Eric G. Wiley

I've been looking for a flash-less way to visually highlight product features and, thanks to Seth Duffey's 1.5 year-old article on A List Apart, I think I've found it.

Here's a quick experiment I hacked up based on Seth's map technique.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Photo retouching is like cleaning house. You never want to do it but once you get in the groove it becomes therapeutic.

Still not perfect, but the powers-that-be thought it looked fine in its original state so it's all gravy anyway.

Thought I'd share the best part with you - the chance to obsessively toggle back and forth between dirty & clean.

Excavator Thumb Retouch

For best results, say the words out loud as you toggle, "dirty, CLEAN!".

Posted by Eric Wiley at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Under-Promise and Over-Deliver. Amazon does a world class job of fudging the calendar in such a way that I'm a happy camper every time I purchase from them. To the extent that they've spoiled me, apparently. If a business tells me my package will arrive in a week, I expect it in three days.

Apple's doing their part to set me straight, though. They Under-Promise on the delivery date and then keep that promise.

Tough love.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 04:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Michael DeAloia recently resigned from his role as Cleveland's Tech Czar and spoke to a group about his experiences while they were still fresh on his mind. "Fresh" as in he hadn't even received his final paycheck at the time of this recording.

It provides the sort of insider snapshot of the state of the regional tech union that we'll never get from the newspapers. Not because they self-censor, but because they don't get the 'pre-press release' insight Michael had.

Full MP3 audio of Michael DeAloia enlightening a room full of people at the Midtown Brews gathering.

Good stuff. Thanks to Vince Frantz for communicating its significance.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Each successive web standards meeting has brought a higher attendance level, last night's being no exception. 23 submitted an RSVP for the evening and about 19 attended.

We're still trying to get the correct venue for these meetings. Impulse, our most recent location, has the casual environment and WiFi that we need but the music is too loud and just gets louder as the evening progresses. I will miss the people watching. Top Gun blended with Saved by the Bell and a dash of MC Hammer.

Our next location should be better. Some of our friends at Cuyahoga Community College have offered to try and get us a room there, perhaps even for the next meeting.

There are enough dedicated members that we, as a group, decided to become an association. Specifically, the Cleveland Web Standards Association. Brendan Cullen will be lending his domain, clevelandwebstandards.org and/or .com to the cause and our meetup organizer, Joseph James Frantz, already has our host machine ready to go.

Bridget Stewart has a pro bono project lined up for us. We'll be redesigning a web site for Seeds of Literacy, an organization that provides assistance to adults in need of reading, writing and math tutoring with the goal of empowering them to advance in society.

The last 1/3 of the evening was spent discussing the brave new world of self-employment. A decent percentage of the group members work from home and many of them run their own businesses. It was exciting to hear about what successful business owners like Vince Frantz and Craig Minch had to say about making the leap and, most importantly, succeeding on your own once you leave the security of your full time job.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 08:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's what the CSS OFF is, in the words of its creators:

Every month, we’ll design a web page in Photoshop and host a competition to see who can turn it into the best web page. The designs we release will present specific markup challenges, along with design and coding considerations for everyone from web newbies to experienced developers.

The point of CSS Off is to make you think critically about web design, and then execute it on a dime. You’ve got 24 hours to take our design and slice it up. Be thoughtful, be creative. Above all, use flexible markup, lean CSS, good design and your best judgment.

Dan Ott's personal site.
CSS OFF official site.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 10:20 AM | Permalink

One of my favorite things about web development is the community. There's a refreshing spirit of sharing that I want to contribute to when possible. Part of that is acknowledging real accomplishments when they rear their handsome heads.

Craig Minch is a web developer in Cleveland. We've not met in person, but I admire his talent. One thing he did in particular changed the way I look at small web projects: I'm now convinced that it's OK to propose a one-page web site for a business.

Anyone who's built a web site for a friend or friend's company has faced the "build first, fill in content later" dilemma. The major flaw being that the company never actually gets around to providing the content so the site ends up looking like a new house with no curtains or grass and a couple loose sheets of Tyvek flapping in the wind.

