Nearly every business has invested in web design and web development. A few web sites are well designed, and those are generally effective at generating revenue. A successful web design not only communicates your brand, but is compelling to your target audience and is easily leveraged to develop new opportunities.

Coda 1.5 Released

August 29, 2008

A new version of the Mac OS X web development tool, CODA, was release this week and features some very useful additions. For the uninitiated, CODA is Mac software for writing website code, creating CSS style documents, and quickly performing file transfers from a development environment to a server. CODA has a capable text editor with syntax highlighting, and an elegant system for managing and synchronizing files - best of all it is a breeze to use with a standardize Mac interface.

Version 1.5 has an improved code browser where block elements in HTML, CSS, javascript, and PHP are listed for quick reference. The previous version did not support this feature for mixed files. The new version of CODA also includes an excellent search tool which permits search for text across all project documents.

Free Vector Maps and Country Outlines

March 27, 2008

This site has some great vector outlines of countries that are very useful for web/print design and reports.



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Searching for Stock Photography

February 18, 2008

Generally during a design project I will look to Getty Images or iStockphoto for photography to incorporate into the web site design. Getty hands down has the best image search feature available and I often uses their tools to distill the terms of my search even if I take those terms to another stock image site. A case in point is last month I was looking for photos of oil field workers for a client that is in hydraulic fracture stimulation.

I first turned to iStockphoto because they have better pricing and if a search there turns up some quality graphics, I save the client a few bucks. After seeing limited results for "oil field worker" and "oil worker", I eventually turned the terms of "worker" and "workman" to find the type of photos I required. When I enter the original terms into Getty's engine, it immediately retrieved the term "roughneck". Of course! Roughneck! I returned to iStockPhoto with the keyword "roughneck" which revealed more suitable images than I was able to find initially.