Adventures name. Overall I really enjoyed it and here’s my review.
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Textpattern mobile theme
13 January 2011 by
If you're a fan of Textpattern, you might be interested in Mobile Textpattern, which is a Textpattern theme that has been developed for mobile by Oliver Ker.
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CSS can do some great things these days
06 January 2011 by
Here's a short round-up of some CSS methods that I've been impressed with recently.