The best one-page web site I've ever seen (and maybe the first I've seen that didn't feature an animated GIF)

Posted by Eric Wiley at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't know what the name of this function is or why it even exists, but once in a blue moon I accidentally trip a mouse or key-combo that makes my cursor overwrite everything in front of it.

99.9% of the time everything works dandily: I insert the cursor somewhere in the middle of a sentence and start typing and it adds new characters as they are typed while pushing all existing text forward. As God intended.

However, right now my text editing software somehow thinks I want the cursor to behave like a bulldozer in the rain forest, where destroying everything in its path is considered progress.

The worst thing about it is that I don't know the proper name for what it's doing so I can't just quickly scan the toolbar or do a Help>Search to undo this mechanism.

Help>Search: "This is Bullshit" doesn't bring up anything helpful.

EDIT: Found it. The culprit is the "Insert" key.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The home page clocked me with a screen full of horizontal rainbow. My first thought was that the site represented a marketing agency showcasing its unlimited creative prowess. My theory was strengthened after reading the heading that said, "Thinking Outside the Box".

Once I had mentally established that stereotype, I decided to look around. My first stop was the Our People section because any marketing agency that put phrases like "Thinking Outside the Box" on rainbow backgrounds couldn't succeed without some extremely good looking people on staff.

The expected headshots and bios were there, but they weren't the exaggerated credentials of hot chicks with pointy glasses & frat-lads that I had expected. What I saw instead were portraits of intelligent looking, well dressed people who performed very unique services for a company that was most definitely not a cliché-spouting ad agency.

One young man who didn't look a day over 19 did things like "administer the Syndicate's Marine War portfolio." Another employee is praised by the bio writer because his legal qualifications "...are invaluable to the syndicate." They also had people who specialized in 'Political Risk and Terrorism' and 'Aviation War'.

What I had stumbled upon was a company that A) had the financial muscle to underwrite oceangoing ships and their entire cargo load and B) enjoyed such a solid reputation that they could make their site out of rainbows without frightening away what must be a very conservative client base. More like a fictitious company from a Hugh Grant movie than real life. Refreshing!

One last bit. Lest is seem like I'm ridiculing the web site, I should mention that I enjoyed the colors. Also enjoyed playing with some of the interactive backgrounds. But then again, I don't own a 320.0 meter Panamax loaded with brand new BMWs.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 08:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've been using Google Calendar for a couple of months now for both my personal and work scheduling. I started using it because it was a free and robust calendar application I could access from both home and work.

Google Calendar has one killer feature that has improved the 'Getting Things Done' aspect of my life significantly: Once you add an event to the calendar, Google allows you to specify when you want it to automatically send a text message reminder to your cell phone.

Most of my day job has me at work on the computer so I have ample opportunity to add tasks & events to Google Calendar as they occur to me. For example, I've been carrying a library book around in my bag for a week now with the intention of dropping it off at the library on my way home from work. However, due to the fact that driving to the library is not a part of my normal routine, I've driven right on past it for the past five work days.

Today, however, will be different. I added "Library" to today's date on Google Calendar and scheduled a text message to hit my cell phone at 5:05pm - approximately the time I'll be preparing to head out of the office this evening. Hopefully it will be the mental nudge I need to change my routine and take the drive home off autopilot.

If you can't afford to pay a conscientious human to follow you around with a Franklin Planner, Google Calendar and a text-enabled cell phone are the next best thing.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Shazam! It just occurred to me that we had a fantastic turnout at the meetup last week. 14 people showed and everyone was cool. It's great to mix it up in person with folks who's on-line icons are more familiar to me than their actual faces.

A lot of talented people were in the group as well. Dan Ott showed off his newly launched redesign of the Cleveland Free Times site. He did both the front and back-end work - nice.

Nate Klaiber shared some of his valuable web standards knowledge with others in the group in a small breakout session. If you're looking for a rough idea of what books to read to get up to speed with your web development skills, Nate's book reviews are an excellent place to begin.

