I have always been very fond of this little logo bird of UK based web agency Erskine Design. Well, you may not know Erskine but probably the owner Simon Collison, author of the book Beginning CSS Web Development.
Recently Simon posted a photograph of some badges with this cute bird to Flickr and not surprisingly people asked to get one. Instead of posting badges around the world, Simon/Erskine offers a really funny deal i happily join:
If you want one, you have to send us (Erskine) something first. It is easy really. Send us a sticker, badge, mug or t-shirt (cheeky me) of your company or employer, or if that isn’t possible just send any old crap. Its the gesture we’re excited by, not monetary value. I’ll ready a load of badges and the moment I receive your ephemera, we’ll post ours out the same day.
What happens to the crap?
Here at Erskine Design towers, we’ll build a wall of received ephemera and blog/Flickr it and get you linked up. Actually, we might also do some crazy image-map madness at a custom URL that all the cool people will be aching to be featured on. Maybe.
Ha, i joined today and sent something… :) over… something especially proteine undernourished Brits can use.
You`ll never guess what it is. Hey, that´s real fun…
If you like to get an impression of what people – and especially design talented folks do with Textpattern, visit the Textpattern driven showcase welovetxp.com.
Designer of this site is Sam Brown, who runs the scottish design agency massiveblue.
Peter Moulding interviewed Sam for txpq.com.
TXPQ is always worth visit if you like to stay tuned with what is going on on Textpattern. Currently there is an interview out with fabulous Nathan Smith, well know from the God Bit Project
Enjoy!
Last month ExpressionEngine relaunched its site with a fantastic new design made by fabulous Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain. You can read all about the design process on digital-web.com where Jesse talks about precisely. A must-read for all designers, i have to say!
I particularly like how Jesse revamped the old EE logo.
But read yourself about it:
Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site
Tom Fadial once again announced the TXP Template Contest. First prize is a brand new Mac Mini! But even if you do not win, there are lots of other prizes to get.
The judges are:
- Andrew Faulkner
- Bryan Veloso
- Jared Christensen
- Jeff Croft
- Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain
- Mary Fredborg
- Nathan Smith
Deadline is 27th of June 07!
Get all information on textplates.com and join. Good luck :)
David Molliere is a freelance webdesigner living in Paris. He runs his personal site david-molliere.net.
Currently he is heading the marketing effort for MODx, an open source CMS and php application framework.
David likes to cook and is quite an amateur wine buff (not only French wine!). His main hobby is digital photography, which tags along well with a taste for travelling and long weekends. He is a big reader of thrillers, a ravenous watcher of US TV shows, and goes to the movies at least twice a week.
Q. Hi David, are you an extensive shopper :)?
LOL :)
Well it depends what I am shopping for. Don’t ever get me close to a high-tech store or a wine shop or I might end up on a shopping spree, burning my credit card to shreds ;) That’s how I recently got myself a 17” MacBook Pro or a 1998 Saint Estèphe, not a reasonnable thing to buy but hey, how could I resist?
Q. You are the main marketing director of MODx. That does imply you are responsible to popularize MODx CMS. Correct?
Director might be too strong a word :P , especially if you consider that there is no rigid structure at MODx. Things are not based on status, but rather on involvement and skills.
Ryan Thrash (founder) is the one who offered me to join the team and help the marketing effort in November 2005. I had created some buzz to make MODx quite a popular CMS in France. I wrote an article about MODx for a famous french webzine about opensource software, which is among the top referrers of modxcms.com. Also, I posted a review of MODx at Webmaster-Hub, which got quite some attention. Of course, it’s easier to stand out in the French world than in the English speaking community where the competition is fierce, but it was enough to convince Ryan that I would be an asset for MODx marketing.
One very nice thing for me is
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On del.icio.us`s blog Nick Nguyen announced a new bookmark extension for Firefox. I just tested it and am completely blown away. The extension comes with a sidebar you can sort and search your del.isio.us bookmarks instantly, view tag intersections, and even modify your bookmarks. It´s dead-easy to tag a link and add it to your linklist. As the extensive sites directories of our Site Collection is managed with del.icio.us the extension comes just very, very handy.
Extension Qick Tour.
Download the extension
It´s quite a while ago since Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast posted her article on TXP vs EE – but it is still a nice read.
I really like EE and considered it once for a project. It is a bit like TXP but has a wider functionallity and a better rights management system. The key question is: do you really need that for a project? If not, your clients are surely happier with TXPs administration surface.
Well go over to Andreas site and read her write-up.
Links
On juicystudio.com Joshue O` Connor published an highly interesting article on accessibility of various CMSs such like:
- Jadu
- Mambo
- Joomla
- Quick and Easy
- Expression Engine
- Plone
- Drupal
- Textpattern
- Xoops
- Typo3
Each of those CMSs was tested by an screen reader user performing some basic tasks, as well as the same tasks being performed by a user with no Assistive Technology/Special User Agent requirements and with an average computer skill level. These tests were facilitated and observed by an experienced CFIT accessibility consultant. To me absolutely unexpected Joomla! is doing a very good job. Some problems were encountered but the testers conclude: If these problems could be addressed, we would recommend Joomla. Expression Engine as well as Textpattern lack of some accessibill key features (f. e. Title and edit boxes are not marked up well and tester found it [backend] unintuitive.
Read the complete article
Choosing an Accessible CMS
anf if you like, follow the discussion on the textpattern forum.
If you’ve ever used Textpattern for your CMS of choice, then likely you have found or used at least one of the plugins available from designer/developer Rob Sable of Wilshire One
Rob (under the name of Wilshire) has supplied the community with an abundance of plugins since August 2004. His plugins have included public side archive and tagging tools, as well as numerous admin side plugins like a scaled down database management tool that allows you to copy your TXP install
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I was browsing through one of my feeds today and ran across a great series of videos available at youtube. These videos showcase some of the great design spawned out of the visionary picture of ‘modern’ living in the 1950s American lifestyle.
The videos:
