SiteCrafting, Inc.

As mobile access to the web increases, it is becoming more and more important to ensure sites are usable on mobile devices. iPhoney attempts to address the iPhone camp with a desktop application that renders web pages within a virtual iPhone.

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Changing the way an entire industry works is never easy. It can take a lot of time to get people used to doing things in a new way. Fortunately, during the past few years we have witnessed entire industries become disrupted by innovation. The Internet has changed the rules in so many industries - digital music, travel, banking - the list goes on and on. So one of our customers asked, why not Letterman jackets?

We all remember (at least those of us that were jocks) receiving our letter and going to the nearest sporting goods store and ordering our jackets. Typically, we chose from a limited set of styles, got measured, paid some money, and then waited 4-6 weeks for delivery. It's a process that still plays itself out in most of the country. Enter Lettermansclub.com...
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So I came across a great blog post on innovation posted by Peter Dixon - When Super is Just Plain Superfluous and I have to say he just nailed it.

So much has been made of the need for innovation that people have lost track of what the word even means, they just know they need to do it. Which I guess is good if you are in the business of providing solutions that help people "innovate". 

Unfortunately, every day people are "selling" innovations that ultimately serve no purpose or are just enormous time wasters.
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If the iPhone is web apps to go, Google and the Open Handset Alliance's new open source mobile phone API, dubbed Android, is The Joy Of Cooking Webapps. Once again Google has seen a good idea (packing a cell phone full of convenient little apps and widgets that sync with websites and external systems) and figured out a way to make it a great one.

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So, I'm pretty much online all the time. I'm constantly looking for innovative applications and web services. I thought, "I'm going to have a look at what the 'big guys' are doing."

We all know Google is creating some pretty great web applications like their maps or spreadsheet apps. Seems decision makers at the big "G" have squarely set their sites on building innovative tools for web users. Surely, I thought, Microsoft has its plan and it's called Windows Live.

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So, some people are interested in what others are reading at the current moment. So I thought I'd give you a view into the sorts of things that I focus on when I'm not working on conquering the web universe.

The fact is, I am always looking for new books and new things to learn. I recently finished a book that was recommended by a client called Indomitable Spirit by Chuck Ferguson which calls itself "The essential guidebook for a lifelong journey of leadership  and the rewards of meeting them".

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Here at SiteCrafting, we are quite busy with new projects. As such, we have realized that additional staff is necessary to meet the demands for our services. With the addition of new staff members comes the need for more furniture. We also decided that this would be a great time to rearrange the office, and create 3-4 person "pods" for team collaborative purposes. So, we headed off to the furniture store that supplied us with our current desks and chairs, hoping to place an order for 14 new tables.

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When I was back in school, I would often tell people how my combined Art and Computer Science majors did not mean that I was doing graphic design, web design, or any other kind of mix of computers and art. To them, it was obvious that I would combine two usually separate majors into the usual combination. To me, however, art and computer science are totally separate. The purpose of art is in my mind to either 1) evoke an emotional response in your viewer or 2) create something beautiful. Computers are a communication medium, and the purpose of communication is to deliver information.

You can see examples of this every day - in websites of art schools that are impossible to divine information out of, or in strictly information websites that have no graphical content whatsoever. In the case of these two ideas, the graphic-less sites win out in function and usability, but the art school sites look better. The problem is, that the art school sites are impossible to use, and so it doesn't matter how good they look. The clear winner here is the plain, yet content centric site. And the lesson to learn is that content is king, and communicating that information well and effectively is the key to building a good website.
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One of the most popular javascript libraries, Prototype, has finally released a decent set of documentation. I'm really pleased, because it was a little difficult to work with not knowing what was available, and how to use all the tools.

Their website is very simple and easy to use, and will quickly become one of my most visited sites. If you haven't used Prototype, I highly reccomend taking a look at its features. It makes javascript development very fast and simple, even for complex problems. I've used it to great success. I don't know how it matches up with some other javascript libraries yet, but I'm planning on reviewing all of them.

I just got a new car - a Volvo 240 Wagon. I can't wait to take it on a road trip. This is the first time I've gotten my own car, and so I've been dealing with all the licensing, emissions, and insurance paperwork that goes along with buying a car. I've learned two important things from buying the car, and I want to share. Read more →

As with most people with an email account, I receive a fair amount of spam each day. Most of it is caught by our spam filters and sent to Never-Never-Land where I won't see it. One piece of spam managed to sneak its way through last week that was just too good to ignore.  With all the advancements in technology to filter out spam, how do you get your message out to thousands of email accounts? You go old school.

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It's pretty common for PHP developers to make complex and difficult to maintain scripts, and I am no exception. I write my code in two distinctly different ways: scripts that do a whole bunch of things depending on input, and classes that do a bunch of things depending on how they are called, but from lots of different scripts. But which is better?

It's a nice ego boost for any prrogrammer to know they created a script/function/class that is really useful, and well designed, but at some point the code stops being well designed, and becomes gross. I think that point is when you have one script that displays an entire (SQL) table of data, views a particular row, edits that row, can delete that row, or can add new row to the table.

If my Software Engineering professor sees me doing that, I imagine that he'll reevalute my grade in his class.
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I ran across a neat article from Sitepoint via Stylegala that you all should read on how to make your HTML 'perfect'. In the world of design, the concept of perfect is non-existant. There is no solution that will work for solving every problem, and there are exceptions to every rule. This article is no different. Read the full article, and then check out my comments.
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Hot on the heels of the Internet Explorer 7 release, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is slated for official release tomorrow, but, as often happens, they have posted the full release version up on the mirrors already, so you can find what you're looking for at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0

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I recently received a gift certificate to a popular online merchant, aka Company. I'm not telling who Company is, because I like them, and I don't want my comments to be taken the wrong way. The entire thing was a fiasco, but I ended up with a nice warm and fuzzy feeling, simply because the merchant actually cared about my experience.

Here's the important parts:

• If something goes wrong, tell the customer why
• Never have an action with out a success or error message
• If you can reasonably accomodate the customer's request, do so
• Respect your customer's schedule
• If the customer isn't happy, ask them why

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Seems like the cat's out of the bag. Well, IE 7 is now available for download, anyway. Good to see Microsoft update their browser software after five years away from the party. Can't say I'm personally looking forward to this install but even if the only thing better about IE 7 is PNG support, I'm all for it.

Download IE 7 and let us know what you think! You can be sure we'll be doing extensive client testing and will post our thoughts as they solidify.