Blog of Ryan Ilg, Web Developer and Graphic Communication Specialist.
A brown box arrived at my door from Amazon.ca yesterday. 3 new code bibles showed up to help me delve deeper into some software I am presently using. Pro Drupal Development (Second Edition) by John K. VanDyk, and Learning Drupal 6 Module Development by Matt Butcher will be helping me in the Drupal department. TextMate, Power Editing for the Mac will be looking after me in, well, TextMate. Which is a text/code editor that I have been using for 3+ years, and still don’t know everything about.
There is always something great when getting new books. No matter how much you believe you know about something, there is always something you didn’t, some shortcut or hidden feature you had no idea was there. The internet is a great resource, but sometimes it can be a daunting task to get the information you need. But really, who does’nt love getting away from the screen to a local coffee shop on a lazy sunday.
Well after many late nights, and code packed days, I have finally gotten around to writing about the latest project I launched… almost a month ago. Morgan Crossing, a new real-estate development based in South Surrey, BC. The site itself has a great feel, with its large background images, slick JavaScript animations, and subtle elements that pull it all together.
I was brought onto the project, once again by Vancouver based design firm Free Agency Creative, before the designs had been fully flushed out. That turned out to be a great opportunity for me to throw my 2 cents into the mix and add some personal touches. Integration of a large size photo gallery was one of them. Rather than a boring, common, small size photo gallery, like you would find on to most development web sites, we pushed the boundries. Using jQuery to supply multi browser integration of animation, it allowed us to give the user a different experience. One where they can open the gallery from any page, without losing the information they were currently browsing. Along with a well placed cookie (another of my ideas), the site saves which ever image the user has currently chosen, so when they visit a new page, it will automatically load the same image in the background. Sort of creating a custom website for each user. The whole site was built on Drupal 6, which allowed for a lot of customization and expandability right out of the box (or zip file, I guess). Using a few modules (including CCK, ImageCache, and Views, among others) and custom templates, ontop of the default system allows the client to easily update the site, add new floor plans, or rearrange information. All the headers are generated dynamically via sIFR3, and Videos are embed using the great open source Flash media player by Jeroen Wijering. Be sure to check out Morgan Crossing, by far, one of my favourite development sites I have created so far. Cheers.
Are you a fellow designer/developer? If you didn’t know about it, or take it already, be sure to pop by A List Apart and take the survey for people who make websites. The information is only going to come back to help us out in the end, and it only takes 5 minutes.
I just read an article over at search-this.com about the 10 things every developer should know. It was quite refreshing as I agree with them 110%. If you don’t already know, or do these 10 things, get reading and start writing good code. The only other things I would add to the list would be to write neat code. When you view the source, everything should be formatted in a readable way with plenty of tabs to keep things lined up. The other thing would be to comment your code, not necessarily the html, but any Actionscript or PHP. There is nothing better than coming back to a project in a year and knowing exactly what everything is doing. It just makes updates a breeze, as well as helping out anyone new on the project. Get commenting!
A few weeks ago, I finished up a little site for Girl Two Doors Down. The site was built in flash, with a little bit of xhtml behind it for the search engines. Girl Two Doors Down, created by Roberta Bernstein, makes flip flops and shoes.
Back in February, I had the pleasure of getting away from code, and focusing more on animation. I worked with local firm Edwards & Associates, who were contracted to put together a trade show booth. I was brought into the project to do the animation for the presentation that was shown on the 42 inch lcd. I took the static mockups, and worked with the rough storyboard to produce a looping presentation. I also took the opportunity to add a few of my own touches, including lightning in the sky, to create a more atmospheric display. The presentation scrolls vertically revealing the soldiers, introducing the viewer the many layers of the game shield. It’s a little tough to explain, but I am including some screen grabs below, even though they don’t do the animated version any justice. I cannot include the full screen animated presentation as it is just to large (file size and resolution wise) to play here.
The YES! Vancouver site just went over a little overhaul (during late Feb, early March). The main structure stayed the same, but the design and layout was slightly tweaked to better match the brand. During the modifications, I took the time to implement a newer version of my project framework (which includes many new features, including a simple cms system). Check out the new YES! Vancouver.
Well its hard to believe its been almost 5 months since my last post. Honestly where does the time go. Over the last few months I have been busy as usual. Working with a few clients, on a bunch of really cool projects. Many of them are reaching their final stages. During the progress I been writing ongoing entries about my tasks, so once they are launched, there will defiantly be a few blog entires showing up here.
The new site for Bellwether Park launched about a month or so go. The site is running off my underlying project framework that allows for an easy startup for any web project. It consists of of all the required files to get a site up in a matter of hours instead of days, of course it all depends on the scope of the project. The system includes mod rewrite already built in, as well as reset style sheets and header documents all ready to go. The individual pages just need to be created, and styled. Getting back to Bellwether Park, Chris Hold was in charge of the rest of the production on this one, expect for the interactive map which I had the pleasure of working on. Check it out.
I just wrapped up a rebuild of the Task Construction Management site. I was asked by Industrial Brand Creative to take what the client currently had, and rebuild the site on Wordpress, as well as update the outdated table based html code (put together by our old friend… Dreamweaver) with shinny new xhtml. I took everything and started from scratch. Working my way from the content out, it was the first thing to go into wordpress. After every single page was accounted for, I started working the styles in. I re-ripped out a lot of the interface elements, so they would work better in a scalable sense, so when someone wanted to increase the font size in their browser, it was not going to destroy the layout of the site. Check it out.
