WordPress: A 30-Second Overview for Non-Geekazoids

WordPress is a free, web-based software program that makes it easier for someone who is not a web designer or web developer to publish and edit content for the web. Got 30 seconds? Read more…

How Architects’ Websites are Failing iPad Users and Their Own Firms.

Nearly 2 years after Apple released the iPad, I’m appalled to see so many blank screens for home pages— and particularly among an industry that inherently understands and promotes good design practices. Read more…

Adding Adobe Edge Animation to Your
WordPress Website.

In my last post, I wrote about my first experience with Adobe Edge. And because my website is now completely powered by WordPress, I had to make a few modifications to my compass animation code to get it to play properly on my website. Here’s what I did. Read more…

CSS Tip: How to Prevent Div Seam Lines from Appearing in Apple’s Mobile Safari

I’ve been hard at work on my new website in between client projects (which is why I haven’t been saying much on my blog lately). As I began testing on my iPad and iPhone, I noticed a strange line appearing intermittently between divs when zooming in and out of the page. Here’s a screenshot taken from my iPad… Read more…

Your WordPress Website: How to Tell When It’s Time for a New Hosting Company.

Last week, I finally realized I outgrew my hosting company and hosting plan, and spent the last 2 days moving everything to another hosting company. Not fun. You see, what worked well for my oddodesign.com website, was not suitable for my WordPress blog. Why? Well, my oddodesign.com website does not pull data from a database like a WordPress website or blog must do. And why does that matter? Because if your database server is slow, it means your WordPress web pages will load slowly, and your traffic will decline. Read more…

Windows 7 on My Mac: Why I Switched from VMWare Fusion to Parallels Desktop.

As a graphic designer, Iʼve been relying on Appleʼs Mac platform for over 20 years. When I began designing for “interactive multimedia” in the early 90ʼs, I used my Mac for design and development, but I used a separate computer— a PC, running Microsoft Windows, to test my work. In many ways, things havenʼt changed. The vast majority of my clients (and end-users) still use Windows to access the websites, flash demos, and web apps I now design. But instead of investing in hardware for 2 different platforms, I simply run Windows on my Mac whenever I need to. Read more…

How to Teach Flash and iPad to Play Nicely Together

As someone who has made a good living working with Adobe Flash for the past decade, I was horrified to learn that Apple wasn’t going to support Flash on its iPad. And while I love and use Apple products, I swore I’d never buy an iPad. So what did I do? I bought an iPad, 2 weeks after they began shipping! Read more…

Flash: Could This Be the Beginning of the End?

Adobe’s Flash has taken a lot of heat since its inception. Critics have demonized it, and some of its strongest allies made matters worse, by generating a steady stream of slow moving, self-serving, animated splash pages, that included some of the most annoying music loops and sound effects possible. Read more…

The Truth About Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Flash Websites

As much as I loved working with Flash, I could not, in good conscience, recommend that my clients use it exclusively, because Flash files, like graphics files, were invisible to most search engines. Read more…