Archive for the ‘jackosborne’ Category

Subtle Site Improvements

Although it might not be immediately apparent, during the last two weeks I have been rolling out a series of improvements throughout this site.

Font Stacks

On my main body text I am using ff-tisa-web-pro-1 and ff-tisa-web-pro-2, which are being served up with help from Typekit. The fall back options in my font stack were; Helvetica, Arial and Serif.

Unfortunately with Typekit, sometimes you can see the font switch happen which is caused by your default fonts changing over to the ones served by Typekit and if you haven’t specified similar looking fonts then the switch over can be quite horrific, with line lengths changing and pushing words onto the next line. So to combat this problem, I switch my fallback fonts to Georgia, Palatino, ‘Palatino Linotype’, Times, ‘Times New Roman’ and serif. Although you will still see the font switch on some web browsers, the switch over should not be nearly as noticeable now.

One final thing I done, was republish my Typekit fonts as suggested on there blog in order for the fonts to render properly in the Opera browser.

Additional Information

This blog has always been pretty sparse, perhaps a little too sparse. So I decided to provide some more extra information at the bottom of each post, which give the readers more information about me. The sections are titled; who I am, what I do and where I do it.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of putting in related information that could accommodate extra information on the post.

Tweet Button

Last week I wrote about Noel Jacksons excellent little Tweethis button and if you missed out on this then it is certainly a worthwhile read. I’ve added the button to the bottom of my posts, directly above the additional information which I have mentioned above.

iPhone Version

Whenever I’ve had some spare time I’ve been chipping away at an iPhone version of this site, so hopefully I should be able to get that up and running before the month is out. Expect an accompanying blog post on how to create an iPhone version of your website in the not too distant future.

Tweet in the Park featured in the Scottish Sun

If you managed to pick up a copy of todays Scottish Sun, make sure you flick through to the music pull-out.

In February I wrote up an article on my first foray into the world of web apps, where I detailed how I went about building a Twitter mash-up site for Scottish music festival T in the Park. As I’m incredibly witty I decided to call it Tweet in the Park.

The site is a Twitter feed aggregator which will pull in any instance of the festival being mentioned, so that people who, like myself, are not in attendance this year will not miss out on a thing.

Late last month the Scottish Sun got in contact with me asking if I would be interested in doing a small interview to talk about the site and why I decided to create it. If you wish to download a pdf version of the page then feel free to do so — Tweet In The Park pdf.

Noel Jacksons Tweethis Button

Recently I had been debating whether to stick a tweetmeme button on this blog but the one thing that kept constantly putting me off was the fact that the button used an iframe.

I didn’t really like the idea of slowing down page load times for something so trivial as a button, so I decided to live without it. However, earlier today I was catching up on some of my favourite blogs when I noticed that Noel Jackson had developed his very own Twitter button, which didn’t use an iframe. It was perfect, it was exactly what I was looking for.

It turns out that it’s ever so simple to incorporate into your wordpress theme, all you need to do is follow the link above and copy and paste two pieces of code. The first part is pasted into your functions file and the second part is pasted wherever you wish the button to appear on your site. I’ve stuck my twitter button on my single page, so to view it please click through to the comments section or click back to another post using the navigational arrows above.

All in I probably spent a little over two minutes putting this into my theme and another fifteen fiddling about with the CSS, which I’m still not entirely happy with.

If you were like me, thinking about putting a Twitter button on your site but not wanting to slow down page load times by having to use an iframe then I can’t recommend this one enough, it’s simple and very effective.

Halfway through project52

This week marks the half way point of project52, so here’s a list of everything I’ve wrote in the last six months. If you’re new to the site then perhaps you will find something of interest.

January 2010

February 2010

March 2010

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

Building The Bookcase

Last month I happened upon a website that had a book section which reminded me of when I first launched my site. However during University my casual reading had to take a backseat and in one of my questionable decisions I decided to remove my booklist in favour of other services such as Readernaut.

For a few days after I visited the aforementioned site I could think about nothing else than bringing my bookshelf back to life and I have decided that it’s time to relaunch the bookshelf with all of the books I have found useful in learning web design and design in general.

