Media Queries are awesome. They really are. Being able to detect a users device width, height, and/or orientation and then being able to style the content they view accordingly is an invaluable tool in any web designers/developer's toolkit. They are paramount to the responsive design movement, and makes porting content from device to device without having to create multiple templates somewhat of a synch. And better still, every day, new possibilities/options are being added to them to make them more powerful. Read More »

CSS frameworks like Twitter's Bootstrap or Blueprint were created to help developers cut down on development time by creating preset definitions for all of the normal items found within the HTML markup of a website.  In terms of the development of a website, having these items already predefined is a boon for many developers tired of having to rewrite the same chunks of CSS for multiple sites.  Read More »

Last week, UX Show & Tell (@uxshowandtell) held its latest event at the Nclud office. The theme this month was "Wireframes and Prototypes" and featured three great presentations by Panayiotis Karabetis (@pkarabetis), Christine Ryu (@UX_ryu) and Brittany Mederos @Brim. Bonus points for all of the presenters channeling the Halloween spirit and wearing costumes. Read More »

So what do I mean when I say CSS generated content? Well, it’s somewhat complicated, so lemme try to break it down. CSS generated content is a technique that allows content (HTML and/or images) to be inserted into the DOM without actually being included in the HTML. Say what? A bit odd, but basically if you view the source of a page using this, you won't find the corresponding code in the HTML. It's being added in via CSS, and therefore is usually considered just for presentational purposes. Read More »

I am pleased to announce that BrowserMedia will be expanding our creative services offering through a merger with local creative agency nclud. The addition of the talented nclud team members to our existing creative staff will allow us to bolster our creative capabilities, while complementing the back-end technical capabilities that have made BrowserMedia a thought leader in open source technologies for many years. Our friends Alex Giron and Martin Ringlein, the two founders of nclud, and a few of the nclud staff will be taking new positions at Twitter. Alex and Martin will remain active with the new combined entity as BrowserMedia board members. I am also pleased to announce that we will be retaining the nclud creative studio in Dupont Circle in addition to our Bethesda, Maryland and New York City locations. The DC studio space will allow us to continue nclud's tradition of hosting local web and technology events for many years to come. Read More »

We are proud to announce the BrowserCMS 3.5.1/3.5.0 are now available. We released 3.5.0 last week, and then as is to be expected a new version of Rails came out. So today we released 3.5.1 which ensures compatitbility with that version (Rails 3.2.5). Read More »

In light of the mobile and tablet innovation boom over the past two-three years, it may have seemed as though the web was laying low behind the limelight, but looks can be deceiving. Just hover over a company’s navigation menu now, and you can quite possibly see one honkin’ huge “mega-menu.” After garnering Jakob Neilsen’s blessing in 2009, these mega-menus, also known as fat menus, have fast-become ubiquitous to the point of becoming design patterns. Read More »

I've recently paid more attention to things that I try to imitate on the web, but use in every day life. The thing that I find the most irksome and concerning is the lack of visual and/or physical interaction with a lot of buttons. The web, especially of late, has done a great job to emphasize the importance of this for user experience, conversion rate, and just general sense of accomplishment. But the real world, unfortunately, didn't think that far ahead, or at least it didn't always think with their users in mind. Read More »

All websites need content, that's a given. But how do you attack the huge task of writing content for a new site? Here are some tips that I share with clients that help them get over this hurdle. In a regular website project you'll go through different phases such as discovery, information architecture, design, buildout, review, and launch. There are specific things you can work on in each of them to make content development more manageable. Read More »

With technological innovations & design trends changing the commercial industry, it's apparent that many graphic arts institutions are finding it hard to keep up with the ever-changing job market for smoother graduate transition. Read More »

User Experience Design (UX) is far from being the new kid on the block. We see and experience various aspects of usability in the everyday environment and products we use, from consumer products, to airport wayfinders, to store checkout areas. But, in recent years, UX has developed into a recognized industry buzzword, so it’s no wonder that organizations talk of it, know of it or want to learn about it … so then, what’s the hang up? I list a few common reasons why organizations choose to opt out of user research as well provide conversation starters to encourage the buy-in: Read More »

