Internet Explorer 8 On Its Way

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) has been coming for sometime now but with the release yesterday of RC1 (release candidate 1) it is closer than ever. IE8 has been in beta testing since March 2008 and the RC1 means that it is in the last stages before full commercial release to the public.

For those of you that use a windows-based computer, and have windows update set to automatically apply updates, you will see IE8 appearing as your browser in the not to distant future.

For those of us who are designers and developers in the online world it means that we have yet another browser to take into consideration with our designs (although it looks like IE8 will have better support for web standards)

For the people who are still using IE6 as their browser it is seriously time to move on. Your browser will no longer be “just the previous edition of internet explorer”, it will be the one before the one before.

For me Firefox will remain my browser of choice.

Dream Dancer – Website Design

Recently we completed the design of dreamdancer.com.au, a website for civil celebrant Nancy Battenburg. Nancy discovered that many young couples in NT and QLD were looking for their marriage celebrants online and thus decided to have this website designed as support for her role as a civil celebrant.

Nancy’s core specifications were that she wanted a clean, crisp and professional look to the design. The only other major request was that we include some of her favourite colours, primarily purple. With a logo already available to us we worked with this, using the colours of this eye popping image to highlight key aspects such as high level headers and links. To keep it clean and professional we designed the body of the website on a white background and a bold purple sidebar for the navigation. A key to keeping the website looking crisp and clean is to maintain a consistent design and presentation across all pages.  The use of suitably sized borders creates the element of space, making it easy for the eye to follow.

As with many of our client projects the Dream Dancer site has been designed on a Wordpress platform. This will also give Nancy a great opportunity to share her wisdom and experiences via the blog embedded within the site.

Nancy has been a joy to work with and we would recommend her to anyone looking for a celebrant for an upcoming wedding, vow renewals or naming ceremony in NT or QLD.

Shopportunity – Redesigned Website

Late last year we had the opportunity to redesign the website for our client Shopportunity.  The initial design had used a little too much of the pink and yellow colour scheme of the logo and the target of the redesign was to tone down some of the colour used on the site, whilst still keeping the branding of the logo and colours.

Shopportunity are a consulting practice specialising in helping FMCG companies standout from their competitors by increasing relevance and appeal to shoppers.  They provide insight, strategy, implementation and training services.  The site is a supportive part of their marketing strategy and is used to provide information about the company and services, as well as using the blog to provide useful information to clients, prospects and the industry.

The site is a Wordpress installation and we went about creating a new grayscale theme that would just use the pink of the logo in the highest level headings and insert colour via the images used.  Have a look at the Shopportunity site and see what you think of the balance between the bright colours of the logo,  the grayscale of other elements and the fresh white background.

New Virus Might Come Via Your USB

There is an ever constant threat to computers (PCs in particular) from viruses and trojans created by people who feel the need to be disruptive and/or clever.  One of the latest is proving to be a challenge is Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker (all the same thing) and it is coming to a computer near you in an interesting way …. via a USB drive.

Christopher Hull over at Yahoo’s tech blogs gave an overview yesterday of the virus, how it might show up on your computer and what to do about it.

Keep a watchful eye out, be careful of what you load onto your computer and make sure you have backups.

1 Thing That Will Improve Your Website This Year

I was reminded yesterday whilst reading Seth Godin’s “Small is the New Big“, that even with bag load of online strategies to grow your business, that there is really one 1 key to having a successful website.

You should be focusing your website efforts on …
turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers.

It is both as simple and as focused as that …

Now remember the goal isn’t to turn strangers to customers (that is too much hard sell).  You want people to get to know you and you to know them.  When they become friends before becoming customers then you have a much better chance of understanding and meeting their key needs.

So my challenge to you is to come up with just 2 things you can do this week that will achieve to goal of turning strangers to friends and friends to customers.  If you want you can share what 2 things you plan to do below.

New Year, New Tools

The new year brings many things, especially for small business owners …. new plans, new goals, new ways of doing things and hopefully new clients.

I’ve only been back at the desk officially for 3 days but already there are new opportunities popping up and there are loads of new ideas on better ways to work.  One of my commitments for 2009 is to deliver what many readers had been asking for right throughout 2008 … more interesting and useful articles on this blog.  But before I dive head-long into the new stuff I wanted to quickly share with you a couple of the cool tools that I came across late last year or over the Christmas/New Year break.

Wordpress 2.7 aka Coltrane

Wordpress is our CMS of choice here and the hotly anticipated release of the new look Version 2.7 (called Coltrane in line with Automattic’s naming of Wordpress version after jazz ledgends) was welcomed.  If you are a Wordpress user then I would suggest that you upgrade to this version.  If you want more details on Coltrane then check out the announcement  post and 2:39 minute video.

MultiColr Search Lab

The very clever people at Idee Labs have extracted the colours from 10 million of the most “interesting” Creative Commons images on Flickr and enabled you to search for these Flickr images a up to 10 colours as the selection criteria.  This tool uses their visual similarity technology to navigate the collection by colour. If you are not into Flickr then you can also search Alamy Stock Photography using the same tool.  Go and have a try of it now … it is outstanding.

Backups

This really isn’t a tool as such – more a tip for the new year.  Find yourself a backup tool and USE IT!  The new year is the perfect time to ensure that you have a full backup of all your business critical files.  I use an online tool called Jungle Disk and the files are stored on Amazon’s S3 service.  You may prefer an external hard-drive or some other method but the key is to backup early & backup often (as the used to say about voting in the old days).

Keeping in Contact

Synchronising contacts between various platforms and devices can be a real challenge.  Even though it is only  in beta stage Soocial looks a very interesting tool that may save some of the hair-pulling when it comes to having information on different devices and across different platforms.

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So with the first post of the year done, I hope that you have an interesting 2009 ahead of you and that it brings all the satisfaction that you are looking for.