Chase Nelson | Page 3

Build your own blog!

February 9, 2010

Shame on you WordPress! I upgraded my WordPress version on BlueHost using SimpleScripts and all of my customizations have disappeared into the black hole of cyber space.

Fair enough. That is the final straw. I will now endeavor on building my own blog. Something I started doing a number of years ago and never finished. We may be looking at a repeat but I’m feeling confident and dangerous. Much of this maverick persona is the same reason that I didn’t back-up my files before upgrading versions. Throwing caution to the wind is the only way to learn quickly.

Wish me luck and please weigh in on the question du jour:

CodeIgnitor

Ruby On Rails

You essentially have 5 minute to respond…I’m starting pretty much now…

Posted by Chase in PHP, Software.

How Do You Use Google Wave?

February 7, 2010

I’ve been toying with Google Wave for the past two months and am really interested to hear how other people have used this tool?

Google Wave has become my new collaborative brain-storming tool of choice. I maintain an unhealthy list of side-projects. Each one, I am undertaking with different friends. For each project, I have a number of waves going at any given moment. I invite all the contributors into the wave, give it a title like ‘Redesign Data Model’, and let the brainstorming begin. We can embed images of data models, use the poll gadget to vote on certain decisions, or just throw out ridiculous ideas to get the creative juices flowing. As each contributor’s creativity ebbs and flows, they can hop on wave and jot their thoughts.

Looking for other cool ways to use GoogleWave, I stumbled on this mashable post. Although most of these examples aren’t that pragmatic, they’re entertaining. I’m interested though, in hearing how others have used GoogleWave and what they’ve thought of it. Let me know.

And if you want an invite – I got a few left – just ask.

Posted by Chase in web tools.

Learnings from a journey in Freelance Webdesign

December 13, 2009

ChaseNelsonDesign is a one-man shop (me). Since high-school, I’ve worked on and off as a hobby helping friends by building their websites . Three years ago I attempted to make that hobby my only source of income by choosing the profession of freelance web developer. I fell a bit short as my initial clients never got their start-ups off the ground leaving me with nothing of a portfolio and a very inconsistent and marginal income. At the time, I had all my eggs in only one or two baskets and I was able to maintain that freelance business for only 6 months.

In that experience, I was a horrible salesperson and an equally bad negotiator. On having identified two potential clients through referrals I made no attempt to market myself via the web or otherwise. The terms of both of my contracts didn’t guarantee me any money up front and left me very little if the site was never ‘pushed live’. With nothing ‘in the funnel’ and very little cash I decided to turn back to the 8-5 workplace and regroup.

I haven’t returned to a life of full-time freelancer but I still hone my craft and business skills taking on occasional web development work. My latest project launched at the end of the summer and I missed my opportunity to announce it. So here is my self-promotion piece of the week:

You should really check out my latest web development project here

I look forward to your feedback!

Posted by Chase in Uncategorized.

Conditional Comments to Handle IE Styles

After my initial post regarding Horizontal Navigations I recieved a lot of good feedback on alternative methods to accomplish the same thing.

A very simple (and apparently very well known) method is to use conditional commenting. If I were to do it again I would implement conditional commenting to dictate one style for IE and another for non IE browsers.

Thanks all for the feedback. For those looking for there own solutions here is a good introduction to conditional commenting: quirksmode.org

Posted by Chase in Uncategorized.

Horizontal Navigation Challenges in IE

June 10, 2009

I am currently building a website for an entrepreneur friend of mine who is venturing out on his own. Looking at this website some of you may think I am joking. The state of this site is constantly changing based on half-baked aspirations and utter indecision around design. Henceforth, I have decided that I will focus on ease of implementation and functionality and just say to hell with design.

My friend’s website on the other hand is very well-designed and, for my sake, I hope well-implemented. In developing this site I ran into a few challenges. To help others in the battle against IE styles, horizontal navigations, and related issues I thought I would document my process.

hoizontalnav

Step 1. Research: In beginning to build the horizontal navigation I figured I would search for some examples in Google. I searched for “horizontal navigation” and one of the top five results was this:

http://phoenity.com/newtedge/horizontal_nav/

Step 2. More Research: I searched other sites and reviewed at least 10 examples. Some decent and quick implementations are seen at the following sites:

http://www.alistapart.com/

http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/

http://www.dynamicdrive.com/style/csslibrary/item/suckertree-menu-horizontal/

Step 3. Decision based on inuition of what would be easiest: Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want to involve much javascript and I wanted to try to get the navigation using only CSS. I have never gotten very familiar with javascript and I was more confident in my abilities to tailor code examples of purely mark-up. Continue reading →

Posted by Chase in CSS, PHP.

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