Finally I’ve done upgrading to WP 2.0. Loving the blue admin, post previews, ajex effects, import features and yes it’s fast.

Now, only thing left is to change new design I got no idea yet.

Technorati Tags: WordPress2.0, Upgrade, Blogging

After many headaches, my very first blogger design has been accomplished for my blogspot site “Little Mayvelous Things“. There are a lot need fixing yet it’s up and running as planned.
The first impressions I’ve got from some reviewers (very unfavorable reviewers: my bro and sis), it’s was “Eeeuu PINK!”, “Too Childish”, “Very girlie”, “Too flowery”, etc etc…I was pretty disappointed that they didn’t like my design.
Nevertheless, my siblings are always too much pain in the … that I’m so use to ignoring them.
Anyway it took me the whole day and night to think of the layout, color, font and design as I never been good with designing.

I’m trying my hand on site designing and hope to design this main site when I have time. Blogger template is easier to redesign than wordpress cos’ blogger has only one file to think of where else WP involve lots of template files. Another reason I’m very slow in rework of mayvelous.com is that I have no php/mysql experience and never build a site using those. So cracking each WP theme templates line by line is very painful process especially when you’re not familiar with php coding.
Anyway now my first step of cracking blogger template has been done, there’ll be only sometime I manage to crack WP as well.
May be next year… will put that in my new year resolution.

So please do visit my newly redesigned site and review how you like or hate about it. Any help or suggestions regarding accessibility issues/errors are most welcome and will try to fix them as I can.
The design is still in progress with a few layout adjustment to made. Anyway I had a busy xmas weekend with that.
Hope you enjoy browsing “Little Mayvelous Things“.

Technorati Tags: redesign, template, theme, blogging, blogspot, sitereview

I just switched to FireFox 1.5 now(yah I know I’m late) and my “JustBlogIt” and “ScreenGrab” got screwed up so I’m testing this new “Performancing” extension. I’m useing that extension to post this entry.

I was really annoyed first cos’ I’ve just installed the extension and couldn’t find how to make use of it. I mean where in the name to click or set setting or post?

There is no option in the extensions panel to set the blog options and I can’t find any trace of how it works at all on “Performancing.com” site.
May be people are too smart or I’m too stupid that the site doesn’t provide a page explaining how to use it. Not even a single screen shot of things in action.

I took me 3 min to search through the site and I couldn’t find it so I search on my browser for any new icons. Finally I found it.
Boy I was like phheeewwww!! What a place to let people notice.

Ok now the good part about it. I really love the interface, it’s just within your browser and no pop up or new windows. Whichever tabs you switch it’s there.

The only thing I want them to improve it make it collapsiable+resizable instead of only resizable panel. Would be very handy to collapse the panel and open again whenever you want.

It’s compatible for the following blogs:

• Blogger.com
• WordPress.com
• TypePad.com
• LiveJournal
• WordPress Custom
• MoveableType

You just add your blogs in there and the categories and posts history of each blogs will show up. Very fast retrival of categories and posts.

One more thing they should improve is instead of having “Clear Content” button to clear history post that you view before and add new entry, they need to add “Create New Post” button for accessibility and user friendliness.

Clear content button can confuse users whether their old posts got clear away or are they really creating new post entry.
Well it’s abit hard to explain, you got to test it out to see what I mean by that.

Ok now this is gonna be my replacement for “JustBlogIt” and I’m loving it.

I think you’ll like that too.
Get it at Performancing.com.

Oh yah, you got to have firefox 1.5 to use it.

Updated::
Just checked the Performancing site and Jed Brown has posted a nice compilation of HOW TO: Using Performancing for Firefox article with screen shots and a nice spell check firefox extension link. Worth checking out.
I was looking for this kind of article yesterday…abit slow with documentation I guess but still it’s there now and the article is really useful.

Technorati Tags: firefox, extension, technorati, performancing

I was checking out this site design review of Magnitude by CSS Drive and thinking how strangly they created the drop cap effect in their pages. They make use of that effect in almost all the pages and every single time they added an image for the very drop cap letter.
Man, that’s just not right.