Brad Dielman is cranking out a small armada of clean looking, standards based web sites in his spare time.

And last but not least renowned CSS expert Eric Meyer showed up. Kind of like having Noah Webster show up at your English Vocabulary Hobbyists Group.

There were lot of people I'm not mentioning here that displayed some great talent and, my favorite part, enthusiasm for the craft of web design. Makes me excited for the future.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Up to this day, I have been fully appreciative of the power and magic of a database driven web site or web application without ever having to know how to build one. This morning, thanks to my honesty and gung-ho spirit, that all changed.

After the CEO told me what functionality he wanted I knew that I could hard-code it and it would work fine, but it wouldn't be scalable and revising it would be tedious. So I offered that a database driven solution would be the best route, knowing full well that the database monkey would jump on my back as soon as the suggestion left my mouth. I was right.

I've spent the morning scrambling around the web making bookmarks in Delicious, jotting down notes and adding books to my shopping list on Amazon. Here are the resources I've narrowed it down to so far. Keep in mind that I'm an absolute beginner with no programming experience:

ONLINE RESOURCES

• W3Schools PHP Tutorial. www.w3schools.com/php/


• "Free Webmaster Help" PHP/MySQL Tutorial. www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql

BOOKS

• PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual QuickPro Guide)


• Beginning PHP and MySQL 5: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

Posted by Eric Wiley at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I just figured out how to e-mail photos from my camera phone to...anyone. I knew it was technically possible to send pics from a phone, but didn't think MY crappy phone would do it.

This is a fantastic breakthrough.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Checked out the server logs this morning. One of the neat things about them is that they can tell me what operating system & web browser our visitors are using. Somebody rode into our site yesterday on a Win98 OS running Internet Explorer 4.01 browser. Wow!

Why wow? Because that browser was released in 1997. To put it into pop culture perspective: Internet Explorer 4.01 was cutting edge technology the year that Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ally McBeal and Dharma & Greg premiered on television. It was the best Microsoft had to offer the same year the Backstreet Boys were dominating the airwaves with songs like "As Long As You Love Me". It was also the year I resolved not to see "Titanic".

It's probably someone's mother desperately occupying herself on stupid sites like this while she waits for her son, who is "good with computers", to call or stop by to share his love & tech support. If that's the case, then she should know that her son is probably very busy and, besides that, he's a Mac guy and hasn't the foggiest idea of what to do with a PC. Besides, he only USES a computer at work and doesn't fix computers for a living so please stop telling people he's a "Computer Expert".

Love you. I'll stop by on Sunday.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a blurb to share:
After struggling with max-width in IE7 (they said it was supported) I discovered a little line of text on a Microsoft developer support page that solved my problem. The max/min-width property will work if you declare "XHTML 1.0 Strict" in your DTD. I was flogging away at it unsuccessfully while "HTML 4.01 Transitional" was perched up in the rafters of my document, silently mocking me. A quick revision of that got me full max/min-width control in IE7. Nice.
Full documentation here.
Note: IE7 is the first version of Explorer that supports the max-width & min-width property.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This blog was lost for a while. Six months, actually. I moved and, like everything else, it got boxed up and mislabeled. It was just getting started when I pulled the plug and threw it into a rental truck.

This morning I'm going to wipe off the news print, oil up the gears and see how it runs. Hopefully it'll get a lot more use from here on out.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Everyone seems pretty excited about the iPhone. And by everybody, I mean the media AND real people. I'm sensitive to how people around me react to expensive new things. I use it as a way of measuring my level of disposable income against the average. In this most recent informal mental survey, it seems I am sorely lacking. My first thought upon hearing the product details was, "Looks neat but spend not another iota of brain power on this new object because it costs six hundred dollars and, therefore, you aren't getting one." Whoa. I sound like my parents.

The fact that Cingular is the carrier is pretty much a deal-killer for me. My house is in a rural area where they currently have weak penetration. Still, I'm looking forward to messing with it at the Apple store. It'll be interesting to see how many demo models each store will stock for us grubby-handed pedestrians.

Posted by Eric Wiley at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)