We were hired by Dan Colman to recode the header for the WordPress blog, Open Culture.

“Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. Web 2.0 has given us great amounts of intelligent audio and video. It’s all free. It’s all enriching. But it’s also scattered across the web, and not easy to find. [Their] whole mission is to centralize this content, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Free audio books, free university courses, free movies, free language lessons and other enriching content — it’s all here.”

The new header makes better use of visual space as well as giving easier access to important links on the top of every page. Even though changes may seem small, improved usability and better use of screen real estate can go a long way.

Old Header:

New Header:

The design and original development for the theme were created by Rolling Orange.

Check out the new design and have a look at Open Culture.

This past weekend we launched the redesign of our website webdev2.0. With the new design we wanted to address certain issues and improve upon the existing design. We kept the same color palette and used a very similar layout.

First off we wanted better social networking integration. We put the links to Twitter, Facebook, RSS Feed, and newsletter in the header and footer so it would show up on every page and easy for our readers. We also have the Feedburner reader count near the title of every page. On the website profile pages we used the SexyBookmarks plug-in for WordPress and each page has a Facebook fan box and Twitter widget.

The second issue we wanted to address was placement of ads. We wanted consistent placement that was above the fold, but we didn’t want them to be overly intrusive. We’ve also reduced the number of ads to 3 per page.

We wanted to show more competitors for each site. We now show 9 instead of 3.

For the front page, we wanted to highlight the highest rated sites. On the previous site it was in the sidebar on the individual pages. We think promotion to the front page will showcase the highest rated sites better and it should get more views on that page.

We’ve also included our latest blog posts in the footer of every page and we hope to use that feature of the site more often. In the old site it was mostly hidden away.

So how did we do? Do you like the new design? What could we do to improve the site? Take a look at the site and let us know. We look forward to hearing from you.

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac was released this week and I was eager to see if there was a big improvement over previous versions.  We’re an all Mac shop and we primarily use Windows for testing purposes.  Our test machines consist of a Windows XP environment with IE6 and now Windows 7 with IE7/IE8 and the latest version of Firefox.  There are no additional programs installed in those environments.  Since I don’t use Windows all that often since Apple has transitioned to Intel machines I’ve used every version of Parallels.  Ideally I’d like to keep a virtual machine running at all times for easy toggling and real-time testing while developing sites.

The problem with doing this is it tends to cause my computers to run extremely slow.  I don’t have a Mac Pro, but I do have a variety the latest MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, and Mac Minis.  All of which are pretty modern with the latest Core 2 Duo processors and maxed out RAM (usually 4GB).  On a typical development setup I’ll usually have Mail.app, Tweetie, Adium, Skype, Webkit, Evernote, iCal, iTunes, Coda, and YummyFTP.  I’ll also occasionally have Firefox, Photoshop, Navicat, Versions, and Pages open depending on the project.  All of these programs run pretty well on any of the setups above.  When I add Parallels or VMWare Fusion to the mix everything comes to a halt.  I realize I’m running a lot of programs and running an additional operating system might be asking too much.  With that being said it’s really a vanilla install of Windows with Firefox and no additional programs running at startup.  With machines with only 2GB of RAM like my MacBook Air I won’t attempt launching the VM even when I’m not running any of the usual programs.

Previous versions of Parallels it eventually lead me to install Windows 7 on a Mac Mini via Bootcamp.  I was lucky enough to test Windows 7 though all the beta stages and I was able to test development on the new operating system before it was released last week.  The Bootcamp environment was obviously much better and it’s expected since I’m running one operating system instead of two.  It got me thinking is it worth it buying Parallels year after year or am I better of just using Bootcamp or even buying a cheap PC with some version of Windows 7.  When I’m developing offsite at a client location, I like to have a VM on the machine to test and having an additional PC isn’t really an option.

Now Parallels Desktop 5 is out and I’ve downloaded the trial and upgraded my two virtual machines.  It still runs a little slow for my liking to use as a full-time open application, but once it’s up and running it seems to work well even with the other applications open.  Boot up and shut down still seem pretty slow.  If I do use Parallels I’ll probably keep the VM open throughout the development session.  I’ll have to work with it more, before making a decision.

Have you been using the new version and what are your opinions on it?  Do you have any suggestions on setting the VM up better to improve performance?

We use WordPress on almost all of our company blogs.  Along with those, we setup and customize WordPress blogs for many of our clients.  Over the years WordPress has done a good job creating a quality blogging/content management system.  Yesterday version 2.8 was released which improves upon 2.7.  This morning I was able to successfully upgrade our blogs without a hitch.

New features include easier searching and installation of themes.  It also gives a better user interface for organizing widgets all within a single screen.  WordPress also claims the platform is faster and fixes over 790 bugs.  Also new to 2.8 is the ability to customize the UI which builds upon the changes in version 2.7.  View the video below to review some of the new features in the updated system.

Apple released the iPhone OS 3.0 software to developers Tuesday. I’ve had a chance to play around with it the last couple days and have been pretty happy with the results. It does offer some nice feature upgrades, but it does it without changing the user experience a whole lot.

When I install beta software on any device, I realize that there could be bugs.  I take a look at the software and see if it will prevent me from doing my daily tasks and are the features worth trying out in testing mode.  With the iPhone I figured if I could still make and receive calls, get my text messages, and use my daily applications like Brightkite and Facebook, then it would be worth installing and seeing what’s new.

I logged into the developer site on Tuesday which was getting hit pretty hard, but after a few attempts I was able to download and install the software successfully on my iPhone 3G.  After initial install it seemed kind of slow, but I think it could have been indexing the content in the phone for searching.  Apple claims there are over 100 new features, but I don’t know all 100 and I think only the ones that really stand out are important to discuss.

