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Modernizing development with Modernizr

When you’re at home, on your own computer, you can use whatever browser you want. Into Chrome? Cool. Love Firefox? Fabulous.

But when you’re a developer, you don’t have that luxury. You have to ensure that your sites work well on all browsers —even those that aren’t your favorite. Worse … you have to ensure they work even on dated versions of those browsers.

And that gets old really fast.

Enter Modernizr.

Modernizr is an open-source JavaScript library that helps you build HTML5 and CSS3-powered websites without having to worry about browser compatibility. Modernizer does this through a series of “feature detection tests.” These tests detect features that a user’s browser can’t handle and downgrades those features accordingly, in a way that works for you.

This gives us developers much greater flexibility in building sites. We can build with a “high-end” target in mind — an ideal version of the site — while maintaining full control over what the “low end” version will look like. No more dumbing-down sites to ensure compatibility with older or non-preferred browsers.

Adopting this bit of tech can also save time and money. By building sites with the future in mind, there’s no need to redo development when a browser adopts more of the new HTML5 or CSS3 standards. Your site will have already been built to make full use of them.

This saves the client money and developers time, allowing those resources to be used for more important things. Like well-thought-out user interfaces, and more research in emerging web and mobile technologies.

So we can keep dreaming about the day when all users adopt a single, brilliant, modern browser.

But until then, we’ll keep writing for all the browsers out there. And Modernizr will make that task a lot less painful.

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The Ever-Amazing WordPress

You’d think that using a certain app over and over might get boring. That you’d hit the limits of what it can do and where you can push it. Be ready to move on to something else.

This hasn’t happened yet with WordPress.

This amazing app got its start as a humble blogging engine back in 2003. It’s since become one of the most predominant content management systems used to manage modern websites. It’s used by literally millions of folks—from individuals to interactive developers to huge corporations. And the sites that are running this framework are seen by tens of millions of people every day.

In fact, we’ve found that as WordPress has grown in flexibility, it can be used to manage nearly any type of website or application. We’ve used it to manage Facebook apps, to create social networks, to build mobile web apps and ecommerce sites … and more.

In my opinion, there are several elements that make this radical usability possible.

First is WordPress’s extremely flexible theme and plugin systems. This combination allows for a huge range of sites to be managed via WordPress.

On top of this, WordPress allows custom site development to occur separate from the core framework files. This allows us to apply WordPress and plugin updates as they occur—giving the site increased stability and security.

In addition, WordPress is built on PHP and MySQL and is open source under the GPL license. This means that clients fully own and control their site, including the core CMS framework. There are no outside vendors, license fees, or hosting requirements involved, outside of the basic technology required.

It’s also cost-effective. Using WordPress saves clients time and money because we don’t have to write every piece of webware from scratch. Instead, we can utilize the ingenuity of a worldwide network of developers and designers who contribute to WordPress and its many plugins.

I continually find amazing uses for WordPress. And I love the ease with which I can create custom plugins and themes to fit nearly any site or application a customer desires. It’s great being part of the active developer community behind WordPress, and I look forward to finding new and fun uses for the platform well in the future.

Building from a Blueprint

I recently started using a new CSS framework called Blueprint. I’ve been excited about the results and wanted to share some of them here.

The cool thing about Blueprint is that it truly saves time in development. It cuts the time needed to take a design from sketch to a skinned website. And because it works so well across browsers, it cuts down the time needed for testing and debugging.

It’s also flexible. It makes flowing a design into a site simple, and it cuts the labor needed to change that design once you’ve started. If you decide to add an image to the right side of the screen, for example, Blueprint allows you to just drop it in, rather than having to rework your layout from scratch.

Here are some of my favorite Blueprint features:

  • It has a CSS reset feature that eliminates differences across browsers. Those minor differences — like setting a margin at 12 pixels rather than 15 — can turn a website from beautiful to bogus real quick. Blueprint standardizes these values across browsers, creating a uniform appearance for your site and reducing the time needed to cross-check it in Firefox, Explorer, Chrome, Safari … you name it.
  • It has an easy-to-use grid that can accommodate simple and complex layouts. Most designers work in a grid, whether it’s 960 or 1020. With Blueprint, you can “snap” your design into CSS almost as easily as putting together Legos. You can also write custom CSS on top of Blueprint to accommodate out-of-the-box designs.
  • Functional form styles. It’s easy to spot a form that hasn’t been styled — it just looks ugly. With this framework, you can write the HTML for your form, and Blueprint will autostyle it. You can customize the styles as needed, but Blueprint it provides a good base to start from.
  • Ready-to-go print styles. Blueprint also includes separate stylesheets just for printing. They’re set up to hide unnecessary content like banner ads and to print web content in a one-column, easy-to-read format.