Why have I brought it back?

It’s all well and good utilising other services such as Readernaut and Shelfari but I like to be able to have more control. Another reason I decided to bring it back is due to the amount of traffic that it used to generate, and the fact that I have now been able to get back into my reading since leaving Uni.

The bookshelfs appearance

Due to the sheer number of books that are on the page I’ve decided to incorporate a navigational filter that will only display books tagged under the category that you have clicked on the navigation. The sections in the navigation are; design, development, layout, motivational and typography.

Any questions?

If you need to ask any questions about the literature listed on my bookshelf then feel free to send me an email and I’ll be more than happy to get back to you. All I ask in return is that if you do decide to purchase the book, after asking for an opinion or whatever, you do so by clicking on the image of the book as they have all been linked up to my Amazon affiliate.

Go and have a look, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Working for free

There will be people who agree with this post and an equal amount who will disagree. However, so long as it helps out one person then it will have been a worthwhile exercise.

A couple of months ago, I went out seeking advice on how I should go about rewriting my CV and boosting my portfolio. Unfortunately this proved to be quite tricky because I’m sure like many of you, when you’re starting out in the web game, there just aren’t that many people who you can seek advice from. Thankfully, it didn’t really matter that I only had a select few people to turn to because the first person that I did speak to gave me a cracking piece of advice. The person in question was Mr. Bruce Lawson.

I’ve only had the pleasure of meeting Bruce twice but feels like I’ve known him a lot longer due to many emails about the HTML 5 Doctor. The fact that he was willing to give me advice even though we don’t really know eachother speaks volumes about the man. Anyway, enough praise, time to get on with the rest of this post…

One of the options we spoke about was working for free and why more people don’t do it. You might be reading that line again thinking I’m crazy, I know I did. But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Let me explain

• You now have a platform to showcase your skills
• There’s a fair chance that you will be allowed to have more say, if not all, in the design than you would for a paying client
• It shows just how willing you are to show your worth
• It expands your portfolio

We all have to be realistic, it’s highly unlikely especially after just starting out that you are going to get the same amount of clients as leading industry experts such as Mark Boulton or Simon Collison. But by adopting this approach you will at least have these all important “real world” examples that future clients or employers are supposedly looking for.

To help give you some ideas here’s what I decided to do. I identified a few Scottish businesses with poor websites; I decided to choose one Scottish charity, one major Scottish business, one Scottish event and one mystery project. Upon each projects completion I’d would then contact the buisness in question and ask them if they would like to implement my new design. You could of course decide to go down a different route at this stage and charge the client if they decided to take you up on this offer, depending upon how much work you had done etc.

Of the four mentioned above so for I have launched one, Tweet in the Park. I’ll write more about this in my next blog post, if you are interested in finding out about more on this project then add me to your RSS.

As I outlined in the first paragraph, this won’t be for everyone and some people will just not be able to be in a position to do so but if you get a chance, even if it is just one site, I’d throughly recommend it. So far it’s proved to be a great experience. Let me know in the comment section below if you have ever contemplated doing something like this or indeed if you already have some published free work out there and what other people have thought about you for taking this line of action?

WordPress next and previous post link on index.php

In two recent projects I have been faced with a problem. The problem is actually quite simple but I couldn’t figure out a solution for it, so I decided to call in the big guns.

I’m sure you are all aware of the <?php previous_post_link('%link','Previous Article') ?> and <?php next_post_link('%link','Next Article') ?> wordpress links that you can use on your single.php pages when you want to offer a form of navigation between posts.

The problem

In these projects I’ve set index.php to display the most recent post but I wanted the ability to use the next and previous post link, to help users cycle through other blog posts. However because index.php is a page and not a post I wasn’t able to use the regular method mentioned above. Therefore the only possible solution for the user to navigate through posts using the wordpress navigation was to click on the post title to enter the post page and then click through the posts using the navigational link but as I’m sure you will all agree isn’t very logical.

The solution

Chris got back to me very quickly with his solution.

