Jumping Dog Blog

Return of the animated GIF

Jumping Dog Design — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 02:37:04 +0000

Are software updates taking up too much time?

Jumping Dog Design — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 02:32:35 +0000

Are we spending too much time updating software? This discussion is highlighted by how forefox are managing their release schedule.

Check out the intended Firefox release schedule:

Official Firefox 6.0 release September 27, 2011.
Official Firefox 7.0 release. November 8, 2011.
Official Firefox 8.0 release – November 8, 2011
Official Firefox 9.0 release - December 20, 2011

Some people think this doesn’t make sense or is just too much!

Today I installed firefox 6, here is what happened:

As expected, the add-ons are not compatible with the updates. It is now going to take time to get the browser back to a useful tool which to develop with – only one compatible add-on! We ask what is the incentive for the developer to make their product compatible with firefox 6, when 7 is just round the corner?

Consider updating:

Windows
Virus Checkers
Adobe
WordPress/Joomla/server side software
Smart Phone Apps
Browsers
All and any other software

PressWork HTML5 WordPress Theme

Jumping Dog Design — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:22:57 +0000

PressWork is an HTML5 WordPress theme for designers, developers and publishers. It is a front end editor, where you control the layout and appearence from the front of the site, rather than the good old wp-amin backend.

It is intuitive, going to the next level with drag and drop functionality to control layout. It uses google fonts, making a refreshing change to our web-safe friends.

The cons are that it is the actual format of the content on the front page is quite inflexible. With my experiments I could not get the actual blog to display – only the summary.

On a more serious not PressWork did not seem to distinguish between private and public blogs – it displayed everything in the database – even drafts! I’m sure if you hang in there they will rectify this soon.

And if the free one doesn’t do it for you, there are premium themes you pay for…

Below is a screen shot of how the default installation looks on this site:

Definitely worth a squizz…

WordPress goes HTML5 with Twenty Eleven

Jumping Dog Design — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 05:37:59 +0000

New html5 WordPress theme, twentyeleven, was released June 30th, 2011.

I do appreciate how sites render beautifully on my droid. Lots of options and all you have to do is make a child theme and you’re off.

Adobe Edge

Jumping Dog Design — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:44:07 +0000

I downloaded and tried out the pre-release version of adobe edge

It is an animation tool with a nice familiar premiere style interface which produces HTML5 and css3 as output, rather than swf files.

The first thing i noticed is that the animation is smoother, not as jumpy as flash. It uses the jquery easing routines and doesn’t have that annoying flash flicker .

There is no interactivity (buttons, sliders, mouse events etc) in the pre-release, but I expect there to be when it is released in beta. When you publish, it creates quite a few files (html, css, js, xml) which I found cumbersome to ‘plug in’ as you would an swf.

I reckon this one is hot and gonna be more common than tap washers as we need to deploy on html5 compliant devices.

HTML5 boilerplate

Jumping Dog Design — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:28:17 +0000

Well here i have my first implementation of HTML5 boilerplate.

At a glance, it is a starting point for html5 projects - see my implementation here : On closer inspection it is much more than that; it’s a wealth of accumulated knowledge combined to produce a framework for high performance, multi platformed sites.

it has some great ideas which are not HTML5 (.htaccess and reset styles at least) which you can adopt for other (HTML4) projects.
It has a ‘build’ process that bundles/minimizes/optimizes your files ready to deploy. Files sizes exceptional but means you have to copy over the whole publish folder for just for one css change.
Works great on mobiles.

HTML5 frameworks are popping up like mushrooms, and now mature enough to warrant further investigation.

Android Incredible S

Jumping Dog Design — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 04:11:16 +0000

The android incredible s is my introduction to smart phones, and can now confirm I love it!

Above and beyond the normal phone stuff, I got apps for:

banking
skype
facebook twitter etc…
guitar tuner
metronome
dropbox
metlink
tramtracker
silvertop taxis
footy now
photo to pdf
chrome to phone
Aldiko reader

and the list gets longer every day.

Brand new beat!

Jumping Dog Design — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 03:59:28 +0000

Keeping a blog up to date over time sorts the sheep from the lambs.

Acquiring an HTC incredible s android can lead the curious astray, tempting one into the meadows of all the good stuff smart phones have to offer. The humble wordpress blog is overlooked in favor of exciting new portable technologies.

The youth of today are dancing to a brand new beat, itoxicating rumbas, salsas and zumbas. There is a party going on and all you have to do is move your body to the rhythm to be part of it.

Updating a myspace site 2011

Jumping Dog Design — Thu, 12 May 2011 07:28:26 +0000

It has been a while since I have visited myspace and whoaaah baby – it sure has changed. The new interface is heavy on the frameworks with the poor ol browser working 27 to the dozen freezing, stalling and all weird kinds of caching when administering the site. You can see how they meant it to be intuitive, but wonder if all these shenanigans would confuse the noobie?

That said, here is the myspace site. In my professional opinion the band are great, so have a listen and please enjoy!

Myspace design for Brunsick Music Group

Megan Gale Photoshop Art

Jumping Dog Design — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:29:59 +0000

Megan Gale Photoshop Art

So here I go back to the humble photoshop round brush and do a simple line portrait of Megan. And I have my second post in my new category – not too overcooked – I will just leave it for now.