Entries for month: “May 2008”
Tips for better web design
I have designed websites for the better part of 7 to 8 years now. I am a designer and web developer, so I have a lot of experience being both the designer and the programmer. I get to see both ends of the spectrum of web design. Over the years I have picked up a lot of tips to increase your productivity in the area of web design.
The most critical point of web design is the starting point. It all begins with the designer. The more informed a designer is, the more some basic steps are observed, then the more productive and profitable your next design project will be. Here area few tips to help designers create a better and more profitable design.
→ Respond NowTags: Design
Accessibility and the skip to content link
Often times, terms like accessibility, validation, and compliance get tossed around by web companies or website owners of all sizes. Large or small. It seems that running a site though an automated validator is all that many people think is necessary. Having recently developed carpal tunnel and using websites without the aid of a mouse, I find that many of these sites are not really accessible or useable to people like myself with limited mobility. There are some very simple solutions that can make your website as easy, or easier to navigate via keyboard than with a mouse. In the following article I talk about my usage of websites and how they typically fail users with mobility issues, and offer both design and programming solutions to overcome these problems. It's doubtful that any designers or programmers will get hurt from reading this article.
→ Respond NowTags: Design · CSS · Accessibility
Stargazer Template
Anyone following trends in web blogs will know that the celestial images are all the rage. So I felt Mango needed to keep up with the Jones' and have one of it's own. This theme called Stargazer did the trick nicely. I also added a few additional theme options so you can change out your blog to the nebula of your choice.
Here are some screenshots so you can see what the options are. Click a thumbnail to view a larger version of each screenshot.
I retooled the codecoloring css and had it overwrite the default coloring so that text can be read on the dark background. The red and blue text was way to geocities for me.
I had to cut my teeth on a css conversion so why not a free template. Mango needs the support anyway right. Fell free to send me feedback. I would like to hear what you think. I will convert a few more templates and once I get the hang of the mango code I will start doing some of my own designs. I have a folder full of designs that were rejected from previous clients that would make excellent blog designs.
Go ahead and download the stargazer template here for free. (updated May 29, 2008)
→ Respond NowTags: Mango
Mango Event Start Template
As I was developing my own skins I kept running into issues where I forgot to include some necessary event triggers. So I stripped out al the layout code leaving only the core tags that I can use as a starting point for a template. Here is what was left. Not much really. Let me also add, that I am not very familiar with mango just yet, so if I am missing information please let me know so I can add it. Perhaps the few developers that are currently working with Laura (the author of mango) we can help her write the much needed documentation.
So here is the code. You may also download a nifty zip archive of the page template.
<!--- //----------------- Include the mango tag libraries -----------------// --->
<cfimport prefix="mango" taglib="../../tags/mango">
<cfimport prefix="mangox" taglib="../../tags/mangoextras">
<cfimport prefix="template" taglib=".">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<!--- //----------------- Header for author information, css and rss -----------------// --->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=<mango:Blog charset />" />
<meta name="generator" content="Mango <mango:Blog version />" />
<meta name="description" content="<mango:Blog description />" />
<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<mango:Blog skinurl />assets/styles/styles-site.css" type="text/css" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Atom" href="<mango:Blog atomurl />" />
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0" href="<mango:Blog rssurl />" />
<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" title="RSD" href="<mango:Blog apiurl />" />
<title><mango:Blog title /></title>
<mango:Event name="beforeHtmlHeadEnd" />
</head>
<body>
<mango:Event name="beforeHtmlBodyStart" />
<!--- //----------------- Sidebar Events -----------------// --->
<mango:Event name="afterSideBarStart" number="1" />
<mango:Event name="beforeSideBarEnd" number="1" />
<!--- //----------------- Footer Events -----------------// --->
<mango:Event name="afterFooterStart" />
<mango:Event name="beforeFooterEnd" />
<mango:Event name="beforeHtmlBodyEnd" />
</body>
</html>
→ Respond NowTags: Mango · Code · ColdFusion
Mango Blog Madness
I just wanted to post today surrounding my thoughts on Mango Blog. I am both excited and upset with the solution so far. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Mango Blog, It's a free open source coldfusion blog application that has just recently made it to it's 1.0 release. It's great that it has features not seen in other CF blogging software and the attention to details within the admin are leaps and bounds above the competition. In my opinion BlogFusion has been the only solution to come close in terms of look and feel of the application, and the features. BlogFusion unfortunately was built around the use of tables for almost all of it modules. I spent many hours reworking the modules for that app only to ditch it in favor of Mango.
I think mango blog will be the next wordpress for coldfusion as long as Laura (author of mango blog) continues to chug away at it's code. It has some really great features that even wordpress would be tickled to have. Things like skinning, themes, plugins, and the file manager.
Speaking to skinning this is both my love and hate for mango. I like how easy it is to just drop in features or widgets. What drives me nuts is the lack of documentation. There is no central PDF to download that has at least of available tags for things like, comments, posts, and search. Currently documentation is a few unorganized pages on the mangoblog website. So right now the only option is to wade through the example skins digging and searching for what you need.
Mango is only a 1.0 release as of writing this, and I am sure the docs will come. Sounds like Laura is up late working on the source code and answering forum posts which I think is almost a better source for documentation. At least you can search the forums :) To say the least, I am anxious for docs.
So what is mango? Well the blog your reading now is in mango. Curently the skin is a pre-packaged theme. I am plugging away at my own but it's a slow process and think it will take another week or more to have something basic done. crossing my fingers for a swifter solution.
→ Respond NowTags: Mango
