LessFuss Design

New site: Hempnall Trust

The second charity site I’ve worked on recently (the other being the Green Light Trust site) is a small website for the Hempnall Trust, a charity in my village that gives grants to those in the parish experiencing need, hardship or distress. Continue reading ‘New site: Hempnall Trust’ »

Talk Talk? If only I could

Last month I made the catastrophic decision to change my phone & broadband provider. I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to keep your marbles where they are. After several weeks of poor service and poorer communication from my new provider, it was as a result of venting my frustration on social media that I managed to get all the issues resolved, which leads me to one conculsion. If you’re getting poor service, vent on Twitter and someone from their Marketing team, fire-fighting in the name of brand protection, will probably come to your rescue. Continue reading ‘Talk Talk? If only I could’ »

Green light for new charity website

I’m pleased to say that after many hours of effort – mainly from Tom Haczewski , but with a bit from myself and other colleagues at Virgin Money – the new brand identity and website for the Green Light Trust has been launched. Continue reading ‘Green light for new charity website’ »

Review of freelancing year #3

On the freelancing side of things, 2009 will be filed under ‘Frustrating’. It’s been a year of interest but not commitment from potential clients, and the work I have taken on has been, at times, painfully slow to progress. Continue reading ‘Review of freelancing year #3’ »

WebAIM screen reader users follow up survey

Last week the WebAIM team published the results of their latest Screen Reader User Survey (a follow up to the last one carried out at the end of 2008). As with the first WebAIM survey , the results confirm that many of the things we have assumed are problematic for screen reader users (e.g. Flash – or rather how developers implement Flash – is a massive pain in the backside) are true. They also reinforce that just as there’s no typical web browser user, there’s also no typical screen reader user. Continue reading ‘WebAIM screen reader users follow up survey’ »

National Novel Writing Month

Seeing as I can barely muster more than two or three blog posts a month, it seems bonkers that I’ve signed up to ‘30 days and nights of literary abandon’ with National Novel Writing Month , in which the improbable target is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words during November. Continue reading ‘National Novel Writing Month’ »

My workstation setup

This morning I followed a Twitter link to a new website called Workstation Setups – a place where web/techie folks can show off their kick-ass office cribs. Because I already had a photo of my workspace to prove to a friend that I really did work on an ironing board, I sent mine in. Here’s the photo:

I know what you’re thinking. ‘How can he turn out the sites he does working on that?’. That, or you’re thinking ‘Now this explains a lot…’

The truth is the iBook is starting to crumble a bit. Everything on iPlayer is like a Ray Harryhausen stop motion film, Photoshop takes 10 minutes to start up, and when it’s running I can’t have more than two palettes open at once without completely covering up what I’m working on.

But the ironing board… well I quite like it. It’s adjustable. The whole thing’s ready made mouse mat. And right now, with most of the downstairs being renovated & redecorated – and simply no space in the house for the luxury of a desk – it’s the best I can do.

As for workstationsetups.com, I very much doubt they’ll add this to their showcase. But you never know. Maybe they’ll take pity on me. Maybe there’s a West Coast Office Furniture out there where they’ll send my ironing board to be pimped. Or maybe not.

Still, the fireplaces is coming on though, right?

—-

Update, 23 October: They published it straightaway , and I got this from the site owner:

Of course that I will include it ! In fact, I already posted it before I replied to your email . WorkstationSetups.com is not just about the sickest workstations. It’s about ALL workstation setups.
Richard, workstationsetups.com

So I’m happy to be proved wrong. Though I think he might have meant slickest workstations…

PHP mail() & Fasthosts

After three days, 14 Wordpress contact form plugins and a lengthy support email dialogue, here’s a post on what you can do – other than repeatedly punching a wall  – if you want to use Wordpress with a simple contact form on a Fasthosts server (or any other provider with strict mail server settings). Continue reading ‘PHP mail() & Fasthosts’ »

HTML housework: get proper closure

This might seem obvious to anyone who regularly writes HTML, but it’s really helpful if you comment your source code to explain which elements you’re closing. If you’re debugging someone else’s source code (or your own code you wrote some time ago), there’s nothing worse than coming across this:

By commenting which element you’re closing as you write it, it’ll be far easier to work out later on exactly what’s being closed off – and therefore easier to work out which is the offending element for any problem you’ve got. By closing and commenting everything as you write it, there’s also less chance you’ll miss closing something off, and the world of pain that brings with it.

So, commented, the above would look like this:

There you have it. Next time you’re in the zone and dropping divs in like there’s no tomorrow, spare a second to comment them as you close them off. Quick and simple, and you could save some poor dude a lot of hassle when he/she comes to look at your code in a few years.

Of course, the tag soup above is to illustrate a point. I’d never write such bloated HTML. *Cough*.

Typeface JS & font weight

Rather than exporting individual images or using PHP image replacement as I normally would, I recently tried out Typeface JS – a method that uses javascript to embed fonts – to make use of a non-standard typeface in the headings of a web design. Typeface JS is pretty easy to use, but there’s one thing to be wary of: how you use the font-weight property in your CSS. Continue reading ‘Typeface JS & font weight’ »