That is not the only benefit. The Google Web Store also provides a way for your custom apps to gain exposure. This is especially great for apps built without much content to create SEO traffic. Additionally it is only $5 to start putting up apps.

With the announcement of Chrome OS, the future is only looking brighter for those who design and develop on the web.

For only being up a day there already is a large number of apps out there.

I was able to export the code and start editing it right on my local machine. No need for an internet connection or constantly update on a web server and reloading the page like many other CMS systems. I used a tool called Vision to work on my files locally. Just create a new theme in Vision and start editing away. One thing to remember is you can not add any directories to the assets folder, they do not get upload if you do. I tried to make a nice folder structure and separate out my css and image files, but that ended up causing problems when I tried to upload to Shopify.

The Shopify’s template language is liquid. For the most part it is pretty simple to work with the output. Here is an example: {{ product.description | strip_html | truncate: 50 | escape }} . Nothing to complex, you can output the product description, take out the html and truncate it down to 50 characters in a fairly simple line of code.

At this point my only issue is that I want to add some extra functional pages that pull data from Twitter or Flickr and have not been able to figure out a way to do that server side. Sure I could write some Javascript to pull the data, but it would be nice if they allowed you access publish some extra files to the server. They do allow the ability for static pages, which is nice for your about page, terms, returns policies, etc…

Overall I am a pretty happy user of Shopify and hope I get the opportunity to work on another project soon using the tool. The project should be in my portfolio soon!

There was a time where all my clients wanted Flash design and development. Those days seem to be dwindling down…or are they? I still think there is a place for Flash in the online gaming world. Maybe, one day when all browsers (maybe even IE) are HTML5 compatible it will be a different story, but for the time being Farmville is still built in flash and still has over 30,000 users.

On another note, does anyone else out there think maybe Apple is writing some logic to over work the processor when the user is running Flash? Sure it sounds a little crazy, but what better way to make Apple fans jump on the anti-flash bandwagon by bogging down their computer when the user loads it?

It seems like the candidates could of ran a much more lean campaign by leveraging social media and the internet more. Sure the politicians had a facebook page and a twitter page, but I don’t feel like many candidates utilized it to the fullest extent. I think Twitter must of noticed this too by adding Adam Sharp as their most recent hire.

On any given social network you have a pretty good profile of the users and their online activity, based on that you may be able to find the sentiment of a given candidate at any time during the election. Candidates would know what part of the state/district to tackle based on conversation. There are lots of tools out there that can retrieve this type of information. This could take out a lot of the door to door and calling. People don’t want to be bugged by someone, but they already are on their social networks so why not try to address the issues people are concerned about. If the candidate shows they are listening to people perhaps they will have a better chance at being elected. Then the people will feel like they are included when the elected officials goes to vote on a bill or issue.

Before you know it the pre-election polls will be based on activity on social networks instead of calls to homes. As the country becomes more mobile the use of land lines is becoming dates; thus, requiring the pre-polling to go one of two ways mobile phones (oh no) or the web.

I think when the 2012 election comes around people in the social media field are going to be high in demand. So all you social media marketing experts polish up that resume and start planning your "strategery" now.

…Then again maybe not, I am not sure I want to see all the attack ads and rhetoric plaguing my social networks.

My past post about political websites had me looking into some other candidates that were popular this election season. Basil Marxeaux got lots of youtube hits, so I decided to check out his website. The spelling is pretty atrocious, let alone the design looks like it was a 10 year olds first website.

This was a targeted ad on Facebook. This definitely looks like a site I should trust to buy software.

This one makes my brain hurt to look at.

This one is the scariest website. I hope the design was just their halloween costume, but my guess is not…

The fact of the matter is that the most difficult client is you. Maybe its just my problem and then this whole post goes to waste, but I don’t believe I am the only one, why else would designers change their image so much? As you work on more and more projects you feel the need to make sure your image reflects some of the new skills you have learned along the way and the design style you are developing as you progress in your career.

Now this may be embarrassing to announce on the web, but I actually spent months working on this website, never really committing more than an hour or two a week, but I kept trying none the less. Every design I ever did I just threw away. Really once I came up with a design it only took me about two days to build, but coming up with a design was more painful then that root canal I had last year. (It’s amazing/sad to me that this is all I came up with).

Recently I completed a full rebranding, redesign, user experience overhaul, and front end dev for an extensive website in just a month. This got me wondering, how can I pull off a website 50 times the scale in a month, but can’t pull off a simple design to display my work?

I think as designers we go into projects with lots of energy to make something awesome for the client, but at the end of the day you can finish up that project and move on. There is not the same level of emotional attachment as when you design for yourself. You design for your clients based on how you read their brand or image. When you design for yourself you try to create something that speaks who you are, since you know yourself at a personal level (let's hope) instead of just a business level the design becomes increasingly difficult.

"Do I show my clean web 2.0 style, or do I go organic looking, I really love the outdoors? I can’t use #C6001 for my site, I used that for my clients website, I need to look original. Do I try to be a nerdy techy guy, or a hip apple loving designer."

Note: All those things didn't run through my mind, they were just supplied as examples

Okay maybe they did

In the end you need to display yourself as a business, not a personal profile. How would you display the services you offer? Put personality into the design and copy, but don’t put your personal life into it. Step outside yourself for a second and be a really good client to yourself so you and your client are happy.

Here are a some services I am considering:

Paypal: These guys have been around for a long and are becoming a standard in many places on the web. Their pricing is one of the down sides to their business. They charge 2.9% +0.30 for money transfers under $3k.

