Journal
Last weekend I went to London to see ‘West End Live‘ in Leicester Square and, somehow, ended up going to see Avenue Q. The trip to the theatre was totally unplanned, and when thinking about why I went to see it, I noticed a number of parallels with online business. Below are some of the things I took away from this realisation.
Be unique
You need to stand out from the crowd. Avenue Q did this in a variety of ways, the most obvious being the fact that the characters are singing puppets… which means they can get away with a LOT more than a human character would. Musical theatre, as online, is full of shows (websites) that are quite similar, so doing something different will make you stand out from the crowd.
Play around with prices
When Cameron Mackintosh brought Avenue Q to the UK he decided to try different …
Earlier this year I said I was ‘back in the swing‘, posted a few times, and then vanished.
The reason isn’t that I have nothing to say (although I have less than I used too) but that I am in the middle of redesigning this website… which will also include a server move. I moved over all the files and databases about 2 or 3 weeks ago, and now I don’t want to have to update everything again.
Unfortunately I can’t leave Binary Moon empty for this long without posting something so I thought I’d talk a bit about what I am working on and the development of the new version Binary Moon.
Development
To cut a long story short the new design is actually going to be a ‘child theme‘ of my own WordPress framework - and it’s a bit of a beast.
Named Elemental, I started development about 6 months ago. …
A year ago - almost to the day - Darren and I released Mimbo Pro, a premium WordPress theme. Since then both WordPress, and our technical skills, have grown considerably and so we’re now ready to present to you, Mimbo Pro 2.0.
Superficially Mimbo Pro 2.0 looks quite similar to it’s older sibling, but it’s actually ended up being almost a complete rewrite. The code is considerably cleaner and simpler now, and there is more abstraction which means removing much of the PHP from the templates - which in turn means easier updates.
Besides cleaner code there are a whole host of other changes and improvements.
GPL
Since the original Mimbo Pro release there has been much speculation and discussion around WordPress themes and licensing. When we released the theme we imposed our own license restricting the themes usage. Whilst this made sense to us at the time on reflection it is …
In my mind software wireframing is an art form.
It’s the art of expressing design and interface intentions to a user or client without actually creating anything.
Often when creating website or application mockups people will become obsessed with the inconsequential minutae. They fuss over colours and content ignoring the actual feel, flow, and usability of the proposal.
Often the easiest way around this is to draw wireframes with pencil and paper. It’s a quick and easy way to take the focus off of the colours and place it on the actual structure.
Personally I’m not that keen on using pencil and paper for this. It’s fine (great even) for personal projects but when working with others, in particular those abroad, it gets akward. You have to start scanning things in and don’t get me started on editing and backups.
This is where software like Balsamiq Mockups come in.
Balsamiq Mockups is a wireframing tool …
Getting a faster internet is great - it gives us loads of opportunity to improve the browsing experience through more advanced javascript and designs - I still remember the dreadful websites of the late 90’s that took an hour to download and only showed a few random pieces of text on a bright pink (or yellow/ green) background.
Unfortunately not everyone is lucky enough to have the latest technology and with mobile internet becoming more and more popular it’s still a very good idea to try to optimise site download time.
Optimising javascript and css is a simple way to speed up the loading of your site. However with more and more frameworks being created and projects growing in scope it’s getting harder and harder to manage these things. Nobody wants to optimise a css framework each time it’s updated, and invariably these things are made up of multiple files anyway - …
Last weekend I spent a few days away from Wordpress and work in general to spend some quality time with the girlfriend. When I got back and updated my local copy of Wordpress (via svn) I was surprised to see that they had started to incorporate all of the user testing information feedback they had received at the test camps earlier this year.
I am really pleased to see the changes as they are moving Wordpress in a very positive direction. I was never particularly bothered by the Wordpress 2.5 admin update. It looked a lot nicer that the old version but there were a number of changes I disagreed with. However, I am very pleased to say, the new version is working much better.
Below are screenshots of the new Dashboard (only added today) and the new Write Post page, click for a bigger image.
A …
Binary Moon
Gun Wing
Bubble Blitz
Bubble Bomb
ExGen
