October 2, 2009
New Launch
Villas of Distinction
Designed and developed by Ryan Cramer in July–October, 2009, this site provides access to thousands of villas around the world. The site was developed with and is powered by ProcessWire.
March 17, 2009
Web Site Design Longevity and CMSs
The longevity and success of the design will depend on several factors, some of which may be out of the designer’s control. But the most important factors are within the designer’s influence, and should be accounted for.
March 9, 2009
Stress-Testing a CMS-Driven Design
When a site goes from design comps to development site, a lot of change has taken place. Once the design is being populated with real content, and the navigation is functional, you should stress-test the design in two key areas: translative and invasive stress testing.
March 7, 2009
Scaling of Dynamic XHTML Text
Dynamic content design should recognize and accommodate the effects of text scaling and length. The typeface sizes that you define are likely to be the standard from which most people view your design, but they are not set in stone.
March 1, 2009
Design for CMS-Powered Web Sites
Compared to designing for static content (print or web), designing for CMS-output is an entirely different discipline. It requires a big-picture systems-thinking approach that might best be described as architecture.
March 1, 2009
A Dynamic Layout Design System
What follows is just one approach to design that has worked well for the author. It should be considered a primer of the process so long as it helps with your design needs. It should not be considered a set of rules, as each designer may have a different approach.
March 1, 2009
CMS Navigation Design
Design of the navigation system is one of the most important and challenging aspects to designing for CMS-output. Not only must the navigation system(s) make it easy for the user, it must accommodate and adapt to the growth of the site.
Search Accessibility
Using Google's First Click Free with PHP
Content in subscription web sites is naturally limited for search engines. This type of content can’t be indexed by Google because you have to log in to view it. How do you retain the benefits of being indexed by Google and still maintain subscriber-only content?
Content Management
ProcessWire - Developer API
This article takes a closer look at the basics of ProcessWire’s developer API and provides a few code examples.
Content Management
ProcessWire - Building Structures
In this screencast we look at how a page structure in ProcessWire can be used to build other web application structures.
Content Management
ProcessWire - Relational References
This screencast shows how you can create cross references between pages in ProcessWire.
December 21, 2008
Firefox, Radio Buttons and Javascript
Firefox exhibits an undesirable behavior when reloading a page containing a form with radio buttons and dynamic form fields. This article takes a close look at the issue, isolates the conditions, and presents examples. Following that, a couple of simple solutions are presented as a way to avoid this issue.
Content Management
ProcessWire - Introduction
ProcessWire is a content management system written in PHP 5 with an MVC architecture. Nearly every component within the application is plugin-based, making the application adaptable to a broad range of content management situations.
December 17, 2008
New Launch: Synbio Project
The Synthetic Biology Project is a project of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Ryan Cramer handled design and development of the site, design of the logo, and implementation with ProcessWire.
November 29, 2008
asmSelect v1.0.4
A new version of asmSelect has been released and is ready for download at Google code. Following is a list of changes/updates made in this version.
XHTML FORMS
Select Multiple Form Fields
Despite their important function, select multiple form fields are problematic. This article looks at the inherent problems with select multiple form fields, and talks about ways to improve upon them.
July 3, 2008
Firefox 3 Headaches
This article looks at a few of the problems I’ve run into with Firefox 3, including some strangeness with Javascript, and issues with light text on dark backgrounds.
May 27, 2008
jQuery and Javascript
jQuery’s syntax and ease of use sets the standard for javascript frameworks. If you’ve held off on using javascript for any particular reason, then jQuery is likely to make you question those reasons.
May 6, 2008
On-Site SEO Best Practices
If done correctly, your site will be highly accessible to search engines and take full advantage the resulting benefits. That’s our goal with sites we produce, and below are the best practices that we try emphasize.
May 5, 2008
IBM Model-M Keyboard
At no other time in history have so many resources been put towards the typing experience.
April 30, 2008
VIM
I get chastised for using a text editor that came from the 1960s, but I consider this a timeless tool that would be hard to do without. Here’s why.
April 21, 2008
PHP
Microsoft .NET developers make more, and Ruby and Python may have a nicer name, but PHP is by far the most important, longest lasting and widely adopted web programming language out there.
© 2010 by Ryan Cramer Design, LLC • 