For Paypal Pro users there is Cashie: If you want to make a simple ecommerce solution on your website (or a credit card form for services billing) you can try Cashie. It is free to sign up and the company takes a 1% charge on all transactions…but this is on top of your paypal processing charges as well.

PaySimple: Is another service that has some really neat features that some of the competition doesn’t offer. With their fees you get recurring billing, electronic email invoicing, and a hosted secure payment page. This seems really great for the active consultant, probably not as strong of a choice for occasional contractor. Their fees are $34.95/month and 2.29% + $0.29. I signed up and their support called me within 20 minutes to see if I needed any help or had any questions, it was a nice personal touch.

Lately all the commercials on television are about the upcoming election and quite frankly none of them tell the candidates message. After watching TV for a few hours I saw what seemed like hundreds of political commercials, but I had NO IDEA why I should vote for them. I was only given a reason to not vote for the opposing candidate.

So this got me wondering what do these guys stand for? I decided to take a look at the websites of two candidates in my current state of Illinois, Mark Kirk and Alexi Giannoulias. It got me wondering the power of web design and if it can dictate the difference of a vote or not. It definitely can dictate the difference between a sale or not, how about a vote?

From there I reworked their brand and fully redesigned the experience of their site. Following design I provided the all the front end development as well. I have displayed a before (to the right) and after.

Fall 2010

#1 Only use your mouse to draw and select objects

Learning hotkeys makes you design like you have a energy drink I.V.

First things first, set yourself up for speed

We are now designing for speed, so stop worrying about how nice the layers are labeled and just start drawing. Turn on auto-select so you can just start clicking layers and drawing/cutting/filtering away.

Toolbar Hotkeys

Sure many people know the new file (command+N) or save (command+S), but knowing how to switch tools in photoshop without having to leave the canvas saves you boatloads of time (Refer to the graphic on the left). Also for the tools that have tools within them, like Lasso, Polygon Lasso, and Magnetic Lasso use shift plus the character for the appropriate tool.

Here are some others to speed things up

Layer Opacity:Select a layer and press number (4 will get you 40%, press 64 it will be 64%)
Brush Opacity/Strength: Press a number. Works with brushes, dodge/burn, eraser, clone stamp etc…
Brush Size: [ or ] HUGE time Saver
Brush Hardness: Shift + [ or Shift + ]
While Brushing Sample a Color:If you don’t want to switch to the eye dropper while brushing just click the option key and click to get a color.
Layer Order: Command + [ or Command + ] to bring backwords and fowards (respectively). Add a shift in there and it goes to the very bottom or top.
View Actual Size:Command + 1, nice when doing web layouts
Fit on Screen: Command + 0
Transform a Layer: Command+T. Perspective Skew, warp? Just right click on the corner of the bounding box.
Put Multiple layers in a folder: Click them all (since you have auto-select on) and command+G.
Marquee a layer: Hold command and click on the layer thumbnail.
Fill a layer/marquee with foreground color: Option + Delete
Fill a layer/marquee with background color: Command + Delete
Merge Layers: Command + E
Go back multiple steps: Command+Option+Z. (command Z will only take you back and forth between the last thing you did)

#2 Save color swatches and layer styles

No need to retype those hexadecimal values every time.
Just saving your companies or your clients palette will save you loads of time. As you are filling or drawing layers just sample from your swatch pallete and keep going.

Keep all your gradients you make in photoshop, this will save you in the long run. let’s say you created a really neat gradient for one client and you are looking for something similar but with their colors. Just go into layer styles see that gradient saved their, keep the positions of the colors the same just change the color values to meet your clients look, and your good to go. It is a bit of a process to save them, so do it when you aren’t in fire drill mode for designing. That way you have it ready when the client/boss beckons your "speed racer" like design skills. Go speed racer gooooo

 

1. Create an Awesome Web 2.0 gradient
2. Click Save in the gradient palette, save it in your Photoshop/Presets/Gradients Folder
3. Click load in the gradient palette, and select the gradient you just saved. I have no clue why it doesn’t automatically load

#3 Design and Repeat

Your option key should be called the copy key in photoshop
Need to start copying layers quickly. Just hold option and start dragging your layers around. This is a pretty basic concept in photoshop, but it carries through in other areas of the software as well.

Let’s say you created that awesome web 2.0 gradient and need to apply it to another 5 layers. While its really nice that you have that gradient saved for you to use again, what if you have a glow, or drop shadow on the layer as well? Click and hold option the layer styles in the layer palette and drag from one layer to another. If you want to just copy on aspect of the layer style (just the gradient) just mouse over that layer style click and hold option and drag to the target layer.

#4 Working with text

How come working with text in photoshop is painful?
Okay so you are finishing of a design and need to add some text and do some treatments, but since you designed so fast your layers are a mess and you hate trying to find them in the layer palette.

Want to start editing an existing text field. Press T to get your text tool and click on the text layer. Or else just click a drag a new one on to the page. Press command + T to bring up the character palette.

Now that you are editing this text field your hotkeys no longer work! So how do I get out of the text box with out having to go to the toolbar and clicking another tool? Command + Enter. This simple command will save you so much time.

Increase the font size quickly by highlighting the text and pressing command + > or command + <.

Change the font color: Instead of opening the color dialog box and selecting. Just highlight the text and click the color from those swatches you saved.

Now that you are all finished Hold command+option+shift+S and save it for web.