James Churchman did a quick bit of detective work and pointed the iPhone 3.0 simulator on the Web Kit detector that we blogged about in the past.
The new showed this:
Compared to the old version:
Allan Jardine is up to his old tricks again (his tricks are: creating helpful small tools!). This time he has created KeyTable, a library that adds the ability to use the keyboard to navigate around an HTML table.
Events can be bound (and unbound) to cells as required by the developer, allowing increased accessibility to Javascript enhanced tables. This library is somewhat similar to QFocuser that was posted on Ajaxian back at the start of the month, but specialises in table navigation. KeyTable also integrates nicely with DataTables, such that paging and sorting is taken into account.
To get started you just need to var keys = new KeyTable(); and then you can add init params for fine grained work, and you can also add events:
JAVASCRIPT:
/* Example event listener */
keys.event.focus( 1, 3, function() {
/* processing on cell 1,3 … */
} );
/* this is exactly the same as */
keys.event.focus( $(‘#example tbody tr:eq(3) td:eq(1)’)[0], function() {
/* processing on cell 1,3 … */
} );
The front page has an example that uses jEditable allowing you to mouse around, hit enter, change a field, and go back:
Super Mario Brothers is making another amazing appearance in a beautiful Matryoshka Doll set (aka Russian Dolls) that bring the amazing characters to light in beautiful vintage looking art.
super mario matryoshka dolls 2 Super Mario Brothers Matryoshka Dolls
super mario matryoshka dolls 3 Super Mario Brothers Matryoshka Dolls
These Matryoshka Dolls combine beautiful colors and the Mario characters into one great gaming toy. We can see in the images Mario, which definitely fits as this kind of doll with his belly, Luigi, the Princess, Bowser, Toad, and a few more that get their own celebrity spotlight.
super mario matryoshka dolls 4 Super Mario Brothers Matryoshka Dolls
This set was created by Cmsturmhous, who also provided a lot of different views to show for this great creation. Mario doesn’t die off whatsoever, and with such art continuing to show itself…I don’t really hear anyone complaining.
After publishing Mootools ContextMenu few days ago, our reader, Temuri has suggested another really nice looking context Menu using Mootools which is called Mif.Menu. There are ART style and shadow style context menu for you to choose from. It supports multi-level and key navigation as well. Mif.Menu is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
Claros inTouch is an Ajax communication suite with key features such as webmail, address book, post-it notes, built-in instant messenger and rss reader. It is an open source web application which features built in spam protection and instant messaging capabilities together with web 2.0 technologies.
It supports both Pop3 and IMAP protocols. Claros inTouch requires a JSP/Servlet container(such as Apache Tomcat), Sun JDK 1.4 or 1.5 and MySQL to run.
MooTools ContextMenu Plugin is a highly customizable, compact context menu script written with CSS, XHTML, and the MooTools javascript framework. ContextMenu allows you to offer stylish, functional context menus on your website.
The most dynamic part of the ContextMenu instance is the “actions” option, where you define what action should be taken per menu item. The action is passed the element clicked on and the reference to the context menu.
In the introduction to SitePoint’s Web Design Business Kit, Brendon Sinclair (the author) describes his average working day, and that of two of his business associates. Brendon works hours that make me extremely jealous, but then he’s spent a few years building up a great team around him and has his business management extremely well organised. I thought it might be interesting for anyone thinking about starting a web design business to see what my average day looks like at the moment – 6 weeks in.
So here we go!
This is when my alarm clocks start going off, I say alarm clocks because I have more than one. I generally have trouble waking up in the morning so I have a combination of alarms that work best for me. Firstly I have a free Mac App called Alarm Clock 2 which starts fading in music from my iTunes library – this is brilliant because it wakes me up slowly, and to music which I like! After that, it’s on to multiple alarms on my iPhone set 15 minutes apart, with the alarm tone becoming increasingly annoying.
By now I’m usually at my desk with a cup of coffee and two slices of toast. This point in my routine is probably the least productive, purely because I’m still waking up. I run through all my emails (usually around 20) and flag any that will need a well thought-out response (no early morning important emails, they aren’t good for business). I then check Twitter for any fresh replies or DM’s, and run through my feed reader.
This is when the real work starts. I’ll usually delve back into my current client work at this point and start working on small achievable tasks. So rather than “convert static html to wordpress” I’ll set myself smaller individual goals like “convert static html to wordpress index page, configure plugins, set up widgets” etc. I find doing it this way means that I get more done in a short amount of time.
