Yesterday I launched the brand new homepage of my portfolio. It was a long time in the making trying to get everything looking good and now I’m going to explain the reasons behind the design, how I came to it and how you can apply the same techniques.

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If your a seasoned web developer your going to want to follow some great resource sites. I myself have quite a large list of RSS feeds in my Outlook but here are my top ten with plenty of resources, freebies and tips…I will however feature 5 “biggies” and 5 “smallies” if that makes any sense to anyone who speaks the English language…

Here we go with the biggies…

1. SmashingMagazine.com

Packed full of daily web resources from desktop calendars to tips on learning CSS. They have also recently had a redesign massively cleaning up the content (which was pretty bad on my opinion) and also aggregating content from websites such as spyrestudios.com, buildinternet.com and webdesignerwall.com. All of which are also great resources…

2. WebDesignerDepot.com

Not specific in it’s content, Web Designer Depot seems to feature everything from Illustrator spotlights (like the recent one on the amazing Archan Nair) all the way to freebies such as the nice RSS icon set. I do however recommend they remove the horrible “I WAS a fat slob” adverts on the right as it’s pretty dire to see (see screenshot to the right)…

3. Spyrestudios.com

Is very good at eyeing up great web designs and showcasing them on their site. They are a small design agency in Canada but have a great blog. They also recently showcased my website because of it’s use of cufon, the amazing javascript text replacement (towards the bottom of the list).

4. BestWebGallery.com

Not a brilliant resource per se but it does feature some amazing modern designs. Not to be used as a starting point for designs but rather as “subliminal inspiration”.

5. BuildInternet.com

Build Internet is managed by twins Sam and Zach Dunn and is a great place to read more about the business side of website design. It’s packed full of jQuery tutorials, graphic design resources, CSS information and HTML tips. Give it a look.

Now for the smallies, generally sole developers who blog about their industry, not necessarily “small”…

6. Adii Rockstar

Now Adii is quite a little celebrity online. He’s known well for his work on the WooThemes project which sells premium wordpress themes but makes for a very interesting read.

7. Fabio Sasso

He’s the guy behind abduzeedo.com and seems to be in deep in the website design world. He has some great work to check out and is involved in a large number of successful websites packed full of resources and inspiration.

8. Veerle Pieters

A graphic/web designer from Belgium, Veerle has tons of posts from over the years covering stuff from html to illiustrations. It makes for an interesting read if you dig deep into the older content. You’ll also see just how much a great designer knows about their industry when you read Veerle’s blog.

9. Collis

Probably should reside in the biggies list but because we aren’t talking about his amazing success story, Envato, he slots into the smallies. He’s the CEO of one of the largest and greatest design marketplaces on the web. He has his own blog called the Netsetter which covers mainly covers the business side of the design industry. (he also features a lot of guest writers too)

10. Chris Spooner

Because he’s a local boy! Chris was born and raised in Sheffield, UK, and runs his blog over at Spoon Graphics. He posts some great content covering mainly graphic design but it a great source of inspiration.

There are many more people to check out in the web design world, you just have a dig, and when you find them either subscribe to their RSS feed or follow them on Twitter like a stalker. Either way you’ll get great resources and good reads!

Also see @liammckay @kevinrose @shauninman @jasonfried

I know it’s unfortunately the “taboo” of modern website design, but many developers don’t want to simply leave their IE7 visitors and IE6 visitors in the dark. It’s fine for sites like this one, or for web applications but what about corporation websites? For sites that HAVE to support older/alternative browsers. This came to light ever more when I recently worked on a website which would mean that customers worth millions could possibly be using IE6. There’s 50% of employees there too who still run IE7 so not supporting them wasn’t an option. I needed (and used) a large set of tools to help me accomplish this task, and I’m going to tell you about them.

Every web developer should (and probably does) use these tools on a daily basis. They streamline your development and help speed up little niggles with your site.

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I’m a sucker for a good advert. Clever adverts such as Oranges “I Am A Smile When You Least Expect It (see below)”, Benettons controversial but accurate campaigns, and over the past few days I’ve found quite a few great print adverts which caught my eye.

