Web Development | Shawn Johnston Vancouver Web Design

Extending the Default WordPress RSS Feed

Topics --> Education, Web Development, Web Strategies

Sometimes you may need to enhance your online presence and reach a wider audience through submitting your content outside your web site. For example you may want to make your posts available on most popular social network aggregators, or make them available on mobile devices, or publish your audio/video podcasts on digital stores.

The Relevance of User Experience: Using Every Opportunity to Impress Your Users

Topics --> Education, User Experience, Web Development, Web Strategies

Is it possible to calculate the ROI of great design? What about the cost-per-acquisition of a customer sold on User Experience? There are no second chances for first impressions, and even the smallest opportunity is a chance to “Wow” users. What you do with that opportunity can spark a chain of events that can make or break your business.

The State of Web Design Trends: 2011 Annual Edition

Topics --> Education, Web Design, Web Development

A fantastic year end article over at Web Design Tuts cataloguing the expected trends and developments we can expect in the new year, 2011. I especially find the top one, the death of the Fold, to be particularly exciting!

Designing for Content Management Systems

Topics --> Web Design, Web Development, Web Strategies

Another great article by Smashing Magazine, this is a thoughtful look at designing around the needs and, to some degree, the limitations of content management systems. As a WordPress developer and designer, this is something I run into a lot, explaining to clients why some things can’t be done certain ways in order to remain dynamic. CMS’s offer a lot of flexibility for clients and nowadays, most serious designers are developing sites on one platform or another. Working with my clients so they understand the why is a key point to the success of the project.

Responsible Development

Topics --> Web Design, Web Development, Web Strategies

Mark Hout over at Cognition wrote a fantastic article on “Responsible Development”. He addresses an issue I run into from time to time, that of trying to match clients dreams and expectations to the realities of the technology we use to bring their sites to life. Just because a thing might be possible, doesn’t mean it should be done. Just as a site must be easy to use for your users, a site that is impossible to update because of all the custom shinanigans is a site that doesn’t get updated. It’s a great read, his opening line is brilliant, “When Happy Cog undertakes a development job, one of our goals is to empower our clients with the necessary knowledge for them to help themselves.” I couldn’t agree more.

Web Designer’s Guide to Font Replacement Methods

Topics --> Font Replacement, Typography, Web Design, Web Development

Font replacement has been the holy grail of web design/development for years and those of us lucky enough to be a part of this revolution are lucky indeed. Personally, my opinion on the methods, I love Typekit but the subscription based method makes it difficult for lone guns like me to use. Fontspring’s single purchase model and use of the @font-face methodology make it a no brainer.

Myth #27: UX Design is about usability

Topics --> Creativity, Web Design, Web Development, Web Strategies

I’ve told my clients many times that part of making a site usable for your users is to make it memorable and fun to spend time with. Studies have shown that professional and well crafted design elevates the trustworthiness of a site as well as it’s credibility. In many cases, especially if you’re selling a niche service or product, well crafted web design makes it easy to remember to come back to and to tell friends and family about. This is a wonderful article over at UX Myths articulating this very well.

Learning to Love HTML5

Topics --> Education, Web Development, Web Strategies

I’m still grappling with HTML5 and what I should be implementing in my code today. This is a great article over at Smashing Magazine that shares some thoughts and ideas about how to do just that.

Streamlining Your CSS

Topics --> CSS Development, Web Development, Web Strategies

Great article from WebDesigner Depot laying out some good strategies for streamlining and writing efficient CSS code. Efficient code is important as it affects the load times of the sites you build.