The first feature worth noting is the one I just mentioned, search.  If you are on the first page of home screen, sliding to the left or pressing the home button will bring up the search page.  It’s a system wide search and it’s overall pretty quick.  It lists search results categorized by application.

Cut and paste is a big feature people have been waiting for and it works well.  There’s only been a couple of times where I’ve needed to cut and paste things.  For example when someone sends me a text message of an address, it was just a pain in the past having to swap between the Text app and Maps.  Also I noticed the phone being a little smarter with linking by adding more linkable text to items that were previously untappable.

The Text application is now referred to as Messages.  It now supports MMS integrated into the standard text message interface we’re used to seeing and also landscape mode.  It adds a camera icon to the left of the input field and in the settings application you can set the message to have a subject.  I didn’t get to test this feature since most of the people I would send MMS to have iPhones with the existing software or would really not want to pay an MMS fee for something stupid I send them.  I’m not sure if the feature is active on AT&T or even what kind of charges are associated with it.  On my old phones I don’t think I even used the feature and I’m not sure if that will really change on the iPhone.

The Stock application got a minor update.  The bottom pane now has three scrollable sections to show stock information, charts, and news.  The application also supports landscape mode which show stock charts at fullscreen.

Voice Memos is a new app and seems like it would be a cool feature that I don’t ever see myself using.  The app did seem to work though and might be cool for students to record lectures or conduct interviews as long as it doesn’t kill battery life substantially.  I didn’t use it long enough to find out.

I use Evernote on my iPhone and computer for note taking, but it’s worth noting that the Notes application syncs with the computer now.

Mail now works in landscape mode.  I noticed a bug in the UI for my email addresses spanning off the side of the screen.  I think it used to truncate so I’m not sure if thats how it’s supposed to be.  It also adds search which is a huge addition for me.  I get a ton of emails on a daily basis and if I wasn’t looking for something within the last day I’d never find it on the iPhone.

The UI of the Phone app has been slightly  updated.  The recent calls now show phone number type under the name for people in your address book and location information for numbers that aren’t.  The contact screen now has a share contact button where you can email the contact or send via MMS.  I’ve been previously using Easycontact for this task.  The voicemail screen has also been updated to show phone number type.  It’s a small but nice touch.

There were some new features I didn’t test.  I couldn’t test Bluetooth sharing because I don’t have two phones or know anyone else running the 3.0 software yet.  I don’t have stereo Bluetooth headsets so I couldn’t test the stereo audio.  Push notifications are supposed to be in place, but I don’t know any apps that currently support it.  If anyone does, please let me know and I’d be interested in trying that out.  Supposedly the calendar supports subscriptions, but I’ve yet to figure out if it syncs via MobileMe or how I go about adding those calendars in.  The phone has a find me function, but I have no idea what that does.

I did notice a couple of UI bugs and sometimes tapping on the screen gave no response.  It slows the experience, but doesn’t kill it.  All my applications seem to work as they did in the previous OS.  I’m sure this is a work in progress and by the time the final release hits the public it will be much more polished.  I’m also interested in checking out some of the new applications using the iPhone 3.0 SDK.  Overall I’m pretty happy with the update and I think it’s something for iPhone users to look forward to using.

David Walsh ported Jonathan Snook’s jQuery menu effects to MooTools. It a quick and easy tutorial which adds cool animation without having to use Flash.

While it doesn’t improve functionality of the menu, it does add a unique touch to the everyday CSS hovers we see in almost every website nowadays. I like to keep JavaScript at a minimum if possible, but this script seems pretty lightweight and fast loading.

Check it out here.

I’ve been a fan of nettuts and psdtuts for a while now. Over the years I’ve picked up some good tips from their tutorials and it’s helped me work on some projects and also learn something new along the way.

The company has moved their series of sites into one umbrella called tutsplus. Not only does that include nettuts and psdtuts, but also vectortuts, audiotuts, and aetuts.

While I haven’t really used the last three sites at all, I checked them out this morning and they also offer some cool tutorials on those topics. The new dashboard shows the latest articles from those sites as well as their latest articles on Digg and their tweets on Twitter. All the modules can be arranged like those you would find on your Google or Yahoo home page.

Head over and check it out.

We’ve done form validation for quite a few sites through PHP, JavaScript, or both. It’s a pretty common thing in web development especially with all the spam bots around. Also it keeps things clean when capturing user input.

Woork has three JavaScript implementations for form validation. The first implementation with MooTools seems pretty clever. The other two seem pretty standard.

If you have any interesting links for us to review regarding form validation, we would be interested in viewing them and also sharing in the blog.

Netuts published a screencast tutorial on how to use CSS sprites. It’s a good web optimization technique that I see more and more, but could be adopted throughout a lot more sites. Check out the video below. Make sure you watch in fullscreen mode or go to Netuts site since I’ve scaled the video to fit in the blog post.

I went to login to my Brightkite account and saw that they allow login via Facebook Connect. It’s nice to see that more and more sites are starting to adopt the process.

It will allow more people to join services without having to sign up over and over. It brings OpenID style login to more of the masses. I would say most of my friends that aren’t too tech savvy have a good idea what Facebook is and probably have an account, but those same friends have no idea about OpenID.

Being a big fan of both Brightkite and Facebook it’s nice to see the integration and it works seamlessly as expected. I hope more sites that I use as well as new sites I might use in the future will support Facebook Connect as well.

With that being said I’ve had yet to enable it on any of my sites, but hope that some sort of integration will happen in the future.