The Orange advert always makes me smile. It’s so fluid and random at the same time. It makes you think like a child for a second and ultimately drops Orange in an exciting, fresh and great advertising niche. Hopefully after the T-Mobile merge these adverts will stay as the T-Mobile adverts are really sh**.

Clever use of an old stereotype. Kids hate going to Grandmas. So bring her cooking home.

http://www.greyparis.fr/

Disturbing in every way yet after reading the tagline it makes sense, in a sick twisted way.

http://www.milc.it/

Putting textures into Billboards is probably no easy feat although the guy who put it up probably saved time getting each one smooth.

http://www.seetheperson.info/

OTT for sure but a brilliant way to advertise…a magnifying glass!

Y&R Dubai

Golden Age Integrated Marketing & Communication. (Ignore the “Sprinking the Passion” Haiku.)
I like it when companies “dirty” their cars up. Most 4×4’s are pathetic excuses for offroad vehicles, finally Audi saw the light and slapped some mud on there…or did they?

Update 6th Nov 09: My panoramic wembley photo has been used in Main Event Magazine (Thanks Ky for sorting this)
Update 12th Oct 09: This photo is now part of the Wikipedia page on Wembley Stadium as the header image

The game was full of controversy, foul play, substitutions and of course, goals. Chelsea finished up beating the Champions 4-1 on penalties and I took along my trusty SLR to photograph some of the action and I got some pretty good shots! Note: all the photos are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence which means they are free to use along with attribution to this site! Enjoy!

Ok so I got my Illustrator hat on yesterday and drew four character doodles on my notepad.
I then thought “Why not draw these as Vectors?”…presenting Four Free Vector Characters + HD Wallpapers!

These vectors are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This means you CAN use them for ANYTHING, commercial or personal and you can even modify them without asking permission. All I ask is that you attribute my work by linking to this website.

That’s it. The rest is history, as they say…Download characters.zip (3.3MB)!

Included in the ZIP file are the four characters in vector EPS format and three wallpapers, 1920×1080, 1440×900, 1024×768.

A good mate of mine (Ky Wilkinson) is giving away 5 FREE floral prints.

Make sure you head over to his blog and drop him an email to claim one!

So University is done and dusted for 2009. I won’t be returning until September 2010 which makes for a nice break. In the end I got my grades (A,A,B,B,B,C) which I was very happy with. To top all this off I thought I’d showcase some of the work I did to receive these grades.

Visual Design (B Grade)

I’ll start with a Module I didn’t thoroughly enjoy this year due to boring briefs, however, I did a little bit of illustration for it which included some postage stamps, posters and even included some Video in After Effects. You can see the video, the illustrations and the posters over at http://turnitoff.info/ (the posters reside in the footer of the page)
The site was built using the latest in Javascript and jQuery technology so check it out, hover over the elements, play with the buttons. Your probably better off using FireFox too, as IE couldn’t really handle it’s superior web modernness. Make sure you check out the video at the bottom of the website too (yes that is me speaking sounding common as muck).

For Visual design I also illustrated the stamps shown in the header image. It’s based on Music Technology over the years and I think I captured the best four from the past century or so. You can see them in all their vector glory too.

Multimedia Product (C Grade)

This was a complex one, which also means I can’t demonstrate it online. The idea was simple, Unique Bidding auctions.

The site featured a worlds first in online bidding. Live real time bidding in auctions. You could actually watch LIVE bidders placing their respective amounts on the page as it went along. This meant users could bid against each other based on other users’ bids. Clever eh! It was all jQuery and PHP grabbing the data from a database. It was awfully complex and also included a 10,000 word document explaing the process and research behind it. There was also a very fancy presentation which explains the fundementals if anyone wants to watch it. Its the branding, the functionality and the UI all rolled into a short few slides.

It also had it’s own iPhone web application which tied into the whole site shwoing live bids from anywhere in the world at any time.

Web Programming (A grade)

Another interesting one. And one which I actually really enjoyed.

Assignment one involved building a file based Guestbook with full admin features, the ability to edit posts and delete them, a swear word filter to stip out those naughty words and a slick simple UI. It also had AJAX editing of comments right in the page. No loading, no navigating, just click and change! I think you can guess what Lady Part and Ping Pongs were supposed to say! It maybe available as a free download if anyone is interested in the future.