I would expect a bit more from web+interactive company like theirs to show more professionalism in their site. After all the first impression sometime counts and in this case the company portfolio site would determine the reputation and skills behind it. Anyway I like the design, very artistic with interesting decay looking text and I like the left menu. The only problem I see is Drop Cap characters.

If I have to do drop cap I would rather use css for that. I’ve tested it and it’s really easy. You need only 3 lines or so.
Well for my own note as well as for you (if you wanna know) the CSS code for Drop Cap effect and implementation as shown below.

#dropcap
{
	float: left;
        font-size:300%;
        font-weight: bold;
        line-height:50px;
}

<p><span id="dropcap">W</span>orem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. </p>

There see short and sweet. No need to create image characters everytime you wanna make that effect. Ok you just have to adjust font size and line height according to your need.
That’s it, I gotta sleep.
Cheers.

I was reading “Rip Web Trends of the 90s” over at NCZ Online and was disappointed to realize 80%+ myanmar sites still make use of those 90s styles he mentioned.

These are the things we all included on our web sites by default, and now have gone the way of the dinosaur:
# Guestbook
# Counter
# Image Maps
# Best Viewed With
# Splash Pages

I would definitely love to see myanmar sites get rid of those especially “Splash Pages”, “Counters” and also try to make the site compatible with FireFox as 90% of myanmar sites are totally crap once you view with browser other than IE.
Also need to reduce their great love for flash, well flash is nice if you can make it faster load but seem to me they just never finish loading.

Another thing about myanmar sites is that they use heaps of animations and messy background images. Each page changes different background images and you just don’t know which page you come from or might have a great doubt about whether you’re in the same site still.
Consistency is the main thing myanmar sites lack.

Now now, don’t start…I know my site is crappy too but it’s good to consider some constructive critism right?

Link: “Rip Web Trends of the 90s”

Sometime last month, I was given an opportunity to try out the beta test of the newly created roll your own search engine site, “Rollyo”.
The owner has requested not to shout/blog/publicize about it so I barred myself from blogging here.
Now that Rollyo’s been officially released, I’m able to talk about it here.

Rollyo allows you to create personal search engines using only the sources you trust. Just add the sites into a form and boom, bingo, whamo, you’ve created a custom search engine (we call them Searchrolls).

Rollyo is integrated with yahoo search and from my experience, it produces very fast and accurate results.

Rollyo puts the power of Yahoo! Search in your hands, by giving you the tools to create your own personal search engines – with no programming required. All you have to do is pick the sites you want to search, and we’ll create a custom search engine for you.

You can create unlimited search rolls for yourself according to the subject you want to group as. Say for example, I have created search roll “Web Development Resources”, where I add all the related web development site links and once it’s been search, the results will come only from the links I’ve added and nothing else.

More effective and specific search result can be achieved as you limit your search rolls with fewer links. The maximum of 25 links can be added to each roll. It was said that the fewer the links in each roll, the better the search result will be.

One of the features I like about there is, the pop up box listing all the links as well as a small image and info of the roller, once you click on search rolls. You can also save other users’ search rolls as you’ll find many interesting rolls for your own use. There are some tools like firefox plugin and bookmarking to go with and some more will come later on.

Well now that the news is out, you can pay a visit to Rollyo and try it for yourself.

The latest web standards award has been given to “kevadamson.com” for it’s unique look and style.
www.kevadamson.com/: “Freelance Illustration, Web Design, Graphic Design and Illustration is what I does, and this be my website …”

Read the review here.

It was a well placed comment left here on the WSA that led me to Kev Adamson’s site and I am glad I went, it is a visual treat. Amongst all the super slick and shiny sites of today, it’s nice to see something so effortlessly scruffy but oozing style and attention to detail nonetheless.

The designer’s philisophy

I work tirelessly to ensure all my work is resolved and considered in every way, as I believe in high standards. This way of applying myself not only satisfies my own creative needs but, more importantly ensures that you, the client, receive quality and a service that will aid long term success and prosperity.

Check out his “web”, “illustration”, “graphics” and “animation” pages as well. I like the way he present his works. The torn paper effect is kind of interesting isn’t it?