It’s been a few days since I last wrote something on my blog… So I’m gonna make amende somehow on the next post, trust me.

I’ve been working on a website project in freelance for the first time and I can say I’m proud of the results so far. The website is still a work in progress, since we are pushing more content in it as days goes by.

So stay tuned for the full project description as soon as I’ll be done with it!

Read more about it on the company’s blog: http://www.kokstrategie.ca/blog/kok-strategie-fait-un-pas-de-plus-dans-le-marketing-par-courriel

You can see the French article there: http://www.kokstrategie.ca/blog/augmenter-lefficacite-de-vos-courriels-en-six-etapes

Feel free to comment, since it is my first article!

Final version with tagline under the logo - Kudos PA!

I want to officially thank Pierre-Alexandre Audet (aka Mr. E or PA) for helping with the final version. He’s a busy friend and he still took some of his precious time for me. Thank you PA!

As usual, feel free to comment on it, I’ll make sure PA hear from you.

Sometime, we have little problems finding informations quickly and accurately. This is why most website uses icons in order for us to recognize a tool (and its function) simply by seeing its icons.

So a problem we sometime stumble upon, is how to get nice looking icons, quickly. We aren’t all designers and there we cannot always take time to create one every time we need.

This is why I’m introducing you to IconFinder.net, a website that aims in helping you finding nice icons.

Apart from providing nice icons, they offer links to some services such as a Favicon (favourite icon – the icon the website will have in your address bar and favourites list), or Convert Icons.

Actually, they also have a blog (shame on me for discovering it only now) where they have a nice post explaining how icons usage can be slippery in interface design… and how not over-use them.
I strongly recommend you read it on http://www.iconfinder.net/blog/4/!

Should you wish to receive more information, you might wanna follow me on Twitter, since I recently tweeted of a list of free icons they were advertising: http://bit.ly/free_icons. I have a tendency of tweeting some nice stuff before talking about it “officially” here. ^^

Stay tuned for more information.

That’s how I would describe this little tool that can be found at http://www.ajaxload.info/

You only have to do a few things before downloading your “loading gif”:

1. The type of loading icon you want;
2. The background color and;
3. the foreground color.

Talk about simple! Perhaps, the only thing I’m thinking that could be added is a speed modifier…

I wanted to share my thought on that.

http://sixrevisions.com/css/basic-css3-techniques-that-you-should-know/

This article is all about basic techniques that can be achieve with CSS3… I prefer the Font-Face one… and perhaps the Rounded borders too.

The other article, from the same website (I’m taking a liking to them), goes deeper with the Font playing… which is probably why I like it.

http://sixrevisions.com/css/how-to-create-inset-typography-with-css3/

Hope you enjoy those two.

While you guys are waiting for it, you might wanna check out my “About” page in French. Why, you ask? Because I put a photo on it! Yup! My little face is now on my website… took me lotta courage though. A friend of mine red the page in French and told me: “You know what is missing? Your picture…”. I laughed… but the kid was right (thanks Jérémy).

I’m also in the process of creating my profile on LinkedIn. It’s not public yet, since I’m missing one recommendation. After that I’ll add it to my resume in my up coming “About” page. Anyway, here’s the link:

Feel free to contact me.

I’ll try to get some interesting article for Monday. I red a few pretty interesting post lately and I want to share it with you.

A new website has been put online. Well, it isn’t really a NEW one, but more like a revision and a complete redo of the old one.

A screenshot of the website

Now now, I know the splash page is kinda an old fashioned way of selecting a language. But you see, it was a client requirement to have a “book cover” page. That’s a way of seeing thing and it’s a point that can be defended. In any cases, should the use access directly the index.php page without choosing any language, the website will do its best to detect and redirect the client to his preferred language (be it French or English).

The framework (“MooTools FTW!” as would say a friend) and administrator section uses (almost) the same code then my previous project, Grimard. I did learned some stuff in CSS laying-out since this website has passed through various layouts. I had to had a few MooTools line in order to set the height of the various columns… and since I had a TextResizer on the page, it was simply the easiest solution… perhaps not the most standard though.

In any case, I’m glad this project came to be finalized. Once the French version was online, the English was completed in less then 8 hours. I’m glad I did the admin page myself: that way I really know how to use it at its best!

This website was also the opportunity to write my first “User guide” for the client. I had to describe, explain and demonstrate how to use the website. It went pretty well and I ended up with a 22 pages Powerpoint file explaining how to edit/add a news, and so on.

One thing I really wish to add to the website, is URL-Rewriting. I’m getting real sick of those “index.php?id=62″… I’ll have to do some research on that. Anyone has a suggestion/solution/tutorial for that?

That pretty much it. Feel free to visit and comment here on the website itself!

View the website

A screenshot of the home page

This project was what introduced me deeply into MooTools. It’s actually during this project that I red the “MooTools Essentials” book (twice) and enjoyed the experimentation.

I also had to develop a whole CMS for the client, in the form of an admin panel. Back then, I didn’t really knew what WordPress was capable of. I’m still using the CMS as a stand-alone installation for some clients though. It has proven useful for me since I used this opportunity to develop some script with MooTools.

As part of this CMS, I used for the first time the script “FancyUpload2″ (http://digitarald.de/project/fancyupload/), a cute flash uploader. It had to be included in the Accomplishments’ admin panel, so the administrator can specify the pictures he want to use with each accomplishments.

As you may guess, I did the code part: slicing, integration and PHP coding. Design was made by the company I’m working with, KOK Stratégie.

It was an interesting project and a good way to learn new things. The hardest part of this project must have been the writing and revision of the texts.

This project was completed in november 2009. Since the lauch of the new website, it has generated over 2000 visits, from about 22 countries around the world.

View the website