Retina displays are here. Or for those who don’t know what that is, high-resolution screens. And what we’ve been typically using as web designers and developers to serve content to normal screens just isn’t cutting it anymore. I won’t get into serving high-res photos today, as that’s been discussed at length by many other smart folk already. Read More »

CMS' have gotten sick. Sick from feature bloat and just general overload. Their main focus is not creating and managing content anymore; in fact this is almost a forgotten part of what they are meant to do. And I don't think it's anyones fault in particular: clients have needs and concerns that their CMS be able to do X, Y, and Z, and developers have needs to get paid. So it's understandable that feature creep just inevitably happens in a CMS and that focus gets lost easily. Read More »

SXSW 2012 was my third time going to this wonderful annual conference held in Austin, TX. I was fortunate to experience this year's edition with a few seasoned veterans as well as a few newbies. This being my third time, I went in without too lofty expectations but still hoping to get a good amount out of it. It didn't start off too well when I arrived in Austin to cold rainy weather but soon changed for the better and was able to have a great time with good takeaways. Read More »

As a platinum sponsor of Rubynation this year we were lucky enough to get tickets for all of the ruby developers in the office, and the chance to hear our own CTO speak about rails engines (great job Pat). As a convert from .net this was my first ruby specific convention. Surprisingly (in a good way) the conference was noticeably heavy on technologies that were not ruby. I went to talks on javascript, coffeescript, cojure, sass, sinatra and node.js. Its great to see how broad the interests are in the ruby community and how readily rubyists embrace and enthusiastically adapt new platforms, languages and technologies. Read More »

Cleaning up your digital image can do wonders in the ever-saturated social media world. Read More »

This past SXSW was my first time attending (many props to @browsermedia& @kerrygunther); and I was super stoked to be able to go -- a vacation, a chance to learn new kick ass webness, awesome food, awesome music, and awesome people. For the most part, that's exactly what it was. Austin seems like a great town, filled to the brim with great taco joints and beer dispensaries (aka bars), so I was glad I finally got to experience that. I met some very cool people, heard some even cooler people speak, and tried to meet up (unsuccessfully) with seemingly the coolest people I follow on twitter. Plus, I heard a bunch of great bands, all for free. Overall, it was awesome, and I wish I'll be lucky enough to go again at some point. However, I had a few qualms with the conference itself. Read More »

It's done! After roughly a year's worth of work, along with some excellent contributions from the community (thanks Brian King, James Prior and Neil Middleton), BrowserCMS 3.4 is done. Read More »

We recently released the Mobile module, with the goal of making mobile websites easier to build. Read More »

Web fonts: what's the deal with them, and why should we care about the recent progress? Simple questions, with lengthy answers. Web fonts are, simply as they sound, typographic faces that have been designed specifically for use on the web, and in many different sizes, resolutions, and monitor types. Sounds pretty complicated right? Well it definitely is. And, that's the main reason (perhaps aside from copyright/monetary issues) that the web has been so hand-cuffed for so long in terms of what was available for users of the web. But, a few years ago, a [few] teams of typeophiles got together to try to change this stale state of affairs. Read More »

Getting your creativity flowing and avoiding the dreaded "designer's block" can sometimes be tricky when working on a project. By being prepared and/or knowing your way around this can be the catalyst for a great design. The following are a few useful ideas I like to apply when the situation calls for it. Read More »

Why aren't more sites using HTML 5 and microdata tagging (in terms of helping search engine optimization)? While we here at Browser are excited about the opportunities afforded to us by these new features, we had to temper our client's expectations. Read More »

What's all the hubbub about mobile first mobileness?? While it is a hot new term, It's not just a hot new term. It's much, much more than that. It's a whole new way of thinking about users, content, web design, and the lot. Do a Google search for 'mobile first' and you'll find somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,520,000,000 results. That's a lot of results. Read More »