Kirsten Jahn on Design & Life » event

WordPress Demystified (06/29/10)

Kirsten — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 03:11:26 +0000

These are my notes from June 29th’s PANMA event on WordPress.

WordCampPhilly Oct. 30
Splat Productions -> David Hilt
Categorize and tag things properly for SEO
brinsterinc.com
Thesis platform
Autahulapa
Child themes = framework themes
Thematic theme
@lewg / goettner.net
WordPress 3.0 new!
- Custom content types -> added to side bar
- Custom Post Type UI
- GD plugin
Woo themes
justintadlock.com
Enhanced taxonomoies
Everything is a custom post type -> no more pages
New menu system
- Based on pages, categories, taxonomies, external links for multi-level menus
front-page.php for front page of site
Custom post type templates, custom author templates, taxonomy template support
New default theme 2010 is a great start for customization
bit.ly/bPy1mj
TechnicallyPhilly -> Sean Blanda
- 3 guys from Temple ’08
- Happy Cog & Catholic Online
- Backup plug-in
BuddyPress
@FlipperPA

Kirsten — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:08:33 +0000

Make the website become a “trusted advisor”
Worked on for over a year
Information architecture
- Classification
- Context
- Bridging the two ^
“Mental Models” by Indi Young
Aligning the experience around the 3 main nav options or else they don’t get included in main nav
When is something navigation and when is it interface?
Can use your own team and circle of friends for user research
1-month development
Used ExpressionEngine (could have used Django or Rails)
2 week manual migration of content ended up having better content because they curated and edited
Focused on public side first and then cleaned up backend later
Accessibilty should be more important than animations and flashy stuff
Validator = show outline to ensure semantic-ness
Define hover & focus always at the same time to make things keyboard accessible
Set CSS backgrounds for people without JS or Flash
Process
- Discovery <-> IA <-> Design
Unified Approach
- Usually deliver 3 design concepts to facilitate discussion among the three
- Inherent value in all 3 designs
Themes for Art Directions
Nostalgic <-> Distinctive <-> Contemporary <-> Fashionable
Design isn’t a sniper but a shotgun blast that needs refining

Kirsten — Sat, 29 May 2010 03:18:07 +0000

At this month’s Photoshop User’s Group we went over some of the new features of Photoshop CS5.

Multi-layer opacity control
Open new image directly placed into already open docu as smart object
Mini Bridge from within Photoshop
Can make default certain settings such as default stroke parameters etc. in layer styles
Straighten button instead of arbitrary canvas rotation
New paintbrush -> mixer brush tool
- Wet: how wet the underlying image is
- Load: how much paint is on your brush
- Brush bristle options and pressure sensitive
Puppet warp -> Edit > Puppet Warp
- Anything you don’t pin down will move
- Pin depth layers the pins
3d -> Repousse -> Text layer
- Copy materials based on face
- Adds shadows underneath
Refine edge
- Quick selection tool (decontaminate colors gets rid of matte)
- Edge detection with smart radius and paint area

Kirsten — Wed, 12 May 2010 16:42:45 +0000

diveintohtml5.org/forms.html
presentations.kimberlyblessing.com
dev.w3.org/html5/markup/Overview.html
Remember that field types bring up conditional keyboards on iPhone and Android
Placeholder text in HTML5
Modernizr: js library that detects if a functionality exists in a browser so you can give alternate solutions if they don’t
At least all of the new form elements degrade gracefully in IE so everything will still work
html5doctor.com
Javascript Shim to make IE recognize the new html5 elements as elements on the page
Google is taking site speed into account for page rank
Check out refreshdoylestown.org
groups.google.com/group/phillystandards