affordable web design blog

ECU Loading Idea

Paul Dixon — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:08:23 +0000

Just in case an Easy Content Unit is a little slow to load (happens every now and then), I thought this might help - an animated gif in the background that tells the visitor that the unit is loading.

Once the unit has loaded it hides the animation (just need to make sure your unit has a background colour set). Could hopefully lessen the chances of a user leaving the page if the ECU doesn’t appear straight away.

It only really works for ECU units like the one below and does involve a little bit more work than just pasting the ECU code.

This is what you would see if the unit above didn’t load straight away -

Might be possible to improve on this idea?

If anyone wants to use this idea feel free to pinch the code & graphics -

The CSS | Circular loader graphic | Prices loading graphic | Combined graphics

The HTML (copy & paste) -



  

PASTE YOUR ECU CODE HERE

Test websites in multiple browsers from one machine

Paul Dixon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:51:28 +0000

Whether you design sites on a Mac or a PC, chances are you won’t always have immediate access to all the popular browsers. As a Mac user I sometimes need to test sites in IE 6 & IE 7.

For IE 7 I can reboot my iMac with Vista, but when I need to test in IE 6 it usualy involves booting an old PC which is not only slow, I also then have to worry about whether the antivirus is up to date etc.

Thanks to Browsershots I can test my sites in IE 6 & IE 7 and a list of other browsers from my iMac. You do sometimes have to wait a few minutes to view the results and there are limits on the amount of tests you can run per day, but it’s a free service. You can even test a site in IE 4!

Give it a try >

Web design books

Paul Dixon — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:02:59 +0000

You can learn all aspects of web design and development online and for free, but for really getting to grips with a subject I personally don’t think you can’t beat a book. The photo below is of my mini library built up over 3-4 years, some of the books have seen more use than others, HTML By Example was the first web design book I bought and although much of it is now outdated (and probably not recommended) it did teach me how to build my first ever site. The more recent purchases are on the right and reflect my current interests CSS, usability and SEO.

If I was to recommend 4 of these books they would be -

Designing with Web Standards (Voices That Matter) - Jeffrey Zeldman
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design (Voices That Matter) - Andy Clarke
Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - Steve Krug
Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day - Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin

I am always on the look out for new web design and development books and would be interested in any recommendations.

Backing up work with Time Machine and a My Book Hard Drive

Paul Dixon — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:51:45 +0000

I have always been aware of the importance of backing up work but up until recently it was always one of those little jobs that I didn’t quite get round to doing often enough, my setup was a 160 GB Formac external hard drive attached to my old eMac.

While I didn’t have any problems with the Formac drive it had a built in fan which made the drive ridiculously noisy, also despite it’s relatively small storage size of 160 GB the drive was physically big - it took up a footprint of just under an A4 piece of paper and was the height of 2 and a half dvd cases laid flat. Because of it’s design it couldn’t really be stood on it’s end which would have saved a lot of desk space. Having upgraded my iMac to OS X Leopard it made sense to use it’s built in backup application Time Machine, but to get the most out of it I realised I would need a bigger and better external hard drive.

Recommended Western Digital My Book External Hard Drives

I decided early on that I wanted the drive to have more storage space than the iMac’s 500 GB internal hard drive and for speed I wanted a drive with a firewire connection. Having looked at various models by various manufactures including Lacie, Western Digital and Seagate I choose a 750GB Western Digital My Book, I almost went for the next model up that has 1TB of storage but the 750GB version seemed like better value.I have been using the My Book for a few weeks now and and it’s worked flawlessly with Time Machine, which runs in the background and is set to backup every hour.

Once the drive gets full Time Machine will delete older backups. You can also choose to exclude certain folders from the backup.The My Book is well built and size wise it’s slightly smaller in height than 4 dvd cases stood on end - it takes up very little desk space. The black plastic casing with rubber edging has a chunky feel and the glowing rings on the front are a nice touch. Most of the time the My Book is quiet, the only noise being occasional hard drive activity.I would definitely recommend the My Book to OS X Leopard users wanting to use Time Machine, and the drive also works with both Windows XP and Vista.

Update: 24 March 2009 - The My Book is still going strong over a year later and was recently used to recover my iMac which failed to start up due to an internal hard drive problem. It took a couple of hours for the system to be restored from the My Book back to exactly how it was before, no lost work or apps!

Click here to buy a Western Digital My Book from Amazon >