Assignment two was a dog database website. Very similar to Battersea dogs homes website. It needed full admin controls and the ability to save dogs as favourites and have the ability to search the dogs too. The brief was very extensive, and I covered everything. Check it out online right now. I ended up building a commercial site based on this for Cliffe Kennels.

Authoring (B Grade)

It was basically Actionscript 3.0 work. For assignment 1 I had to develop an interface which included an animation, using the drawing API and the components within Flash 8. I ended up building a Spirograph kind of application which allowed you to colour it yourself and watch the application build it for you. Very nice! Have a look at it. I also built a flash gallery using XML and class files. But it’s not something I have online at the moment.

Multimedia Design & Production (A Grade)

This is a group project, and something which is a real challenge working with four different creative minds. My University chum Chris Kovalenko was part of our A grade group which created a chairty website and CDROM called the West Yorkshire Autistic Society (completely fake). Check out the site.

Intro to Video (B Grade)

My mate Adam Fisher helped me out with this one as I couldn’t star, edit and film the whole video. He rode the bike, I edited it, The Chemists supplied the music. It actually works quite well for my first every video. So I’m quite happy with it as a 2nd year project.

That’s it! I hope this gives someone some kind of inspiration either for university or for their next project. If it did help you in any way shape or form, drop me a comment!

Don’t get me wrong, the new updates for the iPhone are a much needed modification for the device. Cut/Copy & Paste, Tethering and MMS are all things which should (in my opinion) have been on the phone from the very first incarnation. These things were standard on even the most basic of modern phones.

Apple have played it clever. They brought out an amazing phone and missed out a lot of the basics. The annoying thing though is the fact that Apple is shouting about simple things such as “Read and write texts, emails and picture messaging holding your iPhone sideways.“. Wow! “Cut Copy Paste, Move text, numbers, email addresses between apps“. Honest to god these are not major selling points for the new iPhone software so why flaunt them? To say these are only 2 of the most flaunted updates how good can the other 98 be? Thank god Apple have updated the website today to show the other top features such as the search function, stereo bluetooth and the new language support.

Overall I’m happy with the new update and look forward to installing it next Wednesday (June 17th) but I can’t help but feel Apple have been deliberately holding this off for 2 years just to drum up a bit of cash/publicity. Classic Apple/Jobs, and to be honest, it’s worked on me, as ashamed as I am to say it, I’ll probably be on the phone to o2 next week about upgrading to the 3G S (which is a crap name by the way). :-D

This is a new one, and a funny one too!

I got three messages from three friends all advertising weight loss products. Initially I though what is a 25 year old male doing watching Oprah (and we are from the UK). Then I read it up a bit more…

• “Sarah and Angie have both lost about 40 pounds each in just a few weeks, no diets no excercise just been taking those acai pills that Oprah had on her show. I been taking them now and dropped 27 pounds in just over 2 weeks. Get them now for only five dollars at http———–.com”

Hillarious. A funny spam. But, can people really be falling for this? I mean, come on, how desperate can you actually be to click the link? :D

As funny as it is for me it probably isn’t for those of you sturggling with the bug. Anyway there is a great post over at http://daparky.com/how-to-remove-the-msn-messenger-virus/ which I suggest you check out to remove it.

Fancy riding 1,200 Miles across the UK starting from Lands End and finishing at John O Groats? No? Me neither!

These two guys are though (Adam Fisher and Oliver Frearson) and I felt obligated to build them a website promoting their journey. It’s in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support and they are trying to raise £3000 (that’s only £2.50 per mile!).

Check out the website, visit their blog (which will be updated en route) and give them a bit of support.

If your feeling generous you can also donate by clicking the big donate button on the top left corner. Anything will do, even 1 pence, it all adds up.

Hate the stuff. Recently I have been doing a bit of server shuffling and clearing out loads of crap the server has built up over the years, one of which (unknown to me) is a shed load of spam. Let’s first have some figures of just how much spam hits this server every hour and every day (bearing in mind theres only 5 websites on the server):

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Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Browsing the online world I came across Matt Mullenweg’s post about Timelapse videos. They look awesome and almost toy like. Can you believe the boats in Sydney harbour are real?

It’s something I must try for myself!

