Web design with flair
The creative souls at Google are celebrating the 119th anniversary of the first documented ice cream sundae with a new doodle.
The two scoops of ice cream effectively replace the two o’s in Google. And the ice cream parlor pastels, graphics, and style give this doodle an old fashioned flavor that’s hard to resist.
Here’s a sweet infographic from Yoast that gets back to basics and tells it like it is, explaining WordPress in a way that even the newest newbie can understand.
Questions? Comments?
Once upon a time, I saw a TV special about corporate Google. I remember the boss as being young and friendly. Staff was young, too, happy and relaxed. The special was focused on the company’s liberal policies and rather generous employee benefits. I don’t recall any specifics, but I do remember thinking at the time, Wow, what a fun, creative, great place to work.
I don’t know if it all still holds true today, but I sure do like the doodles the Google folk come up with for holidays and special ocassions.
For the new year: 2-0-1-1, in Roman numerals, is a smart replacement for the O-O-G-L in Google. Very cool . . . creative . . . inspiring.
You know how Picasso had a “blue” period? Well, I’m in what I call my “flash” period. Not a good thing.
There is no question that I have an unholy crush on flash templates. I spend waste a great deal of time online browsing through those at Template Monster. Some of the layouts are awesome. Creative. Inspiring. My imagination runs wild. The possibilities feel endless. I want to use them for my clients and build sites that will knock the socks off anyone visiting.
Wanting that “wow” factor for my design site, I found a sweet template with the features I needed. Though I don’t know a thing about flash, I decided to give it a try.
Wow. What a challenge. What a mistake.
First of all, did I mention I don’t know anything about flash? I don’t even own the software, so doing any real customization wasn’t going to happen. The best I could do was place the template at the center of the page on a checked background and swap out some text and photos.
Secondly, because I don’t know a thing about flash, I couldn’t add any new pages. That is, I could not add new pages that “matched” the main flash page. Nor could I duplicate the flash in the menu and the special rollover effects that go with it. Instead, I had to create inner pages in HTML that kinda sorta almost matched the look of the main flash page, but didn’t. What a mess. What a mistake.
Third, the not-so-sweet flash contact form does not work. I didn’t even realize it until a good client told me they had been trying to reach me for days using the form. How’s that for “Wow” factor? It’s my bad—I never tested the form. Part of the problem is missing code in the PHP file that came with the flash template. I tried adding the code, but had no luck. No luck with Template Monster either. I wrote their customer support with a clear explanation of the problem and attached the necessary files. They sent back a polite, generic one-line response that did not address the problem at all, and told me they were closing the ticket.
I’m not at all happy with the way things turned out. I prefer clean and consistent with clear navigation . . . and this is not it.
My love affair with Template Monster and their flash templates is officially over.