The best thing about Blueprint might be the fact that it’s an open-source, supported framework. That means there’s a community of worldwide developers constantly working on making it semantic-valid and browser-tested. As new standards emerge and bugs are discovered, Blueprint’s network of users updates the software accordingly.

So the next time I’m working on a new website, don’t be surprised if I tell you that I’m “working from a blueprint.” That’s what all great architects do, right?

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Wireframes: What they are, what they’re not

A lot of our clients go wiggy when they see a wireframe. Maybe because of how they look: spare, utilitarian … definitely not sexy. But they play a critical role in the web development process. Here are the top four things to know about what wireframes do … and what they don’t.

A wireframe is a blueprint. A wireframe is very simple diagram that lays out the essential elements of your web pages. For example, a wireframe might have placeholders for a header, navigation, body copy, an image, a search bar, a “call to action” box, and “contact us” information. By carefully assessing which elements are needed for each page of your site, we prevent unpleasant “uh-oh, we forgot that piece” moments once we’re into full development.

It’s not a design. People often mistake a wireframe for a design document. They start to panic because they think we’re using Times New Roman for their font, or arranging their content into boring squares and rectangles. To prevent this, when looking at a wireframe, repeat this calmly to yourself: “This is not my design.” Remember, the wireframe does not represent how your page will look. It represents what it will include.

Wireframes are a step in the development process. Wireframes are just one step in a process that takes your website from idea to launch. These steps include creating a sitemap, wireframes, and design for your site, and then undertaking development. Walking through these steps one by one ensures that the basic elements of your site are established before development begins. So there’s much less chance that development will start, stop, and start over from scratch—which can drive up costs and create a clunky product.

Wireframes are not your final product. Once again, when you see a wireframe, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Repeat to yourself: “This is not my website. This is getting me to my website.” Then, open your eyes and take a critical look. Is everything on the page that should be? Are there too many items in the navigation? Too few? Are there images on the right pages? Is the live chat button where you want it? Ignore the aesthetics, think about what your customer will want to see on each page, and make sure it’s there.

Now you’re seeing a wireframe for what it is – a content planning tool that makes sure nothing critical is left out of your site. And you’re using it the way it’s meant to be used: to increase usability while saving time and money.

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Usability Engineering: Why Wireframes, Prototypes, and Specifications Matter

Designing a website without usability testing is like building a boat without a blueprint. You’ll make something, but whether it floats is a different matter.

Usability testing fascinates me; in fact, I’m enrolled in grad school at DePaul University, studying for an MS in Human-Computer Interaction. And when I heard some debates recently about whether current usability tools were still valid, I took notice. The crux of the issue seemed to be the value of wireframes vs. prototypes, and whether technical specification documents are necessary.

As someone who believes that a focus on usability should be the focus of building a successful web site or application, I definitely had an opinion. I believe that each of these tools has a distinct place in today’s web development cycle. And as a web developer who handles new projects daily, I’ve seen firsthand how these tools expedite development time and directly reduce the number of bugs found and revisions required after development.

Let’s take a look at how each of these tools works.

  • Wireframes – Wireframes are basic layouts for a site or application. The goal of this phase of usability testing is to focus on determining the basic information architecture and interaction design for a site, without the distractions of interactivity or design elements like color, font, and images. By removing these elements, the development team can focus on the best possible placement for the individual elements of the site or application. They can also begin to think about options for interaction design.
  • Prototypes – Prototypes are beta versions of a site or application that allow information flow and interaction testing. The actual functionality of a site isn’t implemented. However, a user can click through interfaces to get an idea how a site will look and feel. By getting feedback from project stakeholders at this stage and making needed changes, you avoid the difficulty and cost of making revisions after development has taken place.
  • Technical Specification Document – This document combines the information flow, interaction design, and functionality decisions reached during the wireframe and prototype phases of development. It’s presented to the site developers along with other tools generated during usability engineering, giving them a complete, accurate understanding of the site’s usability and functionality requirements. This document also enables clear communication between stakeholders (agency, client, users, designers, and developers) regarding what functionality is expected for each interface.

From my perspective, all three of these tools are essential. They enable a reasonably pain-free development process, and significantly cut down on revision and rework. One small change made during usability testing can save literally days of time and struggle — and beau-coup dollars — later in the process.

So for now, I’m sold on these tools. I’ll be ready to learn about better ones as I continue my studies, but for now, they’ll stay in my tool belt.

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Four Ways to Speed Up Your Website

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Nothing drives users crazy like a slow-loading website. Back in the day, we happily waited 30 seconds for pages to load over a 56K modem. Now, we expect pages to load immediately, and we get frustrated and click away when they don’t.