<?php query_posts('posts_per_page=1&offset=1'); the_post(); ?>
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">Previous Post</a>
<?php wp_reset_query(); ?>

Chris then went on to explain how the above code works

WP_Query is just another form of query_posts that is a little more advanced and by nature doesn’t interfere with other loops. We could have used that for this too, but I just like query_posts better. And if there was a regular loop, that’s why I put that reset_query() call, so it wouldn’t mess with it.

The Kudos

I just want to say thank you to Chris once again for taking time out of his day to help me with this problem that has troubled me for a good few weeks now. If you haven’t heard of Chris before then I’m assuming you must have been living under a rock. You can check out his great multipurpose site called CSS-Tricks or you can read his WordPress dedicated site called Digging into WordPress to receive a series of great hints, tips and tutorials.

A New Year and a new Design

Well, the title of the post is fairly self explanatory. As you can see I have decided to give this blog a complete refresh, infact I’m not so sure I can even call it a blog anymore now that I have introduced my portfolio once again but more on that later.

At the turn of the year I decided that it was time to refresh things on this site, the previous design had been present since it was pushed live in August 2009. But if the truth be told, I was never really that happy with it. In the end I felt that the last design iteration just didn’t fall in line with my own "personal brand" that I had created with the previous iterations. My specification for this site has always been simple; clean with plenty of white space, the design conforming to use of a strict grid, use of whites and greys and the typography being the main focus point, I didn’t want my design to be shifting the users focus away from what they were looking at; whether that was a blog post or part of my portfolio. Ultimately, I felt my last design fell down at a few of these hurdles.

One of the main reasons I decided to push through this redesign so quickly was because I have decided to take part in Project 52 and for that reason I have decided to move the style of this blog back to being more content focused. The content area is now much larger than the previous design, almost twice the size.

However, in my urgency to get things pushed through, I’ve still got many loose ends to tie up, so please bear with me whilst I get on with them. Some of the things at the top of my list are; styling of comments, getting my portfolio section up and running and refining my HTML5 code, as this was a bit slap dash and can definately be improved. Infact, I felt that my HTML5 code in the last design was spot on, one of it’s redeeming features. If you can think of anything that needs urgent attention then please feel free to get in touch with me.

On the logo front, as I know this will cause some controversy, let me explain. Those of you who have been regular visitors to this site will have no doubt become accustomed to my laurel logo but for this design I have decided to switch to a laurel wreath as made famous by the tennis clothing brand Fred Perry, as you can see the resemblance is quite close. I would like to design my own laurel to use for my personal brand but for now I think I’ll be sticking with this one.

Oh, I’ve also finally got round to incorporating Typekit, after buying it some six months ago and check it out in a webkit browser, you might find a couple of little surprises within.

Resolutions For 2010

I’m not a great one for New Years Resolutions. The reason is simple, I don’t like failure and when most people make a resolution this is exactly what they are doing. However, exactly one year ago, I decided to break my tradition. The reason was simple, I knew that if I published my aims and goals for the forthcoming year I would be more likely to see them through as people had been able to see what I had laid down for myself.

My goals were; start writing, speak at an event, attend a web conference, stay in a job, buy an Apple notebook, continue reading, learn jQuery and take a holiday.

Goals achieved

Start writing
Seeing as this was my very first attempt at blogging, I like to think that I got on quite well with it, writing twenty six posts during the year.

I also had the pleasure of writing an article for .net magazine which if you missed can be downloaded here.

Attend a web conference
In the end I actually ended up attending three. In May I attended Future of Web Design in London with my good friend Mike Robinson. This was the first time I had the pleasure of hearing Mark Boulton, who now holds the position of my favourite web designer.

Next up was Future of Web Design Tour, Glasgow leg. This was right on my doorstep and seemed like an oppertunity that I couldn’t afford to pass up but in the end I probably could have saved myself a few quid as sadly it wasn’t all that great. However, I did get to meet some great people.

The first Build conference was held during November and it was easily the best conference of the three, I will definately be back next year. I would throughly recommend it to anyone who didn’t have the chance to attend. Big props to Andy McMillan for organising something spectacular.

