Fonts. There, I’ve said it four times now. There’s a huge variety of them, categorized beautifully between Serif and Sans-Serif (pronounce it – I dare you. If you say it wrong like I do, your peers will laugh and laugh). Still, up until the past year or so, browser font support was low, low low. But with the addition of @font-face, we have so many more options! carry on »
We here at Mindfly are creators. We earn our living from creating great websites, and like every creative our livelihood depends on our work and we agree that there needs to be some form of legislation that helps better protect us from online piracy.
However, SOPA and PIPA, two pieces of legislation currently being considered by Congress, are not the legislation we need. Between them they pose a very real risk to undermining the technology the Internet is based upon as well as jeopardizing the principles of free speech that have made the Internet what it is and that as Americans we hold so dear.
Today, January 18th, is SOPA Resistance Day. Several sites, including prominent ones like Wikipedia, are blacking out in order to show us how a world with SOPA and PIPA might look; a world where sites can be shut down and censored without due process. Other sites are participating by providing information about the legislation, explaining the dangers they pose, and providing information about how to do something to help combat them.
Regardless of whether you’re a creator or a consumer we here at Mindfly want to ask you to do three things today.
1. Get Informed. Learn what SOPA and PIPA are as well as the risks they pose. Information is power, and thanks to an uncensored Internet we have more access to information than that of any culture in any time before us. You can read a piece by the Electronic Frontier Foundation explaining the risk to free speech that PIPA and SOPA pose. Additionally, Ars Technica is covering SOPA Resistance Day in detail all day long, describing the efforts people are taking, the reason that this legislation is a danger, and how you can participate.
2. Get Involved. Once you’ve learned more about SOPA and PIPA, we’d like to ask you to consider participating in helping fight this legislation. You can contact your senator or representative (the information for contacting a senator is here, and a representative is here). You can sign petitions, if that’s your sort of thing. Here’s one urging the White House to veto SOPA if it passes. And you can even blackout your own Internet site for the day, helping show others what the Internet may look like when censorship trumps free speech. Here’s a project on github that provides HTML allowing you to do just that.
3. Get Thoughtful. SOPA and PIPA are heavy-handed approaches to a real problem. As important as free speech and an uncensored Internet are to our modern society and promoting innovation, online piracy is a real issue that needs a solution. It’s not just multimillion dollar media companies that are at risk of having their material copied and profited from without their consent. As website designers, not a day goes by that we don’t see news of one of our peers having a design they worked hard creating appearing on the Internet somewhere else as the “original work” of some sham company. If we want to keep Congress from breaking the Internet or threatening free speech with their misguided efforts at combating piracy, then each of us needs to take a hand in helping craft a solution that will work for our society and not against it. Be a part of the conversation.
HTML5. What? You don’t know? HTML5 is the latest and greatest Web Standard. New and exciting things are happening. Quick! Jump on the bandwagon. You know you want to.
Still not sure what HTML5 is all about? You can go the easy route and watch this quick and dirty What is HTML5? video.
Or you can do your own investigation and find out all you want to know. Some great resources I’ve found:
Already have a site built using HTML5? Let us know! We’d love to critique see what you’ve been up to.
It’s a foreign language. Communication between a web designer and a web developer is like debating politics with a goldfish. It’s hard to measure success.
The Deathstar here at Mindfly is never a dull place. What I think would be a straightforward yes/no answer becomes an hour-long debate as to why this won’t work or why it would take 5+ hours to perfect. Luckily, I am able to escape upstairs to Cloud City where I can go back to using English 101. That talk makes my head spin.
When I stumbled across this comedy sketch posted by HIVESeattle for HIVE2011, I couldn’t resist sharing it. These people know my pain. And I love them for it.
Here at Mindfly we like to share the things we know and learn with each other and we tend to use Basecamp‘s Writeboards to do this. While I think it’s fantastic we’re trying to consolidate our knowledge, my biggest gripe with this is it’s not super user friendly. It’s not easy to make things bold or italic, insert a link or a list, or – what I was attempting to do today – insert code. My Google search for escaping characters came up with a couple solutions – one I actually tried (successfully, I might add), and one I did not. Both of which I will list here. carry on »
You’re ready to finally do it. You want to revamp your presence online once and for all. So you search around for a local, well-dressed web design company to get the ball rolling. How much is it going to cost? “Well, it depends…” and after days and weeks of vetting different bids, you get to that exciting time when you’ve decided. Yes! Enough is enough and you’re willing to pay. You schedule the first meeting – and phwew! The hard part is over – now it is time for someone else to take the reins and drive this thing. Next thing you know, you’ll have a martini in your hand when a soft tap on the shoulder says “Excuse me sir, but your website is ready.” Right? Wrong. carry on »
I love designing mobile sites. I love doing web design in general, but mobile sites are something that I always especially enjoy seeing come through my task list.
As of now, when Mindfly has been asked to do a mobile website, or in the case of Smart Trips, a web app, the client has had a current site (usually previously designed or developed by us) that they want to add a mobile version to. Sometimes this requires us to go back through the desktop version of the website and adjust the styles to make a responsive design for a previously created website. In other cases – again such as Smart Trips and any site that requires a mobile application rather than just an informative website – we are looking at creating a completely separate location for their new mobile app. carry on »
I remember hearing about Google Web Fonts when they first rolled out a while back, but didn’t pay that much attention to them because they only had like 5 available and that so did not impress me. Whoa nelly, I should have been paying better attention because I stumbled across them again recently and they’re now up to 190 font families available for free use on the web. I’m in font heaven! The best part about it? You don’t have create an @font-face kit or add any javascript or flash or whatever. Simply link to the font in the <head> and reference it as normal in your CSS and done.
The Official Umbraco certification training courses are scheduled in the Seattle area and a couple of us here at Mindfly Web Design Studio are planning on attending.
The course is going to be taught by a Bellingham local and member of the Umbraco project team, Paul Sterling. I have personally seen him do several presentations. He is very knowledgeable and articulate in addition to always coming across well organize organized. This is certainly going to be a not to miss event if you are into Umbraco and live in the greater Seattle area!
If you’re as much of a fan of LL Spool J as I am, then you don’t need to be told that his newest single “That’s What It’s All About” has hit the proverbial streets. Do songs hit the streets anymore? I guess if you’re playing a song on an iPod and you accidentally drop the device then the song is hitting the street. Which really doesn’t sound that desirable. I’d like to keep my iPod in one piece, thank you very much.
I guess: “the song has hit the online store, retail chains and hobby shops” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Either way, the Spoolster’s newest video is out on the web. Check it out.