The Light Of Day

After 3 1/2 years of preparation and numerous iterations, this Sunday I launched an online magazine- Aenonfire: Talent Redefined. It has been a labor of love and it’s really amazing to me that this day has finally arrived. I learned so much during this pre-launch process. One of the most important things that I learned is that the longer you wait to get something *perfect* the more you shoot yourself in the foot.

There were however, alot, and I mean alot of things that I had to consider. When I first began the magazine I dove in head first into power mode just building. I had a core group of Wordpress plugins that gave me most of the functionality that I needed, mainly plugins that completely took apart the “blogness” of Wordpress and brought it at least in the neighborhood of a cms. This however was an early warning sign to me that I might not be using the right tool for the job. But, as I had been using wordpress for a few years I stuck to it.

The other big factor was that the markup and css just wasn’t flexible enough. I went thru many layout variations before getting the current structure. Once I had that in hand the site at least structure wise was ready to receive content with the hopes of some finality. I kept thinking in the back of my mind that there had to be a better tool for the content management. So, I waded thru the enormous sea of content management systems finding a ton of bloatware on one hand and on the other lacking features that would require plugins.

The great thing is that I did end up finding -what so far for me- has been the absolute perfect solution- Expression Engine. I won’t go into a feature blow by blow here that will incite a WP vs EE flame war. Instead, I’ll just say that I am tremendously happy with my decision.

Yeah, The Shoot Yourself In The Foot Thing

I just want to encourage any of you who may be working on a tremendously large scale project, to really put the “Getting Real” principle in use. Even though I’ve read the 37 signals pdf numerous times, it still took a good amount of courage (and some swift kicks in the butt from close friends) to take this baby that I had been nurturing for years and set it free. Even though I knew that I should get real and put it out there, I just kept holding on to it trying to get it *perfect*, thinking that the whole “first impression” was the make it or break it deal.

Once you get things to a point where you are happy with it, get it out there. If you are like me then I know that it might be tough as you know how many things there are that you need to fix, or that arent quite right to you. But just remember that even though you are intimately involved with every facet and detail of the project, your viewers are coming from completely different angles. Just do the thing!

So without further ado, say hello to Aenonfire: Talent Redefined.

Now Available as a Plugin!

I’m happy to announce tonite that the afd wordpress 2 admin theme is now available as a plugin. First off special thanks to Ping for volunteering to make the plugin. You’ll also notice an option in there to change the colors of the navigation, which is something he needed specifically so that he could tell the difference in the admins between a few of his wordpress installs.

It took alot of css work to get the plugin to override the default admin css. The only area that I couldn’t seem to override was the upload.css. I have provided that file again in this download as an option if you want to replace it with the default one. For me, its absolutely necessary as in order to maintain the aesthetics of my theme. Also I’ve included the fat.js file from the previous theme versions in case you want the colors I’ve used in that, this is also optional if you like the default fat.js colors then no need to replace.

Thanks also to Mike in finding a widget bug, which has been fixed in this update.

I’ve done the updating on my mac tonite and if any of you windows users see anything wonky please let me know.

I’ll also keep the the previous version available for download if you want to use that instead of the plugin. I’ve updated that download with the widget fix.

*10-21-7* updated. I added a rule to set the “view” link on the edit post/page to the left of the edit window instead of absolutely right as the default was.

Download Wordpress Version 2.3x Compatible

afd_admin_theme-2.3.1.zip Plugin Version *NOT COMPATIBLE WITH WP 2.5*

afd_admin_theme-2.3.zip Note This Version is NOT a plugin

Download Wordpress Version 2.2x Compatible

afd_admin_theme-2.2.zip

Download Wordpress Version 2.1x Compatible

afd_admin_theme-2.1.zip

Wordpress Version 2.0x Compatible

afd_admin_theme-2.zip

Installation

1. Place the afd_admin folder into your wp-content/plugins directory.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Upload the upload.css file included here in the optional/wp-admin/css directory to your wp-admin/css directory and overwrite the existing one.
4. Upload the fat.js file included here in the optional/wp-includes/js directory to your wp-includes/js directory and overwrite the existing one.

