terydinho

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

Just finished working on: Linky Linky
 
Thoughts?

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

Segments taken from the brilliant article at Smashing Magazine: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/02/web-design-criticism-a-how-to/
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
1. Note Your Gut Reaction, But Take Time to Explore It.
 
If you can’t articulate your reaction, stop there and keep it to yourself. As I’ve said, gut reactions can be valuable, but we need to explore them. Think of the last time you saw one of your favorite websites after a redesign. You may have liked it or hated it right away, but after using the website for a bit, your opinion (hopefully an intelligent one) became more moderate. Take the latest redesign of Facebook, for example. I was immediately confused. I think I actually typed something to that effect in the search field, which had been moved to where I thought the status update field would be. But I quickly found my way around and was soon comfortable with it. What’s more, the changes made a lot of sense overall. My gut reaction was expected; big changes can be disruptive, but I needed to look more closely to see that these changes were positive.
 
2. Learn to Articulate Your Observations, and Invite Being Questioned.
 
A designer should never, ever critique another designer’s work unless they are willing to have a meaningful conversation about it. This is a biggie. Expressing an opinion without offering to talk about it holds little value. You may be passionate about your craft (and your opinion for that matter), but for that passion to have much merit, you need to be willing to have a two-way conversation about it. Off-hand comments, particularly anonymous ones, are unhelpful for a number of reasons, most of which are pretty obvious. The point is simply that if you’re going to form and share an opinion, be willing to go a bit deeper and have a conversation about it.
 
3. Be Specific, and Offer Suggestions if Appropriate.
 
This is related to the last point. The more specific you are in praising or knocking a design, the more helpful you critique will be. Use descriptive terminology, speak the language of design, relate your opinion back to established principles. Think of your critique as one side of a debate in which you have to defend your opinion.
 
4. Always Consider Context and Audience-Appropriateness.
 
A personal website can be judged on how well it captures the personality of the designer. A mobile-specific website should be evaluated on a mobile device. And so on. This one can be hard, especially if you don’t know the context or audience. That said, avoid critiquing a design without knowing the context going in. Sure, by understanding visual design principles, you can critique just about any design on that level, but that’s usually just scratching the surface—helpful, but not nearly as helpful as it would be if you took the time to go deeper.
 
5. The Most Important Measure of a UI’s Success Is How Well It Meets Expectations.
 
I recently wrote about this in depth. The point is that you should judge the utility of a user interface by how well it meets your expectations. Of course, if your expectations are exceeded in some way, that’s great, too, but simply having everything behave as you expect is a good start.
 
6. Subjectivity Is Fine if Labeled as Such and Articulated Properly.
 
Following on the point about noting your gut reaction, judging a design subjectively is perfectly fine. Sometimes, even after having taken our time and knowing the context and audience and all that, a design still just doesn’t feel right. As long as you articulate that in a way that makes it clear you’re not sure why you feel that way (and if you accompany it with other helpful remarks), the feedback is probably worth sharing.
 
7. Don’t Neglect the Content.
 
Unless you take the time to use the website and to read and absorb the content, your review will likely be superficial. While content doesn’t often fall under the responsibility of the designer, it’s still a big part of the design. Judge a design based on how well it presents the content and facilitates its use or consumption. Of course, here we have one of those “it depends on the website” situations, so context is doubly important.
 
8. Study the Principles Used to Judge Design, and Learn the Language.
 
I’ve touched on this quite a bit already. It’s probably the best thing you can do to give better criticism and to become a more educated designer. In order to properly form and articulate an opinion about a design, we need to know the principles and patterns we’re dealing with. And without understanding the language, we can’t easily have a conversation about the quality of the design.

I love that there are those cowboy companies out there that say "I'm a great designer and developer", when all they do is install WP/Joomla/Drupal and add a theme on with some minor mods. I love it!! Because the big budget guys, the clients I try to go for - they know the difference between someone who knows what they are doing, and someone who can simply install a theme.
 
Bring it on - good clients know good designers and developers. The clients I work with usually don't jump into hiring a developer without researching their portfolio, their skills and a host of other things too - so if 'Bob's Plumbing' wants to hire some kid who his brother's wife's cousin's mate knows for £200 - then brilliant!

Ok, so I am thinking of organising a big WDF meet up some time over the next 3/4 months.
 
By voting in the poll, tell me if you are interested in going to such a thing, and which location is best for you.
 
We'll look into arranging something IF we have strong enough numbers interested and if a location can be decided on

Well I voted London myself - but I would be happy to compromise on Birmingham if we get enough people who would do the same
 
Sounds like we have a few people interested.
 
Also - to prevent drop-outs, I was thinking of organising a 'ticket system'... so you buy your ticket for say £5 and then on arrival, you get a free pint - so as long as you turn up, your £5 isn't a ticket fee, it is just an expensive pint.
 
That way, it'll stop 50 people saying: "I'll come!" and then not turning up.
 
If we get enough people in and decide on a city, then I can look into booking an area at a pub or something - nothing poncey and definitely something with real ales!!!

Seems there's a bit of a bug in webkit browsers with FancyBox. Long story short, when FancyBox tries to calculate the height, in FF it gets what you can see in the viewport but in Chrome/Safari it gets the height of the entire document. Result of this is that it makes the height of the modal window a lot bigger in Chrome, hence no scrollbar.
 
