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I was just talking to an acquaintance of mine (a php developer) about website design when we started discussing accessibility and usability. His response was:
Accessibility and Usability? Is that this web standards stuff people are all so afraid of? Nah f*** that, who needs to learn those anyway.
Well, so why are web standards beneficial, here is my top 10…
Those of you following me on twitter know I tend to spend a bit of time every couple of days in finding new extensions for FireFox (and sometimes Thunderbird) which are making my life as an Information Architect, Web Designer or Project Development Manager easier. These extensions may be some all of us have been using for ages but never really realised we had them installed, or some we really wanted to see or use for some time, but never really spent the time researching whether these extensions are actually available. This is the list of February…
The new website of Rising Star Games, the Japanese publisher with European roots, has just been put live.
The website features a lot of new content, from news, game profiles and blogs over to forums, user profiles, members exclusive content and more! Plus, the sushi bar concept is working really nicely and displays latest information from the blog, the forum, news and upcoming releases
The website was designed and developed by Melon Design & Marketing on their in-house CMS Engine.
Visit RisingStarGames.com
Happy days!!! 😀
Working in a busy office is one of the best parts of being a designer or information architect – you can bounce off ideas, discuss projects with others and get their input, and you can generally have a good laugh.
That is until the time comes where a new project is being started or requirements are being updated. Usually then some sort of “rivalry” will ensue, and in 90% of the cases it will be between a designer or information architect and a developer or development coordinator. Scope was not fully explained or defined, the design is too complicated to build, or data is not coming from the sources it was meant to.
In those times frustration can quickly result in stress and lack of commitment to a project. Let’s see what we would do to remedy that…
Google Earth’s latest update – Google Ocean – adds a plethora of underwater maps for users to take a dive beneath the water surface and explore the 3D terrain (no more 2D relief maps!) of the world’s sea floors, completely with underwater elevations. Users will be able to explore underwater volcanoes and shipwrecks, and even video footage from the most famous diving spots across the world.
And to make sure you have plenty to look at Google added 20 content layers containing information from the world’s leading underwater researchers, ocean explorers and scientists.
The virtual earth is coming more and more alive…and new layers for travel websites are already in development!
Whatwasithinking.co.uk has been around for almost a year, and in time for its first birthday I thought I’d take the opportunity and rethink what I actually want to do with it. So I chose to make two drastic changes:
So in the end I chose to go for a theme by Vladimir Prelovac. The theme is very modern, has a wonderful layout and after a bit of hacking it tracks pingbacks and tweetbacks successfully. If you want to know more about the theme or Vladimir then please click here (and if you want to follow him, click here).
Please let me know what you think about the theme 🙂
My day to day work consists of a lot of time spending on the internet, looking at web presences of current clients, prospective clients and their (and our) competition. My tool of the trade being FireFox 3 (especially considering that IE seems to have a little problem). I am using a number of addons which really help my work-flow in the fields of usability, accessibility, SEO and occasionally information architecture.
I was asked by a couple of fellow twitter users to divulge my plugin list, and since I keep track of them myself at times I thought this post would come in handy for everyone.
So you have finally done it, you are a freelancer or have set up your own little design agency and you have your first clients with jobs coming in. And now comes the time that a project comes to the point where money is involved, be it just before the first 1/3 of the project is done or towards the end of the project. But what do you need to look out for? Where to go for resources if anything goes wrong?
Continue reading after the break for some strategies on how to invoice for your web design or web development work…