Web

Comments on web practices and design

Apture, Mobify and Flowers

Posted by kbs

25-tulips450Recently I discovered two website features that could be of interest to my clients: Apture and Mobify.
First Apture. Apture gives a web page reader hyperlinks without having to leave the page. You can see it at work in the text on this page of drawings I recently did on my iPod Touch. (Or see it now by clicking on the iPod Touch link.) I think it is a great advantage to not leave the page to see maps, video or Wikipedia snippets, but you will be the judge of that. Another great feature of Apture is that it can be added by the client without special software. After I add some code to the selected  pages, he/she can edit the Apture links from within his/her browser (Firefox, Safari, IE). There are some quirks to it. Or maybe it is me, but the more I use it, the more I expect I will master it and the developers at Apture will improve their code. See the Apture website for more details. It is not as simple as drag and drop, but for certain sites, the payoff is well worth it.

Now Mofiby. I sent the Flower Series page to a friend to beta test and got back the reply, “Sorry, Flash is not iPhone friendly.” Damn! That’s right, I use Flash to show the time lapse drawings. I also know that Apture can demand a lot from the iPhone Safari browser. Though it is much improved on the OS 3 upgrade, it should still be thought of as Safar Lite.

I love my iPod Touch and believe that smartphones are definately the future of digital data. My web sites need to designed to account for this. If you are viewing this on a smartphone now, the Flower Series page is a good test for adapting rich media pages to the small screen. I had heard of Mobify from web guru Chris Coyier but had not had a chance to explore it. Mobify is also a bit glitchy. But like Apture, I am in the process of mastering it and believe it can be a good solution for this web development issue.

Border Hopping with Cory Mawhorter

Posted by kbs

cory150

In mid February, I undertook a tutorial about changing fonts on a web page*(see footnote at the end of this post for details).  I had tried other solutions but this one called FaceLift was better. I am using it here on this blog. Notice that all of the headlines are in a slab serif font? See also Pages,  Categories, etc. in the sidebar? This is Gold to a web designer. This enables me to give my clients unique design (aka “branding”), my raison d’etre.

I like to learn more about these authors. Many are engineers in school or just out. Always interesting to see what other projects  they have done and what kind of work is in their portfolio. http://facelift.mawhorter.net/ was the homepage. Odd thing here was that the author, Cory Mawhorter, was not very forthcoming. No portfolio. Just one other project which looked like a precursor to FaceLift.

I started digging in his personal blog and found a post from October that he was finalizing plans to take his van on a quest to see America. 50 states in 52 weeks. He had a number of delays, but by the time I was reading his blog in mid February, he was three weeks into his trip. It was the Monday before Mardi Gras and Cory was in New Orleans…. Continue reading →

WordPress as a CMS

Posted by kbs

My name is Ken and I am hopelessly addicted. (response: “Hello Ken.”) Last November I joined The New York City WordPress Meetup Group to meet other WordPress junkies. I wanted to see what they score and where. Always looking for that Blue Magic plugin. (see American Gangster)

wpsmallIn February, I went to a MeetUp titled WordPress as a CMS: The Strategy of Content Publishing. It was well presented but it wasn’t what I had expected. (That could be another post: expectations. But not here.) My comments did lead to some good discussion with the presenter Johnathan Andersen, who started a message board thread about CMS. Below is an excerpt of my post there. I am including it here because I think it begins to explain my evolving approach to web site design.

What do you think it means to use WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)?

I have been designing sites for about ten years. Most of my clients are writers, photographers illustrators, a book publisher and a few small business owners. The more computer literate have been using Adobe Contribute to edit their sites. I started using WP about three years ago with some of my authors. Publishers Weekly wrote that an author should be blogging whenever they have a new book coming out. That’s when I added WP blogs to their sites. I have always wanted my clients to maintain their own sites and WP seems like a great solution.

WHAT IS CMS TO ME?
Content Management. For starters, that means pages for Press, Bios, News, Coming Events, Portfolios (Galleries) and Contact as well as posts for a Blog. It also means an eCommerce Store, though I have not had any demand for that yet. The traditional Blog and the Magazine formats can accomplish this.

I want to do some work outside of the available Theme Templates. I am a graphic designer. This is what I love. I also believe original site design gives my clients unique branding. But that probably doesn’t apply to this thread, except to say that I am learning to design my own modular WP sites (Thank you Chris @ www.css-tricks.com)

Because I want my clients to have as much control of their site as possible, I have been building some sites with Chris Pearson’s Thesis theme. (see www.thesisterproject.com) This has great promise, particularly because of the two extra Thesis Dashboard panels.

I will be very interested see if this generates any discussion. I have only been to two meetups but am looking forward to seeing what develops. It is great to get out from behind the monitor and meet with people. Even better when we are sharing the techie bong.

This is Valentines Day. I love my wife. (and my new iPod Touch)

113011UPDATE: see Smashing Magazine articleHow WordPress Took the CMS Crown.

Galleries, NextGen Solution

Posted by kbs

I have been working on a new site for Margaret Roach that will be known as The Sister Project. It has greatly expanded my belief in blogging as the new publishing and WordPress as the leading software. I will be writing more about The Sister Project (TSP) after we launch in late November.

One of the five TSP blogs is Galleries where we will display curated submissions of poetry, prose, photography and art. The Galleries need software to organize and present the art and photography. There are many WP gallery plugins available but our research led us to NextGen Gallery. It offers a variety of options and seems to be well maintained–many plugins are not. As with many Open Source programs, the instructions and tutorials could be more thorough. After spending many hours “under the hood,” I think I know how NextGen runs but some things are still not clear. That is why I am doing this test post using paintings I made almost twenty years ago. I want my clients to be aware of this solution and it gives me a chance to post some paintings from one of my favorite series.

Below and in the sidebar are thumbnails of my Field Report art. Almost all of the drawings and paintings are based on one avocado plant that I grew in my apartment. Other works based on the direct observation of nature are also included as part of this series. This last week I went to the Morandi exhibit at the Met. I suppose Field Report is my “Morandi” statement.

(This is the navigation for the NextGen Gallery.)

Pronto! Buongiorno Marco. Galleria?

Posted by kbs

self portraitLast Spring, Marco Ventura told me that he wanted to have his illustration portfolio on-line and asked me to design it. Marco lives in Milan but his reputation and clientele are international. I met him when I was assigning illustration for the Time magazine feature Spotlight. (Before I knew Marco, I was unfamiliar with Italians answering the phone “Pronto.”) He had digital files of all his work and sent them to me by email. I made my presentations to him using Skype.

Marco wanted a very minimal site with a white background and images that were not too large. Like many of the artists and photographers I have dealt with, he was concerned with… Continue reading →

Nice Job, Bub!

Posted by kbs

The HunterToday I updated crime and mystery writer Donald Westlake’s website with three of his books that are being republished by Chicago Press. (see for yourself) So, why am I blogging about it? Because I admired these cover designs. I mentioned it in a reply to the publisher (“Tell your cover designer ‘Nice job, Bub.'”) and they wrote back that they were designed and illustrated by David Drummand. I Googled him, found his portfolio/blog and added him to my Blogroll. Reading about good design process is always rewarding.

This also gives me a chance to talk about Donald’s website and some of the business lessons I learned. He is a friend of a friend and about ten years ago I heard him mention at a party that his webmaster was changing fields and he needed to find someone to take it over. That is how… Continue reading →