Archive for the ‘project launch’ Category

New Website: 4mmGames.com

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Last month I launched a new version of 4mmgames.com.  It existed previously as a flash-based site, but since iPhones and mobile devices do not display flash content, the client decided to overhaul the site.  I used Ariel Flesler’s SerialScroll for the transition effect between the pages (see it on 4mm website!).  The deliverables included content management and mobile device compatibility.

4mm Games Home Page

4mm provided the design and the graphics.  The trickiest part of the site was making the foreground and background slide independently.  The next trickiest was always centering the content and the background, even when the window is resized.

The sliding inspiration came from Carrot Creative, which also uses the SerialScroll library for its website.  Figuring out the independent scrolling of foreground vs. background, however, was all experience and brain power.

Dzineblog compiled a list of websites that use horizontal scrolling as a design theme.  Perhaps this will inspire your creative juice.

Now I’m almost done with another overhaul of a flash-based website, this time for an art gallery.  Seems like flash is going by the wayside…

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A relatively new website and other news

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Vivienne Koorland’s website launched in the beginning of this year.   She’s an artist from South Africa who now resides in NYC.   Adelheid Christian-Zechner designed and I coded.

Vivienne Koorland's Home Page

Vivienne Koorland's Home Page

Vivienne Koorland Portfolio Page

Vivienne Koorland Portfolio Page

The simple, clean design focuses the viewer’s attention on the artist’s work.  The transition effects were implemented with the prototype/scriptaculous library.  Most of the work went into the content management, which I will not show here.  I came under budget and so gave the client a discount.  Hurray!

On another front, a jazz guitarist Michael Bocian released a new album and asked for a slightly different look for his webpage.  (Here is how it looked before).  The top banner’s color gives a brighter vibe, and upon initial loading, the new CD’s release is highlighted for emphasis.

Michael Bocian's New Home Page

Michael Bocian's New Home Page

The picture is blurry for my eyes but Michael wanted it there… who’s to argue with the client?

Lastly, I’m overhauling the website for Peace Action New York State, a non-profit where I’m interning but has a site that needs a serious upgrade.  The whole thing will be re-done using WordPress.  I’m learning a lot about customizing WordPress; it’s super fun and can’t wait to show it off once it’s done.

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New Website: MSK Design Group

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

I recently launched a simple, clean website that showcases MSK’s interior design work. The site combines jQuery SerialScroll by Ariel Flesler with jQueryUI library for the image scrolling.

MSK Home Page Screenshot

MSK Home Page

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Two New Websites! – CFD27.com and MichaelBocian.com

Friday, July 31st, 2009

This week I launched two websites.

First is www.cfd27.com, a silk floral store in the Chelsea district of NYC.  This site went through quite a few iterations of change in design and content.  It was my first project in delivering a site with customizable color-theme, which is a great idea considering the color palette of a floral store changes by the season.  Unlike my previous project, this one had no issue with servers because the client signed up with the hosting service that I recommended (and one that I use), hostmysite.com (see my recent rant re hosting.com).  Also to be thanked is the creator of lightbox2 Lokesh Dhakar for the nifty javascript in displaying images.  I was more than happy to donate a small sum for having used it in this project.

CFD27 Home Page

CFD27 Home Page

The second project, just launched today, is an amazing jazz guitarist Michael Bocian’s website:  www.michaelbocian.com.  Although I’m the least qualified person to comment on musical taste, I know great music when I hear one, so to make Michael’s website was quite a joy.  Plus, I learned a thing or two about MP3s, as well as how to collaborate closely with a creative man.

Michael Bocian's Official Website

Michael Bocian's Official Website

Playing off the guitar theme, the strings light up as you hover over the menu items on the left.  I struggled to find an elegant solution to extending the strings to the bottom of the window.  It works great in Firefox, but in IE I had to use a kludge in the end.  The advantage of using well-formed HTML & CSS, as in this case, is that it works even in Safari 1.3!

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New site launched – AENA

Friday, June 26th, 2009

A project of mine launched today: www.aenac.com.   It was in collaboration with Adelheid at CZA Design.  She does the design, I do the  coding.

A Page from AENA

A Page from AENA

We had quite a difficult time with the client’s hosting service.  The original hosting company ran PHP4 by default, which was okay because you can let it run PHP5 by using .htaccess file.  Also their idea of preventing directory listing was to put a blank index.htm file into every directory…  that’s just wrongheaded.  The biggest problem was that MySQLi was not supported, so I gave the client an option of editing my code, but they found a new hosting company.  With the new one, something was screwy with the FTP connection, which kept dropping connection on me.  After providing them log files, screenshots, etc, the support gave me the following ultimatum:

It might be the issue with the network connection which you have used. Hence, I suggest that you to try to use different network connection and try to connect the FTP in different computer.

Also, please make sure to disable the firewall connection and disable the antivirus and try to upload the files again from your end. Please let me know if the issue persists.

Hmm, if I have no problem connecting to 5 other hosting services, why would this be my problem?  Why would I ever want to disable my firewall and antivirus?  Thankfully they had a decent file manager through their control panel, so the problem was averted, but using FTP is so much easier.

I always recommend my hosting company Hostmysite.com even though I get no kickbacks from them (unlike people who recommend DreamHost…) and it’s not the cheapest service around.   Their support is awesome –  a real person picks up the phone when you call support!  No navigating through the maze of phone system.  It’s a cliche but so true — you get what you pay for.

Anyway, enough of my gripe.  In the end it worked out; glad to have it live.

Update August 2010 — Ever since hostmysite.com was purchased by hosting.com, the quality has deteriorated drastically.  I no longer recommend it and is considering moving my hosting elsewhere.

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