MGMT - "Electric Feel" Music Video
I thought this was one of the most creative music videos I have seen in a while. What you think? Leave comments please!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Website Development, The Do's and Don'ts.
DO use frameworks.
Frameworks is the serious shit. If you're going into any project, or any task, and you're building it around a framework, you're construction process will always go more smoothly, from CSS frameworks (960.gs, Blueprint), to web application frameworks, such as Django (Python), CakePHP (PHP), Rails (Ruby).
You'll be working with an environment that helps you worry less about structure and standards and focus on the development.
DO write validated HTML.
If you aren't doing this, you'll be shamed upon by anyone looking at your source. You should care because search engines care; however, even writing validated html does not necessarily mean you're writing meaningful html.
DO write meaningful HTML.
Doing <h1><img src="/imgs/mylogo.jpg" /></h1>. Well knock it off. To a computer it means the image link is the header of your page. Instead, do <h1>My Site Name</h1> then add some css style to the h1 tag like, say you wanted to replace that with an image, you could add the attributes: display:none; background:url('/imgs/mylogo.jpg'). If you're writing your html and thinking about the design at the same time, you're simply not doing it right. Instead, just write the content out. Use <h1>s, you may use <div> to split up some sections, or you should use <p> to wrap around your text. Then when you're done with that you add the css attributes to the base tags first. Then follow on with classes for specific detailing. A good example of displaying your page header would be scribefire's homepage.
DO be enthusiastic.
If you want your site to do well, then think about it, be creative, think of different ways to improve your site. Think about your readers wants. Try to get feed back and always challenge yourself. If you wanted to do something in ajax, write down specifically what you're trying to achieve and learn it (Trust me it's not that hard). You're living in an information age, if you feel held back by knowledge, you're not taking advantage.
DON'T get too enthusiastic.
But you can't be too enthusiastic, see when you're researching, you're not really constructing anything. The only way for your site to change, or at least it's core attributes can be your doing. And if you spend too much time researching but not enough time developing, you start to wander too far off and never get anything done due to losing a sense of direction. Try to be focused. Write down a requirement and fulfill it. One requirement at a time. So if you need a comment system but want your users to sign in first. Make the user controller first, and create the log in page. By breaking down the things that you can become more focused on a specific task.
DON'T design sites with flash.
Don't use flash for design purposes. You might think it's cute, or cool. It's not, in fact it's fucking annoying, it wastes my memory, Flash is proprietary and it's support outside of Mac and Windows is pretty shit. You make your site unvisitable from my PHONE. If you have a application that you developed, like a video player or something, then by all means, use it. But if putting flash on your site to represent a menu which doesn't do anything but have a couple hyper links then why are you using flash? Flash is not fast, flash isn't truly re sizable. Flash is one of those things that you should really want to use less of. Adobe hyped you kids up to make you think it was the shit, it really isn't.
Frameworks is the serious shit. If you're going into any project, or any task, and you're building it around a framework, you're construction process will always go more smoothly, from CSS frameworks (960.gs, Blueprint), to web application frameworks, such as Django (Python), CakePHP (PHP), Rails (Ruby).
You'll be working with an environment that helps you worry less about structure and standards and focus on the development.
DO write validated HTML.
If you aren't doing this, you'll be shamed upon by anyone looking at your source. You should care because search engines care; however, even writing validated html does not necessarily mean you're writing meaningful html.
DO write meaningful HTML.
Doing <h1><img src="/imgs/mylogo.jpg" /></h1>. Well knock it off. To a computer it means the image link is the header of your page. Instead, do <h1>My Site Name</h1> then add some css style to the h1 tag like, say you wanted to replace that with an image, you could add the attributes: display:none; background:url('/imgs/mylogo.jpg'). If you're writing your html and thinking about the design at the same time, you're simply not doing it right. Instead, just write the content out. Use <h1>s, you may use <div> to split up some sections, or you should use <p> to wrap around your text. Then when you're done with that you add the css attributes to the base tags first. Then follow on with classes for specific detailing. A good example of displaying your page header would be scribefire's homepage.
DO be enthusiastic.
If you want your site to do well, then think about it, be creative, think of different ways to improve your site. Think about your readers wants. Try to get feed back and always challenge yourself. If you wanted to do something in ajax, write down specifically what you're trying to achieve and learn it (Trust me it's not that hard). You're living in an information age, if you feel held back by knowledge, you're not taking advantage.
DON'T get too enthusiastic.
But you can't be too enthusiastic, see when you're researching, you're not really constructing anything. The only way for your site to change, or at least it's core attributes can be your doing. And if you spend too much time researching but not enough time developing, you start to wander too far off and never get anything done due to losing a sense of direction. Try to be focused. Write down a requirement and fulfill it. One requirement at a time. So if you need a comment system but want your users to sign in first. Make the user controller first, and create the log in page. By breaking down the things that you can become more focused on a specific task.
DON'T design sites with flash.
Don't use flash for design purposes. You might think it's cute, or cool. It's not, in fact it's fucking annoying, it wastes my memory, Flash is proprietary and it's support outside of Mac and Windows is pretty shit. You make your site unvisitable from my PHONE. If you have a application that you developed, like a video player or something, then by all means, use it. But if putting flash on your site to represent a menu which doesn't do anything but have a couple hyper links then why are you using flash? Flash is not fast, flash isn't truly re sizable. Flash is one of those things that you should really want to use less of. Adobe hyped you kids up to make you think it was the shit, it really isn't.
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