Blog.

A blog about technology, design and web development.

What Really Happens: Inside a Web Server

This is a quick comic I drew that explains what really happens inside a web server. I started out with the intent to draw an infographic to explain the process, but quickly realized that my 'infographic' was looking more like a comic. So I went with it.

The Anatomy of a Navigation Menu

The navigation menu is one of the most important elements in website design. Clear, concise navigation allows users to quickly and easily find what they're looking for. And when this happens, you greatly increase your chances of a sale, new subscriber, or whatever the goal of the website is. On our latest project we put a lot of focus on designing and polishing the navigation menu; and in this post we'll break down all the elements and show you how to make your own awesome CSS navigation menus!

A New Design for a New Year

It was a long time coming, but I've finally redesigned this site. From the graphics right down the the XHTML/CSS, everything is new. While most designers (myself included) get the urge to redesign their portfolio's all too often, this redesign was definitely needed. It's been over a year since there's been any major changes too the site, and a lot has happened in a year! In this post I'll take a look at some of the tools and techniques I used when redesigning the site, such as CSS sprites, font replacement with Cufon, great new javascripts, CSS3 techniques and more!

PunyPNG
PunyPNG is a free website optimization tool that dramatically reduces the file size of your images without any loss of quality.

Halftone - A Free Wordpress Theme

I've just released the free WordPress theme: Halftone. It's a clean, blue and grey theme with halftone patterns, designed for over-sized logos. Read on for preview and download links!

To Wordpress or not to Wordpress?

Content management systems are becoming more popular as well as more important. If your site is not powered by one you're wasting time and resources. In this post I take a look at my transition from a custom content management system to the possibility of using one of the many excellent, free and open source content management systems available today.

SiteManagr - A CodeIgniter CMS

SiteManagr is a simple, open source content management system built on the CodeIgniter PHP framework. I've just released version 0.31 (beta).

TeuxDeux
TeuxDeux is a simple, designy, browser-based to-do app.

Coming Soon: A CodeIgniter CMS

COMING SOON: an easy-to-use, full featured content management system (CMS) built on the open source CodeIgniter PHP framework.

A Year In Review

With the holidays almost here and the year winding down, what better time to look back and review accomplishments and set some goals for the upcoming year. In this post I'll take a look at some of the tools and technologies I've learned over the past year and why you should learn them too! I'll also set some goals as a developer/designer for the year to come.

Tiny Icons: A Free Icon Set

We've created a set of 25 tiny but high-quality icons, just for you. And the best part is, they're free! All icons in the set are are 10px square and are in png format. Grab the download link after the preview and check back soon as we'll be adding to the set periodically!

Markup with Markdown!

For quite a while I've been looking for a simple web-based text editor for use with general web forms (comments, contact etc.) and a CMS I'm currently working on. There are a few good full-featured editors out there: CKEditor.com, freerichtexteditor.com to name a couple, but I was not able to find a simple, light-weight editor. Then I stumbled upon Markdown.

Brand New Logo

I finally took the time and redesigned my logo. In this post I'll go over what brought me to choose the new logo.

6 Must-Have Free Applications

It's safe to say that almost all of the applications I use on a daily basis are offered free of charge and many are even open source. That being said, not all free/open source apps are everything they're made out to be. Below I've listed a few applications that I've deemed worthy, and use each and every day.

CodeIgniter vs. CakePHP

CodeIgniter and CakePHP are two of the top PHP frameworks. Both have a large following and offer many features and code separation via MVC. In this post I'll take a brief look at the two frameworks, and which one I chose to begin using.

Wireless Card Instruction Manual?

Remember when laptops didn't come with wireless networking built-in? Well I was going through some old junk and came across a PCMCIA wireless 802.11b card I bought for my old HP Pavilion laptop. Opening the box brought back some horrific memories of the hours I lost trying to get it connected and keep it connected. Before I tossed it into the garbage I decided I had better see why the box was so heavy. Digging a little deeper I came across this ...