Your favourite colour – what should be in our new web site design?

March 14, 2007 3 Comments

Thanks to Eoghan, there are going to be some changes around here. He’s just announced that we’re the winner of the 2000 Euro worth of web design work. For a sample of his work , check out the redesign that he has done of the Barcamp Dublin site.

I actually tried to convince Eoghan to pick somebody else with even more readers (in a mercenary get some more exposure kind of way). He’s sticking with the person choosen by his random number omiter.
Winner

So the question is, What’s your favourite colour? What part of this website do you think needs an upgrade – this blog, the main FirstPartners.net ‘Corporate site’, or the wiki / knowledgebase? What changes do you think should be made?Or should I save the prize for the forthcoming mad, take over the world attempt part 2 (Red Piranha)?

Further Kudos to Eoghan for carrying out some Charity work as well: tuppenceworth.ie, entered by Simon McGarr, the other is a project by IQ Content for the Red Door School, entered by Laurence Veale

Filed under awards, barcamp, design, Dublin, firefox, IE, Internet Explorer, RedPiranha, user interface, Web, website

This is going to get ugly

December 22, 2006 2 Comments

This is going to get ugly. Yes, I’m learning CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) , the thing that does the pretty colours on this page. Normally , this sort of thing is done by Graphic Designers (the cool people who wear black), not people like myself (who spend too much time in the Server room). Think 3 year old kid with a paintbox , and you won’t be far off some of the weird and wonderful effects that you might see in the next couple of days.

View Paul Browne's profile on LinkedIn Call me!

All because I want to add a photo to the top right corner. And stop the ‘linked in’ and ‘skype’ links floating all over the place.

Filed under firefox, IE, Internet Explorer, Web, web2, website

Knowledge Base is Back and (almost) better

November 20, 2006 Leave a comment

Following our recent outage, our Knowledge Base is back. More the ‘base’ part , as the Knowledge still has to be uploaded again.

Media Wiki Logo

Following ‘Clouds have silver linings’ we’ve moved to using MediaWiki, the same tool that powers WikiPedia. This has the largest user base of any wiki, and a good supporting toolset. In particular , to allow local editing of wiki pages, there is the Eclipse Based Plog4U.

Filed under Articles, comment, Development, IE, Internet Explorer, Knowledge Management, web2, website

Not a Web 2.0 Company – Scandanavian Airlines

June 12, 2006 2 Comments

I don’t think these guys will be joining the Web2Ireland (even Web 2.0) group anytime soon. Basically , their website says ‘We couldn’t be bothered using any of the Ajax toolkits out there, so we’ll get you Mr Customer to do all the work for us’. I wonder what their look-to-book ratio is ( I used to do some work for Aer Lingus – LinkedIn Profile).

Scandanavian Airlines (SAS) Website.

Hint to SAS: Here is how to fix this (pdf), or hire us and we’ll fix it for you.

Or if you prefer , reassure yourself that you’re not the only airline with Ajax problems.
More blogposts on Ajax.

Filed under Ajax, Articles, Business, Consultant, Consulting, CV, Development, EnterpriseWeb2.0, firefox, IE, Internet Explorer, Travel, user interface, Web, Web 2.0, Web2Ireland

Does Yahoo or Google have more Style?

May 24, 2006 Leave a comment

Just to start another open-ended user-interface debate – which has a better user interface : Yahoo , with everything on one page , or Google’s easy to use simplicity?Yahoo Logo

My own view is that casual users prefer Google, but if you’re using a site day-in day-out you’ll take the time to learn the more complex Yahoo style.

The latest post on Bill de HOra’s blog has more.

Filed under blog, Business, firefox, Google, IE, Internet Explorer, user interface, Web

Take a look at what you're missing – Useful Extensions for Browsing the Web

April 25, 2006 Leave a comment

If you’re using Internet Explorer to browse the web (and if you’re not sure , then you probably are) , then you’re missing out on some great features of Firefox (the main alternative). The good news is that IE7 (currently in beta from Microsoft) gives some of these features – better security , tabbed browsing (a bit like multiple sheets in Excel) and above all , the ability to get plugins to extend the browser.

The bad news is that it will take time for these plugins to appear for the new version of IE. In the meantime, here are a list of plugins for firefox that I can’t live without on a daily basis.

  • Del.icio.us – share and access bookmarks from any PC
  • Linked in – professional networking tool
  • StumbleUpon – view sites recommended by people with the same preferences as you.
  • TabBrowser Preferences – change how you browse using Tabs.
  • AdBlock – an extremely good tool for blocking unwanted ads.
  • Performancing – Blog and surf at the same time.
  • Selenium – record what you’re doing on the web – useful for testing web applications.
  • DownloadThemAll – get a copy of an entire website to surf later.

Filed under Business, firefox, IE, Internet Explorer, Web

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