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Web 2.0

How should a web 2.0 design be classified? Should it just be stylish without any aspects of proper coding? Should it be a Javascript goliath, choking the users computer to death? Perhaps a flash based site with no sense of bookmarking or proper dynamics?

I’m going to step you through creating a 2.0 website. With all the little quirks and nuances. I’m not going to toss an actual CSS or HTML in here as I just don’t have the time right now, but if you’re a semi expirienced web designer, you should get what I’m talking about.

First let’s get your content in order. You’ll need some nice Lorem Ipsum to start off with, you can fill that in with real stuff later. Poperly tag you’re XHTML 1.0 strict compliant html file and make sure to include the style.css file at the top. You should (at least) have a section for a masthead (header), navbar and main content. You can optionally include a sidebar, footer, main banner, or anything else. These should be div id tags.

Everyone has been using a simple unordered list to style their navbars since the A List Apart article “Taming Lists.” The key here is to decide if you have enough space to create a horizontal navigation bar, or if you want to stick with the tried and true vertical navigation bar. There are distinct advantages to each. A horizontal bar uses up less room on the page, thus giving your content more breathing room. A vertical bar uses up less horizontal space, and is better suited at handling lots of links. Depending on your choice, make it fit into the overal design.

Content should be a sans-serif font of your choice. Ariel is not a good option.

Now that you have the basic layout down, you need to make everything look like it belongs on the page. The key to a web 2.0 design is that it doesn’t look like a webpage. It looks like a painting that you can click on and change. Gradients and lots of background images round the thing off. Make sure that all the spacing is correct and that you haven’t killed anything with too much color. Pick one or two primary colors and use shades of them throughout the site. Yellow and Green are not good colors.

I’ve been rather brief but I hope you get my point. Happy designing!

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2008 07 09 Ben Aroia Web Design Comments (0) Permalink

itzik Design

I am currently working on a couple of projects. One is a realestate site built on MODx, an exemplary CMS system with a desperate need for documentation, and the second is a site that will eventually be built on MODx, once I get the design just right. The logo counts as part of the design, and a the current favorite is show below.

Photobucket

While the current design is tentative, I’m leaning towards this one, due to the extended i’s and the k.

Photobucket

You can check out the site (still under construction) at http://www.itzikdesign.com.

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2008 07 01 Ben Aroia Web Design Comments (2) Permalink

MODx

I’ve decided to run with MODx as my CMS of choice. It’s small, flexible, and totally awesome. Once I figure out the menu’s that is. Templates are easy. Take the HTML source of your choice, and then add a couple of MODx tags and you’re running. It’s short and sweet.

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2008 06 15 Ben Aroia Web Design Comments (0) Permalink

Joomla and phpBB

I’ve been dabling in several topics of interst lately, and have test servers for both Joomla and phpBB set up. You can access them here:

http://www.unchartedmess.com/forum
http://www.unchartedmess.com/joomla

The learning curve on these platforms, though high, is something I wish to master. Currently phpBB is giving me loads of trouble. (Something about forums instead of topics or other) Joomla is a straight forward install, but I’m going to heavily customize the backend to increase it’s security. And of course, set up a reliable test server. Can you say new domain anyone? .info domains are currently dirt cheap due to their devaluement of late.

I have some prebuilt Joomla templates I’m going to slap on there, but the goal with both of those is the same as my goal with Wordpress. To create a simplistic, reliable, modern theme. Hopefully all three, wait thats four, will look great together. I actually hava a beautiful logo idea in mind that fits with the whole “Uncharted mess” thing. I still can’t believe that I own this domain. The reasoning for the purchase was that I needed another domain to fill the slot, and I think I picked this one because all the other ideas I had sounded like cheesy porn sites.

Eventually I will move to a true, home grown CMS, most likely built from CodeIgnitor. I’ve been dabling and dabling. Never quite seeming to find the time I need to put into this. Maybe it’s due to the lack of focus I’ve been putting this all recently. I decided I would take a minute or two and scrawl out a post, primarily because it’s been (seemingly) forever since I’ve done so last.

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2008 06 10 Ben Aroia Web Design Comments (0) Permalink

Google Favicon Change

While browsing one of my favorite sites (Google). I noticed that the friendly, tri-colored “G” had been replaced with a swirled purple monstrosity. (http://www.google.com/favicon.ico) While this change seemed inevitable, I cannot help but think that this action, event even, models change in it’s simplist form.

Thank god they haven’t decided to change the main logo yet.

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2008 06 02 Ben Aroia Google Comments (1) Permalink

Moved

I have recently moved this blog from http://d0ve.particalburst.com to my umbrealla domain at http://www.unchartedmess.com/blog/. This change is reflected on the main page. I have also reverted the theme from Hemingway. I felt that the theme was over used, and while clean, not clean enough. I plan on extending this new theme when I get a chance. Which is almost never.

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2008 05 26 Ben Aroia Blog Change Comments (0) Permalink

Cell Phone Rant

So I got a new cell phone from Verizon today. It came in a nice shiny box, with a worthless user manual and a wall charger. (It only cost like $10 so I’m not complaining. Well I am, but lets not get to far off topic.) I open it up and hit the *228 bit to program. I wait. I fiddle. It fails. Repeat. Fail. Repeat. Call Tech Support. Wait for a half hour listening to music that sounds worse then the junk they stick in elevators. Finally it’s done. It works.

