Viewing entries tagged with 'web development'
Dipl-O-Matic
Just live: Dipl-O-Matic
This website records the progress of my Master of Art & Design Project at Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand.
The website attempts to demonstrate the entire development of the project through notes, theoretical and practice-based means, contextual, theoretical and methodological research procedures, visual experiments, etc, up until the final practice result and exegesis.
The navigation is set up in form of a timeline that visually represents the progress of the project in different areas. Tags and categories allow deeper cross-linking and context-based structuring of the content.
For more information and a more detailed description please visit Dipl-O-Matic. The site will be updated frequently.
Portfolio Relaunch
Just gone live: my new and completely revamped portfolio. Visit the site at portfolio.nugob.org
NZ Moodle Moot 2008
I just came back from an excellent Moodle Moot conference in beautiful Napier. Moodle is a free open source e-learning environment which is widely used and developed by a strong community. I particularly enjoyed that it was a really casual and friendly 3 day event. I am sure I can bring a lot that I learned at the conference back to my job. Getting to know other people involved also is a great motivation to actually contribute to this open source project. I am glad I did not miss out this year.
The Right Number
Chrome is the new browser developed by Google. I just tried it and well, it's really fast. It also promises to be very secure and to have a good memory usage/garbage collection model and to be better equipped for up-to-date web applications using Javascript and Ajax (such as Google Mail).
A very good (yet still very geeky) introduction to the Chrome browser was done in comic book form by Scott McCloud, better known for his awesome comic books Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics. I read the first two, the last one is now on my list of books to read. He also made some online comics, based on his own suggestions in Reinventing Comics about using comics in a different medium in an appropriate way. The Right Number looks pretty good.
Six Browsers You Don't Need (but Can't Avoid)
It's always the same ... you create a neat web design with clean html and CSS and it looks just the way it should, then you test it on Browsershots and realise that it looks absolutely perfect except (and without any exception) in all versions of Internet Explorer prior to IE7. I wish I would not have to burn my lifetime with these kind of problems – even a grey, cold and rainy Monday in November is more fun than to find workarounds for Internet Explorer.
Even though Browsershots is probably the best free service available for cross browser webdesign it does not help much to actually work on a CSS file and check it in real time. Fortunately I found a multiple IE installer that installs IE3, IE 4.01, IE 5.01, IE 5.55 and IE 6.0. You still need a Windows PC, but it's probably a good solution for a lot of web developers/designers.
I really don't like IE hacking, but from my experience it works best to make a clean html/css template that works well in all other browsers plus IE7 and then apply a conditional IE style sheet or make a few adjustments in the original CSS file if it requires just a minor tweak.
While I really would not bother too much with anything below IE5 (especially if it's a pure CSS design) I now still have six browsers installed that I don't need and IE8 is on it's way – I wonder if Microsoft will ever bite the bullet and go with the standards it so successfully ignored for more than two decades.
Selling My Soul
It seems that I sold my soul to Google yesterday - on a trial basis. I signed up to Google Apps. I pushed this step for quite a while because I was (and am still) not sure if it is a good idea to have Google handle so much of my stuff, but eventually the comfort of Google Mail and other applications just overpowered my resistance.
Nugob.org is Dead, Long Live Nugob.org!
Welcome to the new face of Nugob.org!
This is my first major update of this website since 2000. Nugob.org is now powered by the Silverstripe Content Management System and Framework and had a complete makeover.
May the old site rest in peace. I still like the previous design, but after 7 years I thought it was time for a change.
Rapid-O-Mat
I updated my portfolio with my latest projects today.
Just online: the website for the yachting club »Ammerlander Segel-Club e.V.«. It comes with my all new content management system »Rapid-O-Mat« (PHP and MySQL), and a member login. It will still take some time for the authors to add content and for the whole site to get alive. I am looking forward to see it growing.
»Rapid-O-Mat« got a lot of improvements compared to my old content management system. It got more functionality, is more userfriendly, got less limitations, is easier to customize (which was the main reason for me to write it completely from scratch instead of just updating my existing system), and it finally got a name! I really want to update this homepage to the new system (once I got some time left). But that's gonna have to wait.
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