Projects

2007.11.10

The following are links to sites that I had a part in developing.
The designs are NOT mine.

It’s a competition between developers to see how few lines of (symmantecally standards-correct) code it takes to get a site working accross the main browsers: FireFox, Safari, Internet Explorer 7 & 6. The IE 6 stylesheet is the judged criteria: the fewer the lines, the more CSS mojo you’ve got.

FEDERATED MEDIA

One of my goals, early on, was to start an online publishing company. Problem was, that I didn’t know where to begin. Now, thanks to these guys, I’m smack in the middle of the industry! Federated Media is one of our most fun, demanding and rewarding clients. We’re their not-so secret interactive agency for a concept called “Conversational Marketing.” Here’s what Forbes said about them. It’s a privilege to work with some really high profile clients-of-a-client.

Most of these are custom WordPress installations. Although, we’re puching the boundaries of what you can get this system to do, which is really fun after the headaches.

My counterpart is actually putting the finishing touches on a new plug-in for WordPress, which will be awesome when it goes live. Just a little kick-back to the open-source community we rely upon so heavily.

  1. Samsung Defining Moments - Added some copy post-launch. I had very little, if anything, to do with this site.
  2. Symantec: A Conversation About Security - My first official custom WordPress install. J. Keply helped me out quite a bit, and even styled the right sidebar to get it out the door. This one was a lot of fun.

EZ PUBLISH

Open source Content Management System “with a near-vertical learning curve” aptly described by D. Barker. The more I work with it, the more I love about it.

  1. CarHop
    - Design by AdWërks. I personally dislike the design after staring at it for months. But, I appreciate that it’s perfect for the market segment they’re going for.
    Implementation (= Heavy Lifting) by J. Kepley. Basic templates by me. Also, the Flash maps were implemented by me, too. And we add a new map every time CarHop adds a store. They’re a nice client. A LOT of functionality and some really interesting things going on at this site regarding server/browser caching to get the effects right. This was my first eZ publish project and it was quite a learning experience.
  2. Midwest ENT - I remixed the Illustrator files to get at the graphics I needed. Cutting this design was the lengthiest part. Implementation went smoothly. Now, if we can only get the client to communicate what else they want to get it off our plates.
  3. South Dakota Interior Design - Added a gallery to this site.
  4. Performance Cars
    - Design by SitePosition. This site necessitated me picking-up Adobe FireWorks, an web layout application that only generates proprietary layered-PNG files! What a PITA. I only cut-up the design of this site and created some buttons. C. Lukenbill did the excellent eZ development; and we trouble-shot the transparent roll-over backgrounds.

.ASP

When I hear we’re getting an ASP project, I cringe. They’ve held-off on me learning it, so I only do the HTML+CSS. Then, it gets turned over to someone else for templating. This, more often than not, results in rework because the ASP developer doesn’t build my implementation into the ASP templates. Finally, someone has to go back and “fix” his templates.

  1. BKG Elements
    - Design by BKG. I had it pixel perfect in one stylesheet, except for the browser-consistent styled scrollbar. Then, the boss scrapped all of it during the transition into ASP. I restored it when the client pointed the issues out. This was a huge team effort to get it out the door. I dissected the innards of Greybox to alter it’s navigation, and made their favicon.
  2. Torch Hill
    - Design by K. Santi. I cut it, wrote the HTML + CSS, and the templates stayed true to the form. And I dealt with the client to make all changes. My first website.

COLD FUSION

Proprietary tagging language built on Java Web Server. Pretention associated with this platform abounds because it’s expensive, easy to learn and hard to make it do complex workflows. Pitiful for building a Content Management System (CMS). Might was well use JSP.

  1. Spader
    - Design by BKG. This company was rebranded and the website was the core of this large effort. They had a custom CMS built with Cold Fusion (CF). I had to take this custom, table-based layout and convert it to a really funky CSS only layout. And this was with no templates, so I had to correct many, many files. It was like cutting the meat out of the fat of a ribeye steak and replacing it with chicken. And it was about as practical, too.

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