Stay in a job
Check.

Buy a notebook
I bought my first ever Mac setup in January. Buying a 15″ MacBook Pro and the lovely 24″ Cinema display, since then I think Apple has taken a fair chunk of my wages away with all their lovely peripherals. Does an iPhone count as a peripheral?

Continue reading
This year I’ve bought far too many books, in fact it’s starting to border on an unhealthy obsession. Not just any books, books that only focused on web, colour and typography. Send for help.

Holiday
My first holiday in three years. My girlfriend and I travelled a mere twelve hours away to take in the sights of Koh Samui, Hong Kong and Macau. If you fancy seeing some of the worst photography in your life then head over here.

Unplanned Goals

HTML5 Doctor
One of the plus points of the year was getting the HTML5 Doctor site up and running. In my opinion this has been a run away success and I’d like to thank Rich, Bruce, Tom, Mike and Remy.

Goals to be carried over

Speak at an event
Unfortunately this is something that fell through towards the end of the year. I did have a small talk lined up for a class of 20-30 students but perhaps this is something that will be achieved in the new year.

Learn jQuery
I didn’t get very far with this resolution, I have learned a few bits and pieces but nothing great. 2010 will be the year that I finally get to grips with jQuery.

New goals

Project 52
I actually covered this in my last blog post and it’s one that I’m definitely looking forward to. I still haven’t got any posts lined up for this, baring in mind that it starts in less than two days but it’s the challenge that I like the most about it.

Personal Projects
This coming year I’d like to spend some time on my own projects, I have a few in the pipeline right now, which should take me up to April/May time. So keep popping back and find out exactly what I’m on about.

Move Out
A scary thought is the fact that in two months I will be twenty three and I’m still living at home. I hope 2010 will be the year that I can make the jump and find somewhere.

Meet more great people
This year I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some great people; Aaron Bassett, Ashley Baxter, Sam Brown, Jason Cale, Rich Clark, Dennis Coughlin, Dan Donald, Paddy Donnelly, Gary Ennis, Piotr Fedorczyk, Andrea Gandino, Molly E. Holzschlag, Si Jobling, Patrick H. Lauke, Roan Lavery, Bruce Lawson, Tom Leadbetter, Inayaili de León, Drew McLellan, Rick Nunn, Adam Oliver, Graeme Pirie, Alan Wallace. Sorry if I missed anyone out, it’s been a long year.

Let me know what you’ve been up to.

Project 52

Last week I signed up to this new idea called project 52. For those of you who do not know what this is about

Project52 is a personal challenge geared toward getting fresh content on your website. The goal is to write at least 1 new article per week for 1 year. Because we all know what it‘s like to procrastinate on our content. A website is not just a fresh design that can be uploaded to the web and forgotten about!

Writing is something that I wish I could do a lot more of but for some reason or another it just always seems to go on the back burner. If I’m being honest, I think the reason that I don’t publish regular content on this site is because my grasp of the English language is poor. I’m still not really sure how I managed to write my fourth year University dissertation.

Another reason that I don’t publish content to this blog as often as I would like is because I try to make this blog tailored more towards what I do, instead of just talking about myself and what I’ve been up to. I just don’t think that anyone would be particularly interested in reading about what I have been up to. However of late I’ve started to change my thinking. It’s 2010 next year (which is a pretty cool number) and next year is already shaping up to be quite an important year for myself. Therefore why shouldn’t I write about what I’ve been getting up to?

So how will I tackle project 52? I think it’s probably going to be easier to do if I use a structure for each month, although this may change by the time 1st January rolls around. My structure might follow something like this

• A tutorial post
• A discussion post about the web
• A guest blogger
• A monthly round-up with next months goals

If you’re interested to see how I fair, why don’t you follow my RSS feed and see if I’ve been able to tackle this task I’ve set myself. If this sounds like your cup of tea and fancy giving it a go then sign up to the site and get the ball rolling so that you have a few ideas by the time that the New Year comes around.