There are a number of ways to optimize sites for speed; some involve server side issues and client side code. Here are four methods that you can and should be implementing on any site you develop.

Optimize images
One way to optimize speed is to get resources from your server to browsers quickly.  One way to do this is to crop, resize, and compress (encode) images appropriately. For example, if you’re using a photo from a 6-megapixel camera as a thumbnail, make sure you’re not transferring that large image across the Net just to have a fraction of it show on your site.

Instead, use tools like Photoshop, Gimp, or even Paint.NET to crop out components you don’t want in the photo, resize the image, and use appropriate compression.

If your image is a photo, we recommend JPG file formats.  Logos and graphics work best as PNGs. And small icons and limited-color objects might be best as GIFs.

Reduce requests to the server
You can also increase speed by combining logos and icons into one larger image—a sprite map—that you show portions of as needed.

Think of loading a webpage like ordering a printer online.  Your printer comes in the mail, and it’s only then you realize you need a special cable. You order the cable, then realize you need paper.  And then ink.

These tiny shipments are similar to HTTP requests.  Most browsers can “order” two things at a time from a web server, but the more items are requested, the longer the page takes to load.

That’s where sprite maps come in.  Using a sprite map is like getting an entire kit of supplies for your printer in one package, instead of in multiple tiny shipments.  With sprite maps, you create one image that contains all of your logos, icons, and backgrounds.  Then, with CSS, you use properties like background-position to restrict which parts of the image show to users at any given time.

This reduces the number of requests to the server and in turn, speeds loading time.

Avoid inline styles and consolidate CSS
Imagine reading a story about a boat. Every time the author mentions the boat, they call it “the rickety white boat from Nantucket.”  Using that phrase over and over would waste space and slow readability.

That’s what developers are doing when they abuse inline styles. Describing every “p” tag in your document as having a specific margin and padding wastes time when the web browser is trying to download the site. Using CSS in external files reduces this bloat. Plus, CSS is cacheable, significantly reducing  load time on subsequent page requests.

Cache is king
One of the best ways to create an incredibly fast browsing experience for returning users is to cache your content on their computer.  One of the easiest ways to do this is to have your web host install mod_speed, from Google.  It’s an Apache module that provides recommended cache lifetimes depending on file type.

Things like images tend not to change very often on your site, and CSS files and Javascript files also tend to be static.  Why have your users download them every time they visit your site? mod_speed configures this for you and is a free download. It also provides the added benefit of “zipping” (actually gzipping) traffic between your server and your visitor’s computer.

To learn more, you can check out tools like YSlow from Yahoo, that give recommendations on caching content, where your holdups are, and even provide tips on whether you are requiring too many  HTTP requests.

Speed = less server load
Users will definitely be happier when you speed up your site. And there’s an added bonus: the faster you deliver content, the faster users will find what they need and leave your site. That means less drain on your servers, giving you the ability to serve more customers with less hardware.

Want to talk about how Atomic can help speed up your website? Contact us today.

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Typekit

Fonts have been a sore spot for web designers for a long time.

Back in the day, we were limited to the most basic of fonts – Arial, Times, and Helvetica – because we needed to use fonts that most people had on their machines. Then came the time of JavaScript- and Flash-based plug-ins. They let us use a wider range of fonts … but things still weren’t great. Often the fonts didn’t load quickly or smoothly. Strange things happened when you used special fonts for links or wrapping text. And of course, Apple has decided not to support Flash in the iPhone and iPad environments.

Thank goodness, we finally have something new. It’s Typekit.

Typekit is a subscription-based library of fonts that designers can use for their websites. All the fonts are hosted online by Typeface, so anything you can find on Typekit, you can plug into your site. And your users won’t require Flash, like other font substitutors have in the past.
As a designer, I appreciate the selection of fonts that Typekit makes available. They look like they were hand-picked by someone with a strong design sensibility and an understanding of what works visually on the web.

And as a developer, I love how easy it is to find the font you’re looking for and apply it to your CSS classes, IDs, or any other HTML tag in your markup. You can also pare down your bandwidth use by choosing only the weights and styles in each font family that you need.

Finally, from a business perspective, Typekit is just plain affordable. You can buy one subscription for your company and use it across all the sites that you develop.

I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but Typekit may make fonts fun again for web designers. I think it’s time to break out the champagne.

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Is the Semantic Web the Next Big Thing?

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Have you ever wished that the web was more helpful—and less robotic?

Let’s imagine you’re traveling to Florida for Christmas.  You hop onto your search engine and query “christmas florida.” But the first eight results are about the city “Christmas, Florida” — not what you had in mind.

Wouldn’t it be cool if search engines could tell the difference between Christmas the city and Christmas the holiday?

Enter the semantic web. The semantic web is a development paradigm, part of the HTML5 proposal, that structures the content of sites so the internet can “understand” words based on context.

