The Day Today

Hi I’m Andi and I’m going to be writing some web design/development focussed entries on The Day Today.

As a self-taught web developer I used to write a lot of my own JavaScript functionality, which meant when creating websites the limits were my own and everything needed to be heavily tested on multiple browsers. For a commercial website these days this potentially means testing on Internet Explorer 5.5, 6 and 7; as well as the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox; Opera, Safari and Camino.

Recently, I’ve discovered that there are some great object orientated JavaScript frameworks out there which take away the pain of lower-level JavaScript coding and leave you to play with the fun stuff. These frameworks allow you to apply some nice Web 2.0 effects such as slides, appear, AJAX, accordians, drap and drop, resize and fade, and they have already been tested in all the major browsers (degrading gracefully where they do not work).

There are lots of frameworks available on the Internet, but two of the more successful ones are MooTools and Script.aculo.us. I personally have more experience with MooTools, but I hear Scriptaculous is very good too (generally it is considered bad practice to mix the two in one solution). Microsoft have tried to jump on the bandwagon too, offering a AJAX framework for .NET 2.0 (formely known as Atlas) which is quite good, if a little too buggy at the moment.

If anyone knows of any other frameworks that they have found a particular joy to work with, please let me know below!

After yesterday’s post I felt inspired to update my online photography website. I had been planning on adding a few new features to the site, and also decided a bit of a redesign was in order. I’m pleased to say that the site now looks as intended in both Firefox and Internet Explorer (there was previously a slight issue in the latter) and I’m quite pleased with the result.

There’s still two features I want to add - namely a blog and multiple maps - but these will be left for a future update. Please take a look at the site and leave a comment with any feedback.

This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of CSS frameworks for providing a quick and reliable website design. I don’t do as much website design as I used to, but I’m currently thinking about creating my own design for this website (instead of just a tailored default theme) and also want to work on a couple of other websites of mine soon. I may look into these frameworks, however I think I’m more likely to start from scratch and test in all common browsers myself - as frustrating as browser compatability is, it’s also rather rewarding!

The hardest part of designing a new website is finding the inspiration - for this I recommend the Open Source Web Design site. It has over two thousand designs categorised by standards compliance, contrast, colour, and layout. I’ve used it for projects in the past where I’ve needed a site up and running within hours, and you’re free to take the source and modify it as much as you like. Simply substituting a few of your own images, modifying the text alignment, or just changing the colour scheme can dramatically change the initial template and result in an original design.

I’m lazy. I enjoy designing websites but I normally either don’t finish them or change them all too soon. This is why I’m currently using a default Wordpress design for this blog - I wanted the content to be the most important aspect and let a design come to me in the future.

When I do look to design something from scratch I’ll definately be taking inspiration from Smashing Magazine’s list of 45 Excellent Blog Designs. I have to agree that they’re all great examples of how it should be done, with my favourites being Dave Shea’s organic mezzoblue, The Freelance Blog, and Circle Six Design.