I’ll usually stop for lunch at this point, which consists of soup and some sort of sandwich configuration. I watch whatever latest series was aired the night before, and generally do most of my blogging for this site around this time. I find posting stuff up around 2-3pm UK time to be a good setup, as you catch people in Europe on their lunch breaks / slacking off in the afternoon – and you catch people on the East coast of the US just getting into the swing of their day. If you mange to do well with some social media by 7pm UK time, then you get the West Coast traffic pretty easily too.
This is probably where the most productive part of my day starts, I find that as long as I don’t have a big lunch (makes you sleepy) then I really start getting some good work done at this point in the day on my current client projects. There’s not much to say about the next 5 hours, they’re spent pretty solidly working with the occasional 5 minute break here and there, and another short break to have some dinner.
Now’s the time I usually stop my client work for the day, I’ll spend some time on Twitter, address some of the emails which I set aside in the morning, and then move on to personal projects. This can range anywhere from building up a new site like therelease yesterday of WPress’d, adding a new plugin or widget to this blog, writing a guest post for another blog, building up some new Twitter contacts, or redesigning one of my own sites. (I’m doing this at the moment with Lyrical Media)
Generally, I’ll finally let my iMac have a rest at this point and decide that it’s time to leave my office. So I take a book to bed (currently the web design business kit, which I assure you, isn’t the most comfortable thing to read in bed) and start plowing through business strategies, marketing ideas, and new software. Often I’ll keep a notepad handy at this point and jot down any blog post ideas or to do list items based on what I’m reading.
After an hour and a half I put the business book down – I s’pose this is where my working day ends really. I like to keep sharp though, so I’ve taken to reading a non-business book for an hour before going to sleep each night, which I’ve actually found to be really therapeutic. Forgetting about work and getting wound up in a fictional world is quite a nice way to end the day – and I’ve also noticed that since doing this for the last 6 weeks that I’m generally reading at a much quicker pace, which is always handy.
Generally lights-out time, though if I’m caught up with my book I might stay up a little later. I always fall asleep thinking about what I’ve done so far, and what I still want to do – I find that keeps me motivated for stuff to do the next morning.
Are they long hours? Yes. – Do they feel like long hours? No.
I think that one of the greatest things about working for yourself is that (unless you’re very stupid) you’re doing something that you love. To me it doesn’t feel like work, it feels like I’ve got a hobby which by some stroke of luck I’m able to spend all of my time on.
That doesn’t mean it’s ideal, sure I’d like some variety – I’d like the luxury of an office full of my staff who can run the business while I build a web application and go out on photography trips now and again – but that’s what I’m working towards, and I’m happy to do it!
Several of you have commented on previous posts that I’m very driven and that I seem to be working hard (thank you, you’re very kind and I appreciate it!) – and I thought I’d share with you a video that really struck home with me when I first watched it, and gave me a tremendous amount of motivation.
To put it in Gary’s words – I’m HUSSLING.
Watch it, and you’ll understand – it’ll be the best 15 minutes that you spend online this week.
Oh and drop me a line in the comments! Tell me what you think of my working day, and of Gary’s philosophy – I love hearing from all of you, and it keeps me posting!
Over the last couple of weeks I had been busy working on a new template for BlogHash and finally it’s ready. If you are reading this post from your RSS reader, visit the home page once and take a look at the new theme of Bloghash.
A New Look for BlogHash
Why did I do it myself?
In the last few months I have contacted at least 5-6 WordPress theme designers but none of them seems to have had any interest in designing a theme for my site; no one replied to my email. Hence, I took it upon myself to design a theme for my blog site. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but then I wanted to learn.
Thank you for the inspiration
First it was John Chow, then Problogger and Keith also got a new design. When they got a new theme loaded up, it was perhaps the last spark needed to start the fire in my mind; I wanted a new one too!
The components of my theme
Before even I started with the design plan, I visited at least over 100 different blogs, thanks to the great list of WP designs on SmashingMagazine, and made a note of the different features on each of those blogs. Most of them had common set of things on their home page and almost everyone’s single view pages were left aligned with one sidebar on right. I wanted to design something different.
The new home page shows excerpts of most recent posts, on the right there are two sidebars showing some of the most visited posts under various categories. This helps in flow of page rank to those pages from the home page.
The single post view has one sidebar on either side. The one on the left is to show ads while the one on the right is to show related popular posts which I am still working on. I intend to show the most relevant post depending on the category of the post viewed.
Please give me feedback
Please spend a few minutes browsing the new theme on my blog and provide me with your valuable suggestions and feedback. Do let me know if you have any tips to help me improve my blog’s design.
Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.
What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.
Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.
When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.
Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience
Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you’re making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don’t know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won’t buy if they find the process cumbersome.
First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.
Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via PayPal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a check. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects’ desired payment method. After all, it wouldn’t make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won’t be able to pay you when they want to.
On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?
Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects’ confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.
As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!
