Stefan Mischook, the founder of Killer PHP has become something of an Idol to me, his tutorials have once again given me hope in the future of the programming and web development community, which has forever been a place for power hungry geeks who choose to write condescending tutorials on pretentious blog sites in the vein hope of raising their profile.

I was always warned about working with developers and programmers alike, when I began taking an interest in web design. I was told how programmers were difficult, unsociable, and rude. However Stefan Mischook, has proven thats just not the case. His video tutorials, which range from the basics of PHP to highly involved OOP have shown that programming can be a powerful tool, useable by ordinary folk like you and me. Its people like Stefan that really make a difference in the web dev community, he tells you what you want to know and cuts out all the bullshit, no blurred lines, just the facts. If you are interested in learning more about web programming languages you can access his site at www.killerphp.com.

This man has achieved what no other has attempted, taking hard concepts, breaking them down, then distributed them to the masses, so fuck your Apress ‘PHP beginner to professional’ book of bullshit, written in some undecipherable jargon and give Stefan a try, you will not be disappointed i promise!

I have been an Avid fan of the Nike + running revolution for quite some time, however, being that we have just had the great British winter, i have not motivated myself to go for a jog in about 6 months. I decided to go for a jog yesterday, only to find that the sensor for my Nike Plus kit was dead. Of course this was not my immediate assumption, i mean the sensor has a sleep mode, it is only used when the runner activates it. So i was standing on the promenade of Whitstable beach, walking round in circles (Literally) trying the get my nano adapter to recognize the sensor. But not matter how may attempts i made i got nothing, so i decided to return to the safety of indoors. After researching this for a while on the internet i found i am not the only victim of this flat sensor battery epidemic.

Normally I have nothing but good words for Apple, but the fact that they designed something which could render the whole system to utterly useless leaves me to assume that someone somewhere didn’t think this though. More googling told me that the sensor battery has a life span of 1000 miles, now i have actually evidence thanks to my nike+ account to show i have only run about 83miles. So why is the battery flat? well a lot of people have been asking that question. Apple have reported faulty batteries which have not been holding their energy.

What i found more fustrating however is that you cannot just buy the replacement sensor anywhere, not for love nor money, the only alternative is to buy the whole system again including the adapter, what is about £20.00 off ebay at time of writing. To add insult to injury apply had responded to another support blog saying they offer a replacement sensor if you have had the system less than a year. Gutting to me, as i have had my 13 months.

The moral of this story is be aware that although the Nike + system is revolutionary, it comes at a cost. So if you do buy one know that your probably gonna have to buy more in the future!

I recently became involved in the Site Point spin off 99designs, in which a competition style design contest allows user to join for free and either create contests or compete in them. These contest span the genres, from designing logos to designing fully coded html websites. There has however been somewhat of an uprising in the design community over the scandalous behavior of the contest holders, who have made themselves very unpopular by holding contests without awarding a prize, despite countless entries being submitted.

I have found myself in this very same trap, entering a contest, completing several designs in scope with the brief, even receiving positive feedback, then finding the contest ends. No winner is selected, and to my astonishment a new renamed contest begins, with a brief, identical to the one which was delivered previously. I liken this to holding a raffle, selling all the tickets, then just jumping on a jet plane with the prize-money.(yeah thats right, a jet plane!)

Of course i am not the first to recognize this. graphicpush strikes a compelling argument against the shambolic behavior of the contest holders. All points i agree with. The premise is great and i feel strongly that the idea has potential, but as he states in his article, to offer a fee in which no contract is won, no merit given the to the failed entrants and the possibility of nothing being awarded anyway, it certainly is comparable to third world wages for talents unapreciated, because even if you design doesnt win, when you submit the design you also submit the rights to the design, so you cant even lay claim to your work if its not picked.

We as designers live in a fast paced, ever changing environment, we are persistently working harder, to meet clients needs, but perhaps there is a lesson to be learned in all this, when you look at the designs which are wining the contests, and you will soon notice as i have that there are repeat offenders, the winners aren’t treating this as a do or die atmosphere, they are instead using 99designs as a platform to showcase work, to use headed design templates to put out the marketing message, ‘im here, this is what i can do’. So enough flight, this is new media, this is what its about, and this should be what we all thrive on.

Just recently i have been looking for inspiration in web design, having been bogged down in backend development it is easy to overlook the beauty of many websites, the elegance of their design.

I was recently having a discussion worth a co-worker about the merits of flash websites over XHTML version. Being experienced in both fields i feel that Flash is far more of a designers playground, the action scripting required is a lot more focused around basic commands, although this can be made more complex. In Truth Flash is a much more conceptual space in which to develop, but flash is a dreamer if you will, the reality is that nearly 50% of the worlds population is still on dial-up, the very idea of them spending 20 mins waiting for your flash based webapp or site to load is ludacris. With this comes the sad truth that flash websites are notoriously hard to spider on search engines, having no HTML text for google spiders to read and relying completely on meta tages will only get a flash site so far.

Having said all this Flash does have one overriding success that in that no matter what browser or OS you run the site will look and feel the same.

I believe the best approach we deciding is to contemplate the strengths of both models, and impliment a compromise, that is why many of my sites use what i like to call flash “components” which gives the user the best of both worlds, the razzle dazzle of moving parts, combined with the practicality and adaptability of a web based SEO compliant site. As i like to think of it the best of both worlds.

Lately I have been working on a lot of small but important aspects of websites, thinking about what a small to medium sized business would want and writing generic code which can be applied to any form of business. All these ideas and toolsets are now forming the basis of a structure from which i could create a template system or as i have called it a ‘skeleton system’.

by laying out good efficient effective code i will be able to spend longer doing the bits i love, working up concepts i know i can fulfill, with an ever greater knowledge needed of CSS and HTML standards more time and effort can be spent in the creative process rather than shying away from more technically challenging layouts, to workout bugs within browser compliance. I hope to be able to turnover better websites in a shorter time frame. My flagship for this new school of thought will be m-bellish.co.uk which will exhibit all the lessons learned from charlieschums.co.uk and go forth to produce even stronger more captivating websites.

M-bellish is now beginning to take on some real functionality, i have found designing the site in a modular fashion has enabled me to develop some really transferable code which can be applied to all future developments. I have been working on the page control panel and thinking practically about the users role in content managing the system. By forming a list of tasks simply defined by buttons the m-bellish control panel can now access a range of functions.

These new features include a direct link to wordpress news manager(requires additional login) and also a link to google analytics to give information about m-bellish stats i.e. site views etc. Although these are minor issues they will prove invaluable in centralizing a hub to control all aspects of the site, even though these different functions are located in physical locations.