Evening all – since it’s been a while since i posted (busy busy – Mayday Network Phase II in full swing) – I thought i’d have a trawl through the archives and see what I could find. Here’s what I came up with, a Flash notice maker I made for a client a few months ago (quickly re-branded ).
This one’s AS3 and can be used to create notices while maintaining the corporate format. Put in your title and body copy (the text will resize to fit), hit print and out of your printer will pop a beautifully formatted notice, corporate font and colours intact, in a handy, print friendly A4. It also adds a little ‘created on…’ tag to try and avoid out of date notices floating about everywhere.
Here’s the file – usual rules apply – credit me if you’re feeling generous. And if you feel like improving it (I’ll hold my hands up – the text resize can be a little fiddly) do so and send me the file.
This week, after a month of hard work, late nights and gnashing of teeth, The Mayday Network website finally went live. A social network aimed at businesses who want to reduce their carbon footprint and do other good environmentally things, the site is entirely built and updated in Drupal. The website was designed by Anywhichway and I was responsible for initial front end template build and subsequent Drupal theming.
The site, currently in phase 1, has member profiles, news feeds and events listings with member sign up functionality. It’s main draw at this stage is ‘The Journey’ a tool that helps guide members, step by step, through their own ‘low carbon journey’. Members are able to tick off steps as they go and periodically upload stories of their progress for other users to see.
A great deal was acheived in a short time here so well done to everyone involved and thanks for putting in the hours .
Recently I’ve been coming across sites that utilise such hideous design and nightmarish HTML that i’ve felt compelled to bring them to the attention of a wider audience and, in many cases, that’s exactly what i’ve done.
Recently as I prepared to Tweet this gem – it occured to me that perhaps lurking behind this terrifyingly poorly executed facade is in fact an ingenious and fresh viral marketing idea. After all it only takes one smug, superior media type (i.e. me) to stumble across it and publish the link on some social network somewhere and bingo – instant traffic.
Of course there’s a danger, as in this instance, that you take the concept too far and all your content is hidden behind an impossible to navigate front end awash with random, blindingly garish links. Handled in the right way, however, this could be rather effective. Imagine a website which on first glance is pure HTML abortion, hideous enough to get an instant mention on media boards across the web, and yet on closer inspection incorporates a surprisingly intuitive navigation which in turn leads to well designed and structured content. Food for thought my friends, perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new viral phenomenon – one that will eventually result in a mass turnaround in the way we design and build websites. Retro web design – God forbid!
Anyway, sorry for the almost actual blog like nature of this post. Back to standard postings next time. In the meantime here’s another one for you to point and laugh at. Look at his ponytail – LOL!
Happy Easter loyal readers (or possibly reader). Here’s a nice simple piece of JavaScript that counts down the number of words remaining in a restricted text field as you type. When you hit your limit and the counter hits zero you will no longer be able to type any words untill you delete some. There is no restriction here on characters and words are defined by spaces only. The example below shows it in action.
Textfield is limited to 50 words.
words remaining: 50
File’s attached as usual here – so download them, use them and together we can make HTML forms fun! (as long as you don’t have JavaScript disabled…)
This week the British Soap Awards website 2010 website went live – built by me and designed by the good folk at Anywhichway! The site is built using the CodeIgniter framework and includes a basic vote authentication function and a reporting back end utilising the PHPExcel plugin. The voting aesthetics are coded in JavaScript.
Traffic on the site is extremely heavy and as of this post has attracted more than 9000 unique voters (in two days). With more than quarter of a million expected by the end of voting it’s, with the exception of the Orange Intranet (which doesn’t count), my highest profile and most visited work so far.
).
Viral revolution or webvomit?
April 15th, 2010Recently I’ve been coming across sites that utilise such hideous design and nightmarish HTML that i’ve felt compelled to bring them to the attention of a wider audience and, in many cases, that’s exactly what i’ve done.
Recently as I prepared to Tweet this gem – it occured to me that perhaps lurking behind this terrifyingly poorly executed facade is in fact an ingenious and fresh viral marketing idea. After all it only takes one smug, superior media type (i.e. me) to stumble across it and publish the link on some social network somewhere and bingo – instant traffic.
Of course there’s a danger, as in this instance, that you take the concept too far and all your content is hidden behind an impossible to navigate front end awash with random, blindingly garish links. Handled in the right way, however, this could be rather effective. Imagine a website which on first glance is pure HTML abortion, hideous enough to get an instant mention on media boards across the web, and yet on closer inspection incorporates a surprisingly intuitive navigation which in turn leads to well designed and structured content. Food for thought my friends, perhaps we are witnessing the birth of a new viral phenomenon – one that will eventually result in a mass turnaround in the way we design and build websites. Retro web design – God forbid!
Anyway, sorry for the almost actual blog like nature of this post. Back to standard postings next time. In the meantime here’s another one for you to point and laugh at. Look at his ponytail – LOL!
Tags: comment, Design, HTML, media, scriptic, Silas, viral marketing, Website
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