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TypeGauge

I’m very excited to finally blog about this publicly, as my good friend and co-laborer at the nytimes.com— Pau Santesmasses has released his firefox extension “TypeGauge“.

What is it?

Many of you fellow web developers may be using the completely-must-have extension Firebug already. Well, sometimes you may want to know some details about html elements and those are the only things you need. In the case of TypeGauge, these details are the particular html tag, font-size and line-height.

Why is this important? If you care about your typography and are striving for consistency across browsers then this information is critical. A good example of where this comes into play is when sizing fonts for Safari, if you have somehow ended up with a decimal value instead of a whole number (maybe your font-size percentage on the body element does not give you a whole number, like another site I deal with everyday), Safari will round up the value and this will cause your font to be larger in Safari than say Firefox.

Enter TypeGauge

Once you’ve installed and activated TypeGauge (by clicking its icon in the status bar) you can freely hover over elements on your page in the same way that Firebug works. TypeGauge gives you tag, font-size and line-height results for every item on the page. The font-size and line-height results are the browser computed values so you can depend on the accuracy.

I’ve been using this extension for a few months now and can bear witness to its value in my day to day web development. It’s indispensable.

Big Up to Pau for building a clean, simple, yet powerful extension that is an essential tool in any web designers box.

So go get it and admire the proper web design where the extension lives too—Looks great Pau.

Get it here

Thanks for the support!

Tonite I came across a very welcome surprise- my friend Damien Dunmore, and the ever progressing sounds of Stick3x. Its been a mighty long time since my days at the Casbah and Soma back in San Diego, but getting to hear “life at the backhouse” was music to my ears. Thanks D- its been too long since we got to hang out proper, but until then… this was a welcome interlude, thanks also to Alexx Thompson for shooting such a dope video.

Yeah bu…

Have you ever had a conversation with someone (or tried) but you couldnt get much in because they liked the sound of their own voice so much? I know I have, and generally after a few tries, I just give up or in. All of the things we learned (or didn’t learn) when we were young about listening and paying attention, not interrupting and waiting for another person to finish before our turn comes— were right.

Sometimes, as designers we can fall into the same trap. We get so wrapped up in what we want to say that there isn’t much room left for dialogue.

(more…)

It was a bit strange when he first asked me if I wanted to hear his music, you know the routine, your friend has some music and you dig it because he’s your friend. Thats what I was expecting at least. I was in for a real suprise and had no clue. From my first listen I was hooked. He has many of the qualities that I look for in musicians, the main one being transparency. I like honest music. I like music from the heart, sincerity.

Its truly one of the most mystical things about music when you can hear something “new” for the first time, and yet it is not unfamiliar, somehow you immediately accept it and it just becomes “home”.

Keep it up Jess.

Oh and don’t get a big head over this post ;)

Just a quick heads up on those of you (like me) who hadn’t checked out flock the new opensource browser. It’s still in developer mode, but you can download it and take it for a test drive.

And for you extension hungry Firefox user types, you have nothing to fear as they have already implemented that into flock and have chose some of the arguably best extensions available to start with. All you web developer toolbar die hards and adblockers take a sigh of relief.

Thumbs up for first impressions, it has an gui that mac users will undoubtedly gravitate to which is one of the main gripes from many mac die hards about Firefox (although I like its minimalistic approach). It fits into Tiger quite nicely. And its ALWAYS nice to have another standards aware browser around for both pc and mac to heat up the fire on MS IE.

Hey all, first a happy and safe new years to you out there wherever you may be! And second, I wanted to give a heads up on my friend Chris. He has released two of his fantastic site designs as wordpress themes. I recommend that you pay him a visit and get ta downloadin’. Not only are these great designs, but any look under the hood and you will see the craftsmanship of how they are built. Chris is an excellent coder and these two offerings should provide for a good amount of study and instruction on how to build a solid, advanced wordpress theme.

Thanks for the offering and the inspiration Chris.