Dropbox and You

Dropbox and You

September 19, 2011 3 comments

Dropbox over the years has been an indispensable tool in not only my web design/developer super-hero tool belt, but also in my off-time. If you haven't heard of Dropbox, or are new to it, we'll show you how this tool from the Internet Gods will "handy-fy" your...

Creating complex HTML email signatures in Mail.app for Mac OSX Lion

Creating complex HTML email signatures in Mail.app for Mac OSX Lion

September 15, 2011 29 comments

Apple released it's latest desktop and server operating system in July 2011 called OSX Lion.  With this new release came a new version 5 of the native email client, Mail.app, which was heavily influenced by it's little brother on the iPad. Apple has never made it easy to...

Beyond the Favicon

May 19, 2011 2 comments

We're all pretty familiar with the Favicon... that little 16x16 pixel site-specifc image that shows up in your browser or tab title. They're useful when scanning a large number of open tabs to recognize sites, and are an easy way to promote your brand's experience when a...

Pros and Cons for Using ExpressionEngine’s Default Stylesheet Parser

May 9, 2011 10 comments

If you reference the official User Guide while building an ExpressionEngine site, you will probably end up using the {stylesheet} tag to include a reference to your CSS file in the page head. The tag functions very similar to the {path} include variable, but EE recommends not using {path}...

Redirect to 404 When ExpressionEngine Entry has “Closed” Status

May 5, 2011 13 comments

Here's something interesting about ExpressionEngine's treatment of "Closed" entries: When an entry is set to the "Closed" status and you manually access the URL, you simply get your template rendered with no content in your {exp:channel:entries} tag. Why wouldn't you want to have a 404 page...

call to action

[Noun]

an item on the page that calls for user action. Usually a big bright button (eg. "Click here to learn more").

SEO

[Noun]

An acronym for "search engine optimization"

Creating complex HTML email signatures in Microsoft Outlook 2011 for Mac

Creating complex HTML email signatures in Microsoft Outlook 2011 for Mac

April 30, 2011 21 comments

Microsoft released it's latest office suite in September of 2010, which in my opinion is a huge leap forward in terms of usability and responsiveness from earlier versions available for the Mac.  Included in the office suite is Outlook 2011, a step up from the monstrosity known as Entourage, which...

WYSIWYG

[Noun]

An acronym for "what you see is what you get"

remote images

[Noun]

Images that are hosted on a server which are viewable to the public.  Example, www.bluecoastweb.com/images/gra-sig_bcwlogo.gif

Planning Ahead with your ExpressionEngine Templates

Planning Ahead with your ExpressionEngine Templates

April 30, 2011 8 comments

Creating building-blocks of elements can save time and headaches later. When first learning ExpressionEngine, the complete "ground-up" functionality of the template system can be daunting to say the least. What is the best way to organize a site you're building? A lot of websites have unique elements in certain...

URLs

[Noun]

Abbreviation of Uniform Resource Locator. It is the global address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web.
Or in other words, the stuff that's part of the "www.somethinghere.com/thisismylink.html"

domain name

[Noun]

The words that come after www.

hyperlink

[Noun]

A link from a hypertext file or document to another location or file, typically activated by clicking on a highlighted word or image on the screen.

browser

[Noun]

A computer program with a graphical user interface for displaying HTML files, used to navigate the World Wide Web : a Web browser.