jackwebdale

Wordpress would be able to do that, among a lot of other things.

hey Zvi. I had similar debates when I put together my portfolio which includes some reels / video walkthrough's. I wanted an elegant embedding solution that would be professional and fit well within my site framework visually as well as work across all devices (iOS particularly). Both Youtube and Vimeo do it well. I decided in the end to go with Vimeo (with plus membership). Firstly, the quality was slightly better on Vimeo for many of the tests I did. I tried different compression settings in MeGui for various video gaming and snowboarding videos and Vimeo came out slightly better. I put this down to Vimeo plus's 2 pass encoding they do rather than youtube's 1 pass. Also, Having a plus account lets you fully customize the embed's visual style and the elements that the user can see, as well as forcing 'HD' for desktop users if you feel the video deserves it. You can also remove the Vimeo logo and change the colours of the controls to make it feel part of your site. Example: http://www.webdale.co.uk/work/portfolio-2012/ In the end it felt like Vimeo's focus is on video professionals and creatives rather than the more social and 'for the masses' Youtube. If you're after more organic views and more comments / social interaction then perhaps youtube is the right way - but the kind of people you'll get looking and commenting will most likely be very different to those on Vimeo. Your video embeds will display fine on all devices, the iframe deals with all that.

I find it far easier with two screens. Often one screen is for reference (inspiration, wireframe, spec etc) and the other for work. Usually have my macbook pro plugged into a 24" or so. Given the choice i'd have two 22" running 1920x1080. I sometimes use single but usually means a lot of alt tabbing! Oh, and crack on with flash - still a relevant web tool!

Just start with HTML5 and CSS3. They are very similar (at the basic level) anyway, just HTML5 has some more useful DOM elements to describe content better and CSS3 can save you time cutting up bits of design (rounded corners, drop shadows, font face etc).

Hmm, thought I fixed it in inspector then but apparently not. Float:right isn't allowing height:100% to work...

1. Remove these from .sidebar: position: absolute; right: 0; 2. Change .main from width:72% to width:70%

Thanks, nice packaging too. Premium weed, I can almost smell it. Do they do free samples? :tv (2):

Hey Sally, welcome! Nice simple site. Hope you don't mind me making a suggestion. You could give it an easy but really impactful improvement if you injected some typo heirarchy into your headings and menu items. I just played around for 10 mins, see attached imaged. Just introducing some Serif's (georgia) for your heading and menu items and a few other sizes helps quite a bit. Containing your menu items helps define them in the header also. Just some suggestions though, I like the simple style, very fitting for a holiday home.

Welcome Which CMS have you decided to start with?

It is all very confusing. I should be able to help clear some of the points up though. Basically all IR35 is there for is to stop people from using a LTD company as a tax avoidance tool when really they may as well be permanent employees to whoever they are working for. For example, some long term (6 months +) contracts for corporate companies as an IT professional require the consultant to work 9-5, never from home and using the company's equipment. In the eye's of HMRC they could use those points to judge that contractor is acting the same as a permanent employee and class them as inside IR35 for all offending contracts - and recalculating all tax paid as Paye and NI rather than dividend/minimum salary. It's a pretty massive difference for most IT contractors. IR35 status isn't slapped on you as a whole, it's on each individual contract. Full time employment which you are paid a salary and pay PaYe and Ni contributions never come under ir35 because you are already classed as employed and are paying the maximum tax that HMRC can get from you for that employment anyway. It only applies to LTD Company contractors. In your case, doing some freelance work on the side is absolutely fine. You can either set yourself up as self-employed and declare your freelance work through that (self-assessment tax returns etc) or as a LTD company. a LTD company will require more setting up and admin but you can pay less tax if you play it right. Either way you'll be wanting an accountant or you can learn how to do it all yourself. From what you've said there's no way IR35 is at all relevant to your employments or freelancing. Most likely you will be freelancing from home working for several clients on short term projects, meaning you have a lot of control of your hours, equipment used, fees charged etc. You wouldn't be able to get inside IR35 if you tried! It's also worth noting that the Conservatives once suggesting axing it as part of their campaign, and in march 2011 the treasury put in a request to shut the policy down as it wasn't earning them any money and was a pain in the arse as it was hard for them to get any big money out of it. Although it might still be going on the risk of being investigated and being caught inside is pretty low. It will only be the guys taking maximum p*** that will get screwed in the end. Also, although it's technically wrong, i'd weigh up how much you're actually going to make on the freelancing side. If it's only a couple thousand a year you may be better off trying to take cash or exchange favours. Don't tell HMRC I told you though!

Did this last week, a little 'making of' vid... http://www.webdale.co.uk/blog/making-a-mercenary/ Back into the corporate world now though so nothing else of interest just yet!

http://www.cgtextures.com/ You can try this one too

You'll need a tiny bit of PHP knowledge to push the content from your wordpress into your lovely css/html templates. It's super easy though as you basically just copy and paste similar loop code and change bits here and there in amongst your css/html. I found that coding the front end first (just flat html/css) then plugging in the php after a lot cleaner and smoother..

My point mostly refers to micro-sites that support the launch of a product that is not aimed at those who are impaired and where the requirement for lots of 'WOW' (video game audience is a great example). Go to The FWA and you'll find plenty Also, the point that sites SHOULD be accessible is mute for this discussion. It's whether flash is better than HTML5. And the answer is yes, sometimes. The people still spending millions on full flash experiences when it's appropriate seem to think so, and you can bet they know exactly who their audience is and can back the choice to use flash with their financials. Why cater for the 0.5% of your audience revenue at a much higher percentage overhead?

It's already been said, but for most applications HTML5 is superior as it's more accessible to more people in more places. Flash still has it's place, either as rich assets within a HTML framework (for some zing or interaction that doesn't effect the usability of the site). It's still far superior at handling video. Full flash sites are reserved for projects that have no requirement to be accessible nor work on most mobile/tablets. It's also worth noting that for these types of rich experiences it's also probably a hell of a lot cheaper (and less riskier) to do in flash due to there being a larger pool of talent that can produce it and there's no need to spend time on progressive enhancement or accessibility. This will change once everyone gets to grips with what HTML5, canvas etc is capable of.