The portfolio page looked a little drab. Afterall I am working SOLID completing work left right and center. Not all of this can go into my portfolio page as it’s more University work and stuff built on a personal basis. This then spawned the “Showcase” page. Have a play with the few flash and javascript games on there as well as reading about some of the smaller projects I have been completing to get me through University.

In the next few weeks it’s going to be developed a little more to display more images and information on each project. But for now it’s a start ;-)

Theme Demo – Download Now 670kb

I am pleased to announce that you can now download the brand new Wordpress theme named “Olivia” direct from our website and soon from the official Wordpress themes gallery.

It has been in development for a long time but good things come to those who wait!

Key features of the theme:

1. Seven brilliant styles including a Grunge style and Magic style!
2. Beautifully designed
3. Wordpress 2.6.3 compatible
4. Widget ready!
5. Built on the famous 960 grid system
6. FamFamFam Silk Icons
7. jQuery functions including text size modification
8. Basic stylesheet for accessibility
9. Thumbnail generation

To coincide with the release of the theme I have written a quick tutorial explaining how to use the features explained…

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With the release of Google’s new web browser named “Chrome”, will this mean a shift in browser usage?

Probably not. It’s the same situation as Firefox found itself in nearly four years ago, and it’s only just catching Microsofts browser.

So, is Chrome any good? We downloaded the BETA yesterday and have been playing ever since.
We are pleased to say it’s extremely fast. It features a new open source Javascript Engine named “V8″ as well as multiple tab processing. This means the browser can handle processes from each individual tab rather than processing the lot at the same time, which competitors such as Firefox 3 and IE7 do (IE8 BETA has a similar system to Chrome).

Although it may take up a little more memory and power it ultimately makes for a faster browsing experience and more stability. If one of the processes fail you only lose one tab rather than the whole browser.
Firefox has a similar stability system included where it re-initiates your tabs after a crash. Google Chrome never has to close when a piece of dodgy Javascript breaks the tab. It just closes it.

Things we like in Chrome:

1. The truely awesome Chrome Inspector
   A great debugging tool is built right into Chrome. Want to know what’s making your page load slowly? Not sure how long your page takes to load? Want to know which elements load first? This shows you the lot. You can see which order elements load, how long they take to load, how long it takes for each element to load after the previous as well as file information and the built in debugger and property inspector. You have to use it to truly understand it’s complexity. Simply click the control button, then down to Developer>Javascript console and click away!
2. Incognito Browsing (and the awesome logo)
   It’s basically a porn mode. Very much like IE8’s new privacy feature. Upon opening this new “Incognito Window” all your history and web cookies won’t be stored meaning your basically invisible on the internet. It also means your mom/mum won’t find that dirty website you have been visiting over the past few days…
   We also love the “spy” logo very similar to Gamespys logo. It looks very cool for a Google graphic! (We also love the Chrome logo).
3. The iGoogle like welcome page
   When opening a new tab you have the option of showing a “New Tab page”. It shows your most visited websites in order and also shows your full browser history with time and date. Clicking show full history actually allows you to see your online travel path. The new tab page also shows new bookmarks and recently closed tabs. A feature we like very much as losing closed tabs can be easy.
4. Organised tabs
   When you have several tabs opened, keeping track can be difficult. And when Firefox adds your tab onto the end of the list it can be hard to find again. Google Chrome adds the tab next to the currently opened one, which helps keep them organised. The more tabs you have open at any one time, the harder it becomes to sort, and the more valuable this feature becomes.
   Click on the image to see a better example. 
5. Unobtrusive status bar
   This is a personal preference. The more browser space is available, the better. This means you can see more of the page at any one time. Even if it is 10px worth of space, every little bit helps.
   When hovering over links the status bar pops up in the lower left corner, then fades away when you move away from the link. Simple and effective.
    

To be honest we could write about the new Chrome all day, but we know that it’s already been well documented. Maybe we got a little carried away.

To download Google Chrome simply head over to their website.

We are currently in the process of writing and building our blog. We hope to feature an extensive array of tutorials, tips, tricks and other amazing things related to Javascript, XHTML, CSS, PHP and Motor racing :)

If you have any ideas on what you would like to see on this blog in the coming months, please don’t hesitate to leave us some comments. (We would also like some comments on the new website design and blog design too :D )