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Portfolio closed down for re-design

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

I closed down karinnelegault.com last week as I’m preparing for a re-design of that as well. At least that site is in better “re-design shape” than this one ;) It’s almost done. Here’s a quick preview:

My portfolio mock-up 1

It’s very different from the minimalistic design that I’ve had up there for a year or two. I think this one matches more … me. The darker colors (even tho I’m wearing a light-blue sweater at the moment ;) ) are more my colors. A few things changed in the process like the removing the “WHAT I DO” page and the latest entries from this blog in the footer.

Why did I remove the WHAT I DO page?

For lack of content I suppose. I’m looking to making it more a straight page portfolio. Show more of my work. What I do is simple and it’s pretty much the same as everyone else in this field: web design, WP theme’ing, etc…. so I thought it better to just put it up like that.

The footer

I decided to only show stuff from The Web Squeeze as that is my main project. My “full-time” project. We started getting quite a lot of hits this month which we are really happy about. A steady flow of advertisers on the magazine. We finally got BuySellAds on the forum now at last.

When’s the launch?

Hopefully soon … like by-the-end-of-this-week soon! I’ve only got the MY WORK page left to work out and I’m done. It’s been a long time coming and hopefully I can get this blog in a better shape after that.

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Posted in Writing | 3 Comments »

Is it finally time to ditch IE6?

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

From M. Dave Auayan at IE Death March:

Internet Explorer 6 will be SEVEN years old on August 27th. It came out a few weeks before the Twin Towers fell. It came out before the Nintendo GameCube. It came out before the first iPod.

It’s time to put a deadline on dropping IE6, and I say that time is now, and the deadline should be soon,  say like, March 2009. That’s roughly a little more than 6 months. Feel free to join me.

And don’t think for a second that this is the only “Give IE the axe” campaign … Oh no! There are quite a few out there already.  Elliot Jay Stocks says Death to IE as well.

As of now, I’m no longer including it in the standard project scope. If a client wants IE6 support, it’ll be an optional, charged-for extra.

While I agree that “fixing” (being nice here) a site to work in IE6 is a total pain the rear end (again… being nice here), according to TheCounter, IE6 is still used by 37% of internet users (for July). That’s still quite alot. So what do you do?

I think Elliots’ way of charging for IE6 support is the best way to handle this mess.

One comment that struck me on Elliot’s site is a great eye opener:

I bet you still put accessibility features into a site and I think the numbers of people who use those features are very much less than a third of the internet population.

How true it is. We slave away making sure out site is accessible to all but the number of users using Lynx or some other test browser is MUCH less than IE6 users. So why do we support them? Because they have NO CHOICE in the matter. And IE6 user CAN use another, better, browser. Not a person with certain disabilities. THAT is the difference!

I was always of the belief that you should support the latest two versions of IE. So for me, IE6 will be dropped when IE8 comes out.

So… what will you do? Will you totally drop support for IE6? Will you charge extra to support it?

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Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

So many ideas, so little time.

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

I feel like if I don’t put down all my ideas somewhere, my brain might explode from trying to save them all. I don’t know what it is really! Sometimes the creative juices are just overflowing and at other times… nothing! Well… seems like I’m in one of those creative slots.

There’s a few things I want to do with this blog and hopefully I will be able to keep it up. I want to start making backgrounds … don’t ask why but I’ve got just a bunch of different designs in my head right now that would be great for that.

Also, I know it’s a bit complicated because I always have 2 very distinct set of readers: the web design community and the jeepers, but there will be a new write-up coming soon on the install of my Xenon Flat Fender Flares. As soon as I can go through all the pics and my notes.

Which brings me to another thing. I know most people would separate both sections (Jeep VS Web Design). Have a different domain for each and it is something I have been contemplating lately. I love both! However, I feel like I don’t write enough about each subject to warrant 2 separate sites. Am I wrong? Time will tell I guess. And maybe if I get more time to go off-roading, I might have more to talk about? Hopefully that will come next year.

What else …. well… I think I want to get into WP designs. Putting out a few free templates and maybe some that could be good enough to warrant the Premium title that people would be whiling to buy. I’ve been doing A LOT of WP lately. This blog is/was my first WP site and I’ve learned a lot since then. We’ve converted The Web Squeeze to WP and we’re currently putting the finishing touches on the new design. And my latest is my husbands’ band site: Widow’s Walk.

The reason why I’m thinking of getting into WP themes/designs is, when I get into times like this – creative juices periods – I don’t want to loose those design ideas that I have stored in my head. I usually create what I call drafts and save them for a rainy day but this way, I could actually make a total site out of it and it wouldn’t get lost in the pipes like they usually do.

And going in to the same train of thought here, I will be making a series of tutorials on The Web Squeeze on (Part I) creating a site beautiful site in PSD, then (Part II) bringing that design in HTML/CSS and finally (Part III) setting it all up in WordPress. We’ve had quite a few requests for these tutorials so … I have my work cut out for me! ;) That would be my first free WP theme available for download.

So in the coming weeks, be on the look out for desktop backgrounds and maybe a WP if I have time.

Oh and one more thing… don’t be shy! Leave a comment! :)

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Posted in Writing | 3 Comments »

iMac – My second Apple product

Thursday, July 10th, 2008

A month or so ago, I bought my first Apple product – a 8G iPod Touch – and I just love it.

I’ve also been looking at Macs for quite some time. I’ve always wanted one. Yes… I know they are expensive but when you think of all the time you can spend “repairing” a PC with Windows on it, swearing at it, cursing it for the stupid OS that it is sometimes well… to me the price out-weight the troubles that PC sends my way. It’s an opinion and I do not want to get into a PC vs Mac debate.

So… we were on vacation the last 2 weeks and we stopped by Future Shop to have look at them. I really wanted to get one for my birthday. I think I was in there looking at them for 2 hours. Trying to decide if I wanted a MacBook Pro or an iMac. Then, once I decided on the iMac, do I want/need the 24inch screen?

Needless to say, I wasn’t leaving that store without a nice iMac box :D

After much debating, I finally went with the 20inch, 2.66Ghz Intel Core Duo 2 processor, 2GB of 800Mhz DDR2 SDRAM, 320GB Serial ATA hard drive.

It’s been 2 weeks now since I’ve plugged it in and started playing with it and all I can say is WOW! I love it!

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Posted in Writing | 3 Comments »

My first Apple product

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008

After months of looking at them online, I finally had an excuse to buy myself one. It was my husbands’ birthday yesterday. After supper, we went to Future Shop and I told him that I was planning and getting him an iPod Touch. He was tentative at first since he didn’t really know what they were/did apart from playing iTunes and MP3s. When I started describing all the cool little things you could do well … there was a spark in his eyes :p

So now we both have one. It’s an 8GB iPod Touch which is plenty for us.

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Posted in Writing | 3 Comments »

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