An Event Apart Boston 2008 Live Blogs

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
June 25th, 2008
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
3 Responses, Join The Conversation.

For the past 2 days I’ve been in Boston at the An Event Apart conference. I kept a live blog of all of the presentations on the controversial upstart Scribble Live.

The conference was great and I think there’s something for everyone in these live blogs. Take a look, I’ve marked my personal favourites with an asterisk:

I wrote about Moneen for Much Music

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
June 18th, 2008
Posted In:
Music
Comments:
No Comments, Start The Conversation

I wrote a about a NXNE show featuring Moneen, Casey Baker & The Buffalo Sinners and Songs From A Room for the Much Music blog, check it out. NXNE: Moneen @ El Mocambo - Much Music.com Blog

Who Cares What Old Joke Bands Have To Say?

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
June 18th, 2008
Posted In:
Music
Comments:
No Comments, Start The Conversation

I just read a Punknews.org article that contains this quote from Gene Simmons:

“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this. They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilized. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.”

For the love of God I hope the music industry doesn’t “pop its head up”. The last thing we need is another album full of joke songs by a bunch of assholes that think they were anything but a joke band. Kiss were worse than Britney Spears or NKOTB ever were because they disguised their shit pop as rock and roll, dicks. This quote just proves Kiss was never in it for the music, they’ll just wait until they can cash in again, why would they play music otherwise?

I just thought you dudes should know about this, that’s all.

Stop Drop Downs… And Roll

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
June 9th, 2008
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
One Response, Join The Conversation.

If any option in the main menu of your website drops down to reveal more options you’ve failed at usability 101 (according to me, and I’m all that matters.. according to me).

The internet exists so people can get information quickly, when you take that statement into consideration you might come to the conclusion that drop downs are a good idea, allow users to drill down right from the start. Not so fast, if you give people 20 options right away it’s gonna slow them down, a lot. Let’s use a band website as an example, when you show up looking for tour dates you don’t want to be met with a drop down with the options “upcoming tour dates, past tour dates, booking information, tour photos”, you just want tour dates. If you want past tour dates, that’s fine, have a sub menu containing the other sections inside the tour dates section.

Presenting every option available right from the start is never a good idea, make your main menu options very broad and just get the users inside your website. When you walk into a department store you want to go to a specific department and go from there, you don’t want 100 signs hanging from the ceiling saying “men’s underwear, hula hoops, cat food”, you’d have to read all 100 signs before acting rather than just getting into the department you want and going from there.

Don’t make people stand there at the front of the store reading signs for 5 minutes before buying underwear!

Efficient Use Of Transparent PNGs

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
May 27th, 2008
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
One Response, Join The Conversation.

You can do a lot with transparent PNGs but it’s not very often that I come across someone doing something useful with them. Sure you can make a scuba divers light get brighter as you scroll deeper (CSS Zen Garden) or make icons look sweet with a drop shadow on all types of different backgrounds but that’s basic, almost useless stuff compared to what MAC cosmetics is doing with transparent PNGs on their site.

Kat was trying to send her friend an image of a colour of eye shadow, but every time she sent the image it was grey instead of the colour of the eye shadow. She asked me “WTF?”. I checked it out, they’re using a solid background colour with a transparent PNG over top. Amazing.

Instead of having to generate thousands of images and load them individually, they have one image with a bunch of background colour hex codes stored in a database. It’s genius and it probably saves them a bunch of money.

Check it out by clicking on the link below and then checking out any of the thumbnails. You can also click on the thumbnails for a bigger version of what’s going on. They have to use some simple JavaScript to force the PNG transparency in IE6 but it’s well worth it.

MAC Cosmetics

I Wrote About My Morning Jacket For Much Music

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
April 22nd, 2008
Posted In:
Music
Comments:
No Comments, Start The Conversation

I wrote a blog post about My Morning Jacket’s new single, album, Saturday Night Live appearance and Toronto show for the Much Music blog. Check it out: New Music From My Morning Jacket

I borrowed the photo from Brandon Hirsch, check out his photos on Flickr.

Love You To Death Website

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
April 6th, 2008
Posted In:
Portfolio, Web Design, Wordpress, XHTML & CSS
Comments:
No Comments, Start The Conversation

A custom Wordpress skin created for the power pop band Love You To Death. I did all of the HTML and CSS, I also laid it all out and created the background images. I did everything but the logo. Love You To Death website.

Read the rest of this entry »

New CTV Video Player

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
April 4th, 2008
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
One Response, Join The Conversation.

The most recent roll out in the CTV beta broadband video player series is the CTV prime time broadband video player. You can watch 4 seasons of Degrassi: The Next Generation, 2 seasons of Whistler, or season 5 of Corner Gas (Mom & Dad), but in my personal opinion the best part of the player is the CSS… wow… breathtaking.

To be honest, I still can’t stop watching the Comedy Network’s video player. How can you go wrong with every single episode of South Park, Chappelle’s Show and Reno 911?!

Snowboarding At Smuggler’s Notch

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
March 23rd, 2008
Posted In:
Snowboarding
Comments:
One Response, Join The Conversation.

I made a cheesy video of Alison and I snowboarding at Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont last week. It’s really just here so I can watch it when I’m dying to snowboard again in the fall. Without iMovie I’d never be able to make these crappy videos, thanks Apple!

New Website: Devil Strip Rollers

Posted By:
Matt
Posted On:
March 18th, 2008
Posted In:
CSS & XHTML
Comments:
No Comments, Start The Conversation

The second of the two websites I’ve been working on as favours to friends has finally gone live. A devil strip is “The strip of concrete between the rails of street car tracks in urban centers.”, The Devil Strip Rollers are people who ride bikes in the city of Toronto. The website will be a central place for all cycling related info, pictures, videos and events.

The site is a 100% custom Wordpress skin created by me and based on the Photoshop files supplied by Ryan, the site’s owner. There are a bunch of plugins at work for the events, the Twitter feed, the Flickr feed and the YouTube feed. Thanks to some last minute help from Andre the Flickr plugin was fixed while I was on my way to Vermont for a snowboard trip, thanks Andre.

I learned a lot about Wordpress while working on this site and I’m happy with how it has turned out so far. I know Ryan has some big plans and I’m excited to see how this site will grow.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Show Background