Usability, Web Sites and SEO in Kansas City

JavaScript Libraries Like a Swiss-army knife. Allow you to write JavaScript quicker, easier and better. They do not replace JavaScript, they extend it. Extremely light-weight and cross-platform compliant. Most are open source. Help to design an experience. Used to prototype and indicate JS functionality. They are used for page searching and modification, CSS and DOM [...]

Procedural Programming – JavaScript, PHP, ColdFusion, ActionScipt 1 and 2. Tend to be simpler and require less code than Object-Oriented counterparts, but runs into it’s own challenges. Object-Oriented Programming – C#, Java, ActionScript 3. Individual components allow greater flexibility. In a well-written object-oriented program, all components function independently. Object-Oriented Terminology Package – Filing cabinet or [...]

WordPress is the worlds most popular blogging software. Content Structure Must plan ahead for content structure. Many think WordPress isn’t capable of doing things such as departments, features, columns and sections. WordPress templates let you to filter by category name or category number. Start with a clean and logical system to simply this process. Ability [...]

Books by Rob Huddleston Adobe Flash Catalyst Catalyst is middleware. Start in Illustrator or Photoshop, then pull in project using Catalyst. Convert to Flex project, then go to Flash. Catalyst does have very basic drawing tools and could be used for wireframe or a very basic prototype. Biggest challenge will be training designers to create [...]

What is the difference between us? Let’s start with some generalizations. Developers are killjoys, squashing creativity to make a deadline or taking the easy way out to implement features within an application. Designers are fun, but reckless, they create great work but aren’t concerned with the bottom line. A little reality please. We all want to [...]

Workflow is all about solving problems. “Nobody knows what they want, until they see it.” jQuery UI Themes recommended. Site Design When you think of any web site, you think of something visual. If you’re going to have a perfect prototype, why not work with a technology where you can use templates, libraries and patterns [...]

Prototyping is incomplete version of software being developed with a subset of features of the end product. Why Prototype? Proof of concept. Will an idea even work? Design validation. Design is organic, so prototyping gives you an idea how something feels. Management buy-in. Helps to create a shared vision. Reduce misinterpretations. For stakeholders, developers, team [...]

Font stack is a very early example of progressive enhancement. Compare black & white to color TV’s. When color TV’s came out, program directors’ didn’t say we’re going to keep filming in black & white. Providing visual rewards to those with advanced browsers. CSS3 is a series of modules and was designed that way so [...]

History of HTML There never was an HTML 1. The first version was HTML 2 in November 1995. HTML 3.2 in January 1997, HTML 4 in December 1997, HTML 4.2 in December 1999. XHTML 1.0 in January 2000, XHTML 1.1 was problematic because it  must be served as mime-type: application/xml in May 2001. XHTML 2.0 [...]

600 years of typography. In 1993, the web came about and we had very little control of typography.  2008, we have 18 fonts, most still use four or five fonts. @font-face comes about, but still isn’t used. First supported in Opera, then Webkit, Firefox and Internet Explorer in a proprietary way. When a couple of things converge, [...]