Ok this is at the edge of ‘webdesign related’ but I’m a bit in a hurry today and really wanted to point you at this particular online tool which might be very handy. I had to do someone an offer today through e-mail and in my opinion a Word Document is not quite representative.

Though I don’t have Adobe Acrobat installed I took a look online for something to convert my Word Document to .pdf, and I ran into http://www.doc2pdf.net/

Upload a Word or Excel file and there you go! A nice .pdf file on your desktop!

Simple and fast, just like this post!

See you tomorrow!

Thomas

Didn’t make it to post yesterday… but hey, I got a normal life too

Let’s talk about bad habits. Because I got some, and I wonder if you do too! Most of my bad habits are a result of me being a bit conservatie sometimes. It’s just that I’m stuck to certain habits and can’t seem to change them, allthough I could get benefit from it.

• I use Zend Devlopment Environment, but I never create projects. So I’m constantly browsing my drives when opening files.
• I don’t have a folder on my drive with important files and scripts in it so I can easily copy them when I need them. You don’t wanna know how many times I have downloaded jQuery…
• Sometimes I start  my browser, go to Google Analytics, check my statistics, close the browser, start the browser again, go to Google Analytics again, and check my statistics again…
• Same with checking my Hotmail. I sometimes check my mail knowing that I don’t have any…
• I use WS_FTP 95, which on certain hosting providers automatically disconnects the ftp connection after about 30 seconds of inactivity. So almost each time I want to upload a file I have to connect again.
• I haven’t installed php + mysql locally, so when I’m working on a project, with every change I do, I have to upload the modified files to see the result…
• I don’t have a file, or handy webapp which contains all my usernames and passwords like ftp, mail, mysql, etc… So when I need a certain password, I have to digg through thousands of e-mail finding the right mail containing the login and password.
• I never use Firebug
• My default page in Firefox is Google. When I start my browser and want to search, I always type www.google.com first in the address bar, regardless of the fact that Google is already open…

That’s what I can think of right now. When I think of something else I will add it to the list! I guess….

So, what about your bad habits!!

See you tomorrow!

Thomas

A trend in webdesign I see more often lately are designs with large typography. Often a large teaser is shown on the frontpage, combined with a photograph or illustration. Navigation is most of the times located in the top right corner.

Personally I really like this style. I actually don’t know when it was introduced, so if you know more about this please let me know.

Beneath some great examples a saw today:

Boco

Borderleft

Friendly Duck

Cooper Lumen

Creative Spark

Further

GraphicDZNR

Gugafit

Hull Digital Live

Moomeo

Mutant Labs

Project 365

Sage Blue

This By Them

So far for now. I hope you like them. Share your thoughts!

Nice weekend and see you tomorrow!

Thomas

There’s quite a lot of tools and software I use and have used over the passed years. Some of those I simply can’t live without. Let’s take a look at them. I’m interested to hear if you use them too and if you maybe know some good additions and alternatives.

Let’s make clear that I’m working on a Windows (no, not vista) machine. There’s a big change I’ll be  switching to Mac in the near future. We allready bought an iMac which my beloved colleague Anne is the proud owner of. The next one will become mine There’s not a lot that can stop me from switching to Mac, the only thing is that a need a real good php editor because I’m pretty addicted to Zend Studio! So if you know a decent php editor for the Mac, please let me know!

Head over to the tools now. I’ll describe the most important ones I really cannot miss. It won’t be that much as you expect I guess.

Zend Development Environment

I’ve been using Zend for a long time now. It’s by far the best editor I have ever worked with. I use it for php coding and writing html / css.

Zend has a lot of options like debugging, a build in function library and is very easy to use. You can create a project for each website you’re working on which makes it easy to quickly browse and open the right files.

http://www.zend.com

WS_FTP 95

Don’t laugh! I know, this was build in the Middle Ages! This is the very first FTP software I ever used and I still use it. A couple of months ago I switched to smartFTP which is a great tool. BUT, some trojan came into my pc, stole the ftp passwords from the three sites I added to smartFTP and uploaded infected files to the server. Took me quite some time to repair it and I immediately switched back to WS_FTP.

Trojans somehow can’t get access to stored passwords in WS_FTP which is a great benefit!

http://www.ipswitch.com

Notetab Light

Can’t remember when, how and where I got this… This simple text editor I use to create and edit .htaccess files and robots.txt.

http://www.notetab.com

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

What shall I say. I believe Illustrator and Photoshop are a great combination for anyone who designs websites or any other kind of material.

In short words I use Photoshop to crop and resize images and to add effects to it.

For all the other work like the website lay-out and logo’s I use Illustrator. I’m a really big fan of it!

Do you use Photoshop or Illustrator when designing websites?

http://www.adobe.com

Adobe Flash

I’m not a big fan of it, but I can work with it. I used to build websites completely in Flash but don’t do that anymore. When animations are needed, Flash is a great tool.

http://www.adobe.com

Advanced JPEG Compressor

Simple tool to compress JPEG files. I use this tool when large photos are used in a design, like full screen backgrounds.

http://www.winsoftmagic.com

phpMyAdmin

This webbased Mysql administration tool I use to create and manage my databases. Absolutely love it!

http://www.phpmyadmin.net

Well I think that’s about it. These are the tools I really can’t miss when developing a website.

So which are your favorite tools? Let us know!

See you tomorrow!

Thomas

A couple of weeks ago I came up with the idea of starting a daily blog about webdesign and all related stuff. The idea is to post an article every day about something I’m working on, something interesting I saw or read, something I had problems with, and so on. The subject can be anything: webdesign, coding, wordpress, usability, seo, graphic design, logo design, seo, marketing, jquery… you name it!

The purpose of course is to start some interesting discussions, share some knowledge and teach eachother.

So where to start with? Let’s use this first post to tell about the proces of setting up of this blog.

The theme
The last two days I’ve been busy setting the whole thing up. Allthough I’m not very experienced in Wordpress it all went pretty smooth. I started by downloading the ‘Evening Sun’ theme from Spectacu.la. I didn’t completely match my requirements so I designed a new lay-out and integrated this with the theme. It’s not completely finished but I hope you like it so far.

Plugins
The next thing I did was installing some plugins. Google XML-sitemap generator, All-in-one-Seopack, Sociable, Tweetmeme and a Twitterwidget. I think these plugins are quite familiar to everyone who has used Wordpress before.

Google Analytics
Never forget to install Google Analytics!

RSS
I added the RSSfeed to Feedburner.

Well that’s about it. It took me about two days in total. Wordpress is an awesome tool which I can recommend to everyone who wants to set up a blog. But enough about that… Everyone knows that!

So what can you expect in the future?
As I said before I will post an article everyday about a very wide range of subjects. Could be anything! So if your interested please come back daily, submit to my RSSfeed and follow me on Twitter. I will of course tweet every new article!

Please contact me if you’re interested in writing a guest post or anything else. All is appreciated!

I really hope you will enjoy the blog! I’m going to take a beer and some sleep after that!

See you tomorrow!

Thomas