There's a fix listed in this post:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2520107/jquery-fancybox-plugin-not-centered-in-safari-or-chrome-but-is-in-firefox

Actually Wilf, it would be easier than I first thought - but obviously not really simple
 
1. create the custom post type = easy. Also add meta boxes for name, image, description, link
2. create a post (ad) with it = easy
3. ask which pages you want this post to appear on = quite easy (look at how ACF works, where you can pick pages/post types etc...)
4. The only real tricky point would be on impressions and/or clicks - and when to cancel the ad
 
Also - are you thinking that only administrators could load ads onto the site? or could normal users do it for a fee? That would increase the difficulty LOADS.
 
Let's talk about it Tuesday if you like - I reckon it could be a useful plugin. I didn't really 'get' it on Thursday when you mentioned it, but written out like this, it is totally do-able.
 
Speak later babe x

Seems to be a bit of a stupid system but I'm game for a laugh.
 
I'm in!

Try ProjectPier.

How are you getting on? Do you still need help?

Jquery doesn't really ever present major cross browser issues in my experience. You should ALWAYS give a JS free alternative so that things degrade gracefully though.

Ditch Spry and use something based on a decent framework, like jQuery.

I doubt anybody will just give you a script, but if you go here: http://bit.ly/HfR5Vl
 
That'll give you all the info you need

I doubt anybody will just give you a script, but if you go here: http://bit.ly/HfR5Vl
 
That'll give you all the info you need

Brighton Mike has hit the nail on the head. What I will try to do is to guide you through it a bit.
 
Start off by going to your local version of the site, and making a back-up of your theme (just in case anything goes wrong).
 
Then open up your theme's Functions file (usually called functions.php).
 
Once you have opened that, go to the bottom of the file and add in the following code:
 

add_action( 'init', 'add_new_documents' ); function add_new_documents() { $labels = array( 'name' => _x('Documents', 'post type general name'), 'singular_name' => _x('Document', 'post type singular name'), 'add_new' => _x('Add New', 'document'), 'add_new_item' => __('Add New Document'), 'edit_item' => __('Edit Document'), 'new_item' => __('New Document'), 'all_items' => __('All Document'), 'view_item' => __('View Document'), 'search_items' => __('Search Document'), 'not_found' => __('No document found'), 'not_found_in_trash' => __('No documents found in Trash'), 'parent_item_colon' => '', 'menu_name' => 'Documents' ); $args = array( 'labels' => $labels, 'public' => true, 'publicly_queryable' => true, 'show_ui' => true, 'show_in_menu' => true, 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true, 'capability_type' => 'post', 'has_archive' => true, 'hierarchical' => false, 'menu_position' => null, 'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'excerpt', 'comments' ) ); register_post_type('document',$args); }
 
That will add the custom post type you need - next we can deal with the meta boxes
 
But the deal is, you have to understand the code... read through it 3 or 4 times and make sure you get an idea of what it all does

Brighton Mike has hit the nail on the head. What I will try to do is to guide you through it a bit.
 
Start off by going to your local version of the site, and making a back-up of your theme (just in case anything goes wrong).
 
Then open up your theme's Functions file (usually called functions.php).
 
Once you have opened that, go to the bottom of the file and add in the following code:
 

add_action( 'init', 'add_new_documents' ); function add_new_documents() { $labels = array( 'name' => _x('Documents', 'post type general name'), 'singular_name' => _x('Document', 'post type singular name'), 'add_new' => _x('Add New', 'document'), 'add_new_item' => __('Add New Document'), 'edit_item' => __('Edit Document'), 'new_item' => __('New Document'), 'all_items' => __('All Document'), 'view_item' => __('View Document'), 'search_items' => __('Search Document'), 'not_found' => __('No document found'), 'not_found_in_trash' => __('No documents found in Trash'), 'parent_item_colon' => '', 'menu_name' => 'Documents' ); $args = array( 'labels' => $labels, 'public' => true, 'publicly_queryable' => true, 'show_ui' => true, 'show_in_menu' => true, 'query_var' => true, 'rewrite' => true, 'capability_type' => 'post', 'has_archive' => true, 'hierarchical' => false, 'menu_position' => null, 'supports' => array( 'title', 'editor', 'author', 'thumbnail', 'excerpt', 'comments' ) ); register_post_type('document',$args); }
 
That will add the custom post type you need - next we can deal with the meta boxes
 
But the deal is, you have to understand the code... read through it 3 or 4 times and make sure you get an idea of what it all does

No worries James.
 
I am off home myself in a mo. So drop me a PM over the weekend or on Monday and we can have a chat about it then. Happy to help, that is what this forum is all about
 
Read up on the links I sent you as well as reading the code I posted and that should all start to make sense.
 
Speak soon

Hi James,
 
It is really quite simple when you get into it, and to be honest, you'd be really helping yourself out if your learned how to make your own CPTs and Custom Meta Fields.
 
Head here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Post_Types which will tell you all you need to know about adding a CPT to your theme.
 
Then head here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/add_meta_box for how to add meta boxes.
 
There are plugins that can do both of these actions for you, but as I have learned over the past year or so, nothing is quite as good as custom coding them yourself, it saves tons of issues later on.
 
There are loads of people on here who will help you through the process too, so it would be a great learning experience. Have a bit of faith in your own ability, you can do this
 
If you really think it is beyond you, then PM me, I have a few contacts who are sh*t hot at WP who I can put you in with. I would offer to take it on myself, but I have just taken on the build for a huge project, so my next 2 weeks are totally taken up now.
 
Good luck

Definitely down to the individual and specific to the company you're working for.
 
From my experience, the idea behind it is that it's less about your actual ability and more a reference to your knowledge of the company's development process, coding standards, procedures, workflow, etc... Once you're able to competently handle that side of things (which usually means working without supervision) and prove that you can be trusted, then you can be considered not to be a Junior any more.