Staple Web Design Blog

We’d like to know what everything thinks about getting a wordcamp out here. Right now we’re gauging interest for how many people we’d be able to get. If you’ve never been to a wordcamp or heard of one, you can check out http://central.wordcamp.org… Also, if there are any other wordpress related questions anyone has you can post them here and we can talk about them at the meetup.

To RSVP Head over to our meetup group and join in.
Buffalo Wordpress Users Meetup Group

We’re looking for anyone at any skill level with wordpress. Whether you’re a newbie or been working with it since its beginning you’re more than welcome to join in.

If you’re like me and one of the select few web designers and/or developers who doesn’t carry around an iPhone all day long I’d first off like to welcome you to our exclusive club. Secondly I’d like to point you to the Motorola Droid or other Android Phones (preferably the 2.0 android phones coming out soon). Its rare that a Web Designer isn’t an iPhone owner, but I have my reasonings, one large one is the network carrying the iPhone and its horrible service around Buffalo.

Anyways, No worries, because I’m in love with my Motorola Droid anyways. I’ve owned both, and personally recommend the Droid over the iPhone. One place where it does need some work is to get some more Web Design & Development Apps in the Marketplace. This is what I’ve found to be useful to me as a designer, I’ll keep this updated as new apps come out for the android platform.

• Google Voice

  (free)
  If you’re a designer and don’t have Google Voice, this one might not help you too much, but I love this application. This is one of the “iDon’t” apps that the iPhone can’t use because of Apple’s App Store Restrictions. Anyways, It’ll let you sync your Google Voice account to your phone and even allow you to choose to make calls from your Google Voice Number all the time, internationally, or let you choose before each call. I find this great as my Business Phone Number is a Google Voice Number and being able to use my physical phone to call from that number is a great feature and one of the big selling points of this phone to me. If you don’t yet have a Google Voice account, let me know and If I’ve got any invites I’ll send one your way.

• CSS Cheat Sheet

  (free)
  This is a simple, yet handy cheat sheet that has CSS Elements that are in a dropdown category system for quick and easy navigation and searching.

• Remember The Milk

  (free – requires RTM Pro Account)
  Remember The Milk is one of the fastest and easiest to use task lists on mobile devices. The Pro Account for Remember the Milk is only $25.00 and if it saves you even a few hours in time you’d otherwise not have organized it has already done its job.

• Google Analytics for Android

  (free or paid)
  There are literally a ton of Google Analytics Apps in the Marketplace for you to choose from, but I do suggest grabbing one that you enjoy. I’ve yet to test them all, so if you’ve got suggestions as to what GA apps are the best don’t hesitate to let everyone know in the comments.

• wpToGo

  (free)
  This is another App that is for a specific piece of software, but this is one of the most popular CMS/Blogging Platforms in the world. wpToGo is a fast and easy way to connect to your Wordpress Blog via mobile and add posts. There are some features I’d like to see added in either a paid version, or updated free version but this is still a very good app so far.

• Mind Map Memo

  (free)
  Mind Map Memo is a free app that lets you easily create mind maps while on your android device. It works quite well with my Droid and makes what would seem to be a tedious process on a mobile device quite simple and powerful. I love to use mind-mapping software to organize my thoughts and ideas so this is a must have for me.

One thing that I do really enjoy is the Google Calendar that comes installed on the Motorola Droid. I won’t list that since its a common thing for most Android phones.

I’ll be updating this as more apps become available or I discover some that I have yet to run across. If you’ve got any apps that help you out with your design or management add a comment and I’ll check them out and possibly add them to the list.

I’ve got some exciting news; I’ll be attending my first ever Wordcamp on November 14th and 15th in NYC. Very excited to go to one and have been trying to get to one for a couple years now. As most of our clients know we almost always suggest wordpress as a CMS or blog for our sites because it is so flexible, powerful and open source. If you’re going and would like to meet just let me know as I’m looking to network with as many people as I can during the event.

More information on Wordcamp NYC

It took a while, but we just gave ourselves a nice new design for the site. We’re still working on some small details, so you might see some areas that are still being worked on so pardon our dust. We hope everyone likes the new design.

I’m happy to announce that I will begin designing for IPB 3.0+ and vBulletin 4.0+. vBulletin 4.0 is planned to release sometime in August, and IPB has just been released. If you’re looking for a custom IPB or vB skin don’t hesitate to contact me and I can help you out. 15% discount to the first 5 clients on the new forum designs!

I’m also thinking about releasing some downloadable themes (haven’t decided for sure, or whether they’ll be paid or free), but I will keep everyone updated of releases of themes if and when I do.

Since starting as a Freelance Designer over 3 years ago I’ve matured quite a bit in my designs, and how I manage to create the designs. From thoughts in my head to html/css code displayed in a browser as a finished product, each step along the way is crucial to a good design, and one of the areas that I often undervalued when designing before was wire framing phase.

Wire frames are gaining popularity very fast with designers and after trying it out, theres no question why. Wire frames help to organize all the information and sections of a site that you’re working on. (more…)

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(more…)

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• Most importantly, point three

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I’m happy to announce that my Camaro Forum has won vBulletin.org’s Board Of The Month Contest.

I had some stiff competition, but I’m quite happy with the win and hope to continue to improve the forum and keep our member base growing and consistent.

For many designers and developers, CSS 3 support cannot come soon enough. The new features announced sound and look great in general. Many of the functions will make designers lives much easier.

With new features like

• Border Radius
• Border Image
• Ability to add fonts via the web (user doesn’t have to have font installed on their system)
• Text Shadows
• Multiple Backgrounds
• and many more…

The question with all of this however, is when will it be safe to really use the CSS3 exclusive functions on a webpage without a fallback for older browsers. With Browsers just beginning to support CSS3 (Firefox 3.1, Safari 4 are known to handle CSS3) how long will it take IE8 (or 9 if Internet Explorer really wants to tick off designers) to be out of beta and released. After that it’ll have to be another few years for all windows users to upgrade to IE8. To make a long story short, while CSS3 is here and teasing us, the reality is we can’t design exclusively for it until at least 3 years, probably longer. I still have 6% of users on my sites on IE 6.0 or older.

This doesn’t mean we can’t use these cool new functions, it just means that sites shouldn’t be built for only CSS3 browsers. Sites that can degrade well will make everyone happy. It’s not wrong to design with new features for people using new browsers, the problem is if you rely only on them, and not understand that there are many people on older machines that do not update their browsers as regularly as many of us.