For example:

  • If you search for “house main character,” the semantic web would understand that you mean the TV show House, not a house where someone lives.
  • If you search for “green windows,” it would understand that you meant energy-efficient windows—not windows that were painted green.
  • If you wrote “I love Atomic Interactive – they provide excellent web development,” the semantic web would understand you mean that “Atomic provides excellent web development.”

In other words, the semantic web can understand the association between pronouns and the words they’re linked to. Wow.

How does this all work? The semantic web’s enhanced understanding of words is driven by microdata, one of many new tags in HTML5.

So if I were writing content about Christmas, Florida, I would include microdata indicating that I’m talking about a location. Conversely, if I were writing about celebrating Christmas in Florida, I would include microdata indicating that I’m talking about the location Florida, but the event Christmas.

Modern search engines like Bing, Google, and Yahoo take advantage of this microdata to keep your search results relevant.  In fact, Bing was built from the core up to parse microdata and associate content together. That explains why Microsoft markets Bing as a “decision engine”— supposedly, it helps you make better decisions by getting rid of superfluous search results.

The bottom line? If you have a data-heavy website or are having trouble with SEO because search engines are confused about your content, utilizing the semantic web can help. Atomic can help you take the first step in coding for this brave new web. Reach out to us anytime you want.

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Thanks (giving) from Atomic

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It’s the time of year when people sit back and reflect on the things they appreciate in life.

With a long weekend stretching out in front of us, Ryan and I thought we’d take a minute to write about some of the things we’re thankful for. Call us sentimental … but we want to share some of the things that are important to us … things that we appreciate every day.

  • Our awesome clients. Your support and belief have helped us grow from just an idea to the thriving company we have today. It’s been great to work with each and every one of you. Thank you.
  • Our staff. It’s exciting every day to walk into our shop and know that we’re working with such a talented group of people. Everyone from our designers and developers to our project managers and SEO specialists are the best at what they do. They’re also excited about learning new things – helping us and our clients “push the envelope” and constantly take advantage of new technologies.
  • Our space. We’re so glad to be in the Firefly Building and to be part of the revitalization going on in our downtown. It’s inspiring every day to be in this space – to see how a few visionaries took a “junk” building and turned it into something amazing.
  • Our city. Yeah, we know Dayton’s not New York. Got it. But there’s a tremendous amount of creativity here – c{space and the new group culturemash are just a couple examples of many. And there’s a tenacity that we admire – people who see opportunity and interest in a landscape where others see only waste.
  • Our technology. Of course, at heart, we’re geeks. And we’re crazy about the technologies we work with and the possibilities they bring for our clients. So we’re thankful for the hackers creating holograms using XBox Kinect, our own developers creating new apps for the iPhone … and everyone in between.
  • Our families. Sometimes going the extra mile for our clients means extra hours at work. So here’s a final shout out in this Thanksgiving edition to our wives Nikki and Lisa. Thank you for supporting us in this venture and picking up the slack whenever we can’t. You’re the best.

Enjoy the next couple days off … spend some time with the people who are important in your lives … and we’ll catch you next week. Thanks to everyone for being part of the Atomic family.

Working with Open Source Software

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Some of our customers are nervous when we tell them that we use open source software for our web projects. They think that open source means fly-by-night or unregulated.

That couldn’t be further from the truth.

Open source applications —like Linux, MySQL, WordPress, and Firefox — are reliable and stable. Often they have fewer bugs and security holes than proprietary software. That’s because the source code is open to the public, and a huge community of developers are reviewing it and suggesting improvements. A control board reviews the suggestions and implements the best ones in each new version of the software.

We use open source software in a number of ways for our clients. We think it has some distinct advantages.

  • Flexibility. The code on open source software is literally “open” to developers. That means we can easily change it to meet our clients’ needs. For example, we recently created a WordPress plug-in for realfootballtalk.tv that allows the site administrators to track the stats of various pro football players. That’s an example of a very specific application that you couldn’t get off the shelf—but that we created and easily added in to WordPress.
  • Innovation. Because the community of developers for open source software is so large, there’s a ton of innovation. It’s like apps for the iPhone — it seems like every day someone invents something new and cool. We pull from this universe of plug-ins to constantly bring new features and tools to our clients.
  • Cost savings. Open source software usually costs significantly less than proprietary software, or is even free. We pass that cost savings on to our customers. In addition, using open source software as a base reduces our development time significantly. We spend our time on customization, not on reinventing the wheel. Once again, this saves our clients time and money.

One of the sites we created recently using open source software was chapelhillhouse.org, a weekend retreat for families coping with childhood cancer. Part of the reason we could donate our design and development time for this site was that using open source software made the process so easy.