Now the rant.

Okay. With my phone I can:

  1. Listen to overpriced music
  2. Watch TV on it’s 1″ screen
  3. Send text/pix/video messages
  4. Call people
  5. Waste time figuring out what the buttons do
  6. Create ring tones
  7. Take pictures/videos
  8. Move things with my mind

Number 8 isn’t really a feature. It’s actually a feature on my List of features all Cell Phones should have. Okay, not really a feature there either. Back to the LOFACPSH.

  1. All cell phones should be able to call people with a minimum amount of hassle. None of this crappy voice activated, bluetooth junk. I want to be able to type a number (fast or slow) and call it. No missed digits, no phone book look ups. Raw calling.
  2. Send SMS messages with the ability to extend the message past 160 chars. Everyone uses SMS so it has to be supported. In addition to this, I would like an intelligent type of T9 entry.
  3. Bluetooth Connectivity standard. Lots of devices (other phones, laptops, etc) use bluetooth for various things. NOT just sending you’re little vCard out to people. I want full object push capabilities. How many people would use their phone as a little wireless flash drive?
  4. Custom ringtones. I want a phone that I can recored snippets of songs I own. I want to have an integrated tone generator. I want a phone with more then just 9 basic rings.
  5. Camera. Not always necessary or needed, but nice in a pinch. Give me at least 2 megapixels or you’re wasting my time.
  6. Micro-SD card slot. 2GB of music anyone?
  7. Rugged. I should be able to drop this thing every day of the week and twice on Sunday without needing to haul up to the store to get it replaced.

Things I think would be really nice, but I doubt they would be good for the business:

  1. Open firmware. The phone I got has 3 basic style themes that all suck. Glitzy and slow. I want a basic, professional theme that doesn’t spend all it’s time working on animation.
  2. Ability to create applications that run natively on it. I want a phone that I can create custom apps for. I want to be able to write scripts that can sort my contacts or launch files.
  3. Integrated file browser.
  4. WiFi connectivity.
  5. Ability to use the Bluetooth serial port for internet access.
  6. Built-in bomb for an emergency.

Okay, number 6 isn’t looking to plausable, but other then that, I think I just described an iPhone or Blackberry at the least. Shit. I am NOT looking to shell $300 out for a phone.

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2008 05 20 Ben Aroia Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

The Sinking Forum Ship

Nowadays it’s either a “Destination Unreachable” or a simple placeholder page that greets many visitors to several popular Mac warez forum boards. Not that this is a simple case of filesharing. MSJ (http://macserialjunkie.com) and Mac-BB (http://mac-bb.org) are two very popular mac communities that have been receiving error messages lately, MSJ more then Mac-BB. Mac-BB has been down for several weeks, the suspected cause is a router failing. MSJ is more recent (today, despite a brief return). Some questions I pose are: Where are the backups? Why hasn’t anyone else (seemingly) noticed? Is this a common occurence in the forum community or something specific to these forums?

As a regular poster on these sites, I have found that many of the topics are helpful, concise, and above all, friendly. Some explanation for these periods of unexplained downtime must be presented. I recently switched from Mac-BB to MacSerialJunkie due to the downtime. I must say I miss it.

Some may remember the trouble caused by GoDaddy.com when they suspended seclists.org for allegedly publishing MySpace user/pass combos. There is even a NoDaddy.com site in which employee’s of GoDaddy complain about their boss, and customers complain about support. If one were to speculate that the problems with these forums are caused by their registars, then I have a another question. Are these (and other) incompetent domain registars be a nagging problem that webmasters will have to deal with?

Thats all my comments. What are yours?

Edit: No MSJ is giving the following page using OpenDNS:

OpenDNS error for macserialjunkie.com

Edit #2: MSJ is BACK! Turns out it was planned server downtime, but man that generic parking page scared the shit out of me.

Edit #2.1: Mac-BB is back. Moral of the story: Pay your bills.

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2008 05 15 Ben Aroia Forum Comments (1) Permalink

Work related things

Currently I have to get a site outline done by six, ten or so pages for something else reviewed by one, and still have time to sleep. And eat. I think thats important. Not to mention the fact that my two favorite forums (Mac-BB and MSJ) seem to be down right now. Mac-BB was a while (2 weeks?) ago but MSJ is more recent (like just now). I’m hoping for a bounce back or I might go crazy. I think I’m gonna eat something and get back to work.

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2008 05 15 Ben Aroia Work Comments (0) Permalink

Non Title

Damn. This is hard to balance. Between my forum activity and Twitter there seems little left to say here. But I’ve got a couple things.

First off is the translation from paper to digital artwork is hard, if not impossible to do write. I’ve been working on a new logo for UnchartedMess.com and it’s not been easy. Fun, but not easy. First thing is I don’t like the hack job I did in the first place. It look too much like the Under Armor logo for my taste. I did a sketch and flaired the legs out a bit, and shifted the U. And it didn’t look too bad. What I was really looking for was something like logo3. That was the more or less origonal design I had sketched. Only problem is making sure that all the angles line up and all the widths are the same. Not an “easy” task. Photoshop helps a bunch, but some of it’s low level manipulation tools leave a lot to be desired. I’ve also tried my hand at DrawIt, Acorn, Pixlemator. I’d love a simple vector program, but the widths! Forgive the perfectionest in me.

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2008 05 13 Ben Aroia Photoshop Comments (0) Permalink