Keeping Busy

I've been incredibly busy lately, which is something of a surprise given the current economic climate here in the United Kingdom (and throughout most of the world in reality).

Perhaps the downturn in spending has caused companies to finally think about promoting their business in any way they can, in order to encourage new customers. Whatever the reason, it's an ideal situation for myself.

Two projects I've worked on recently are:

PerfectGetways.co.uk Holiday Home Search Engine

Berwyn Mountain Llamas - Llama Treks in North Wales

TinyBrowser - a TinyMCE file browser with multiple file upload

I initially created TinyBrowser (a file browser for web applications) for my own use, as part of my LunarWeb Content Management System, before deciding to release it under the GPL for the benefit of other users.

I have to say I've been completely blown away by the response I've gotten. I'm getting several emails a day from users, plenty of feedback, bug reports and shows of gratitude - a great massager for the ego!

At first TinyBrowser was exclusively for use with TinyMCE, but I've gone on to add support for FCKeditor (still in experimental stage) and also a stand-alone mode for use in your own web app.

My design philosophy was to make it as functional but easy to use as possible. Standard html form file uploads have always been a bugbear of mine due to their limitations - specifically the inability to upload multiple files and to filter by file type - so that was a primary goal with TinyBrowser. In the end, I utilised a Flash-based upload tool that provides those two requirements along with a nice GUI including stuff like sortable columns and upload progress bars.

I've set up a Google Group for discussion of TinyBrowser (and access to the latest betas).

Fluffy Photoshop Clouds

I'm always searching Google for tutorials to discover new ways of using Photoshop, Adobe's de facto image manipulation software package, but a recent website project required the creation of cartoon style clouds to decorate the page header - surely no-one has created a tutorial for this?

Well, amazingly, there were several tutorials to pick from and I actually used the number one search result as the basis for my design. That resulting tutorial was this:

http://www.photoshopstar.com/graphics/cartoony-splash-page/

To see the finished effect on my client's website, visit Corwen Day Nursery.

Web Compliant & Accessible Design

The days of using HTML tables to layout the content on your website are well and truly gone, although a surprising amount of websites still use them. The main bugbear in using tables for layout is that they weren't designed to be used in such a way, their sole purpose is to display tabular information - so unless your website presentation resembles an Excel spreadsheet they aren't the way to go.

Something else that quickly becomes apparent with table-based websites is their difficulty to maintain - the presentation is so tangled up in the content that even a minor layout change is a nightmare.

The solution to all this is to use Cascading Style Sheets, a method that truly separates content from presentation. Of course CSS isn't a new concept as it's been around for a number of years, but it is constantly evolving. And in this evolution is a tangled mess of browser support, compliance, non-compliance and bugs.

In a perfect world, CSS design is simple - in reality, it's anything but as each browser from Firefox and Safari through to the much maligned but virtually de facto Internet Explorer have their own little quirks in how they choose to interpret the CSS. In fact, they vary greatly from version to version (IE5, 6 and 7 anyone?) and browser behaviour can even be affected due to running in quirks or standard mode (yes IE6, I'm looking at you).

So, will we ever reach a point where all browsers are equal in their interpretation of CSS? Right now that seems like nothing but a pipe dream, but we can only hope.

In the meantime, I will continue to strive for full cross-browser support in all my website design projects.

Lunarvis Offsite blog

Hello there,

My name's Bryn Jones, I'm a web developer based in North Wales, United Kingdom and I'm starting this blog as an experiment, to share updates, random opinions and the occasional bit of useful information.

The name of my company is Lunarvis and this is the homepage for web design in North Wales. I also offer other IT system services. Here are some website development projects I've worked on:

D. E. Jones Electrical Solutions
Gregory Gray Associates Town Planning
Williams Haulage
Celfderw Oak Kitchens and Furniture
Universal Learning Streams
Hen Bost Holiday Cottage
Omnia Recycling
Silk and Honey Specialist Lingerie

I hope to keep posting to this blog on a semi-regular basis, with details of my expanding web design portfolio and as the need arises to post random information.