CSS sprites

We have used Yahoo design 2 weeks ago in order to demonstrate the reskin features of our CMS.

One of the thing we noticed was the use of CSS sprites (a master image is used for all the icons on the page, and sliced accordingly through CSS).
example: Traffic icons


Since then,I came across an article about this on Alistapart, which is very detailed and useful.

I have been playing with the Yahoo UI Library for a little while, and when you are using javascript, a Firefox extension such as firebug comes in very handy. Here is a video from Joe Hewitt (the guy behind this extension)

optimisation for flash - swfobject to the rescue

I was asked by a friend to run some optimisation for his site, Xanadu, a site about architecture - it is a flash site, and since I usually only manage SEO in house, or train people how to manage it themselves, I never came across optimising for a flash site before.

I usually recommend to provide with an html version of the site, but could not manage to convince him. And since he is a friend, could not really say no - so, I had to do a bit of research about how to optimise for a Flash site.

Found a very neat way to achieve good results: using the swfobject

I am even considering pulling out the flash code using ajax to make it the perfect page - since Google is extensively using ajax, I don't see anything wrong with using it as well. the good thing is that they use multiple flash files according categories, which mean that I'll be able to deep link to the site - kind of a luxuary.

Well, let's see how it goes, and will probably post the results in a few weeks..

Time break down for modern design

Matt sent me a link to http://theobvious.typepad.com which is quite funny - not relfecting a high level of html knowledge really, but funny anyway - we have all gone through this.

protecting content - why?

Just received an email from Lastthursday.com today, which was a communication from their new CEO, Richard Alberg.

Just over a month ago I took over as CEO [...]However they ran into the problem of how to make LastThursday a commercially viable enterprise

Ok, they study ways to monetise on their community.

[...]Together with a few colleagues we are now implementing the plan. The first stage is to undertake considerable site development work as this will allow us to provide an environment that we believe will be attractive and valuable to our members

good...

[...]Our community will not be a place where we focus on selling our services to each other. Since members are mainly in micro-businesses with extremely limited buying power for the vast majority of vendors this would be a foolish endeavour that simply smacks of desperation.

mmmmh ok

Nor will our community be a place where we posture for Google. Yes, our site has the potential to be busy enough to attract the search engines. But if we post just to be indexed then very soon our community will be overwhelmed by inane drivel. For this reason all posting areas have now been closed to search engines and can only be viewed by registered members.

And here I jump. It really doesn't make sense.
1) If you log on, you'll see that all the posts are from people who posts the same thing on their own blog. There is not any original content here (except replies to the posts, but I would rather comment directly on the blog than on LastThursday). LastThrusday is effectively an aggregation of articles previously posted by the volunteers on their own blog. And aggregation doesn't really appeal to search engines any more... So I would not worry about the risk of getting too many visitors if I was Richard - I wold worry about getting flagged as content aggregator instead.

2) You must welcome traffic from search engines, and then take action if the quality of your traffic is not meeting your expectations. Again, why worrying about the potential impact of bad quality traffic when you don't get a lot yet.

Product's development - the Google way

A funny article from www.valleywag.com about Google's approach to product development..

social web - the academic side

I have been browsing resources to find out about social networking on the Internet - I stumbled upon this great site, http://www.danah.org/papers/.

Danah boyd is a PhD student at the School of Information (SIMS) at the University of California, Berkeley. "My research focuses on how people negotiate a presentation of self to unknown audiences in mediated contexts."

Great material for anyone interested in setting up an online community portal..

Modern design

Yep, web design is getting more and more exciting this days thanks to the new javascript libraries (DOM wangling, ajax, etc ... ), and Yahoo has just released a great source of info on this topic!

July Meetup - all about Ruby

It is now official, next London Web design Meetup will be about Ruby (Also available on Upcoming).

Currently looking for a speaker - so give a shout if you are interested in running a short presentation about Ruby on rails (~15mn) on the 12th of July at the Horse & Groom

I was talking to Deirdre about this last week at the Geek's BBQ, and she suggested that I should ask the authorisation from Paul birch (who runs Pizza on Rails) before. Was it a joke?

We have now 3 "official" speakers -
Eben Halford
Alan Bradburne
Jonathan Conway

The program is really exciting - cannot wait to listen to these guys!