As you probably have figured out by now...
...my name is Matt Deasy. I'm a 20 year old freelance (contracted) web designer currently residing in New Jersey. I'm a sophomore in college and I hope to major in Computer Science. My permanent residence is sunny Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It's quaint, relaxing, and at some times boring.
I've been designing web pages for around seven years now. My original web page was done with simple HTML and a little content. After my friend pointed out a templates page and CSS Zen Garden, I began to play around with CSS. Since that point I've been working on perfecting my HTML and CSS skills while taking in to consideration some coding standards. As time goes by I also continue to improve in graphic design.
May 6th, 2008 by Matt
If anyone doesn’t know what a Tooltip, its a little block of text (or an image) that shows up when you hover over a link. I’ve went looking for a simple JavaScript Tooltip in order to add it to a site I was working on, and got pretty overwhelmed with the results.
Right now there are way too many sources of code out there for this. I found myself sifting through endless amounts of Google search results looking for an option that was non-bloated code and easily styled. Thank god for codeeazy.com. Their Tooltip is very simple to implement, only a few lines of JavaScript code, and works like a charm. It displays both images and text, and the text can be styled just like it was in a div because, in fact, it is. It really opens up a lot of options for a web designer and makes it easy if you don’t know much (or anything) about JavaScript. There are no crazy fade effects or mouse tracing effects, which I feel distracts from the content. Enough doors are opened with the ability to manipulate the content via CSS.
Anyway, just thought I would pass it along. Check out codeeazy’s blog here.
Posted in General Stuff | No Comments
April 24th, 2008 by Matt
So I know I promised three different posts for the Presidential Candidates’ sites, but I decided to just roll them all together in to the site o’ the week! It’s going to be a little lengthy, so I’ll split it in to two parts. Here are the (somewhat revised) criteria I will be judging the sites on:
- Logo (10 pts)
- Organization of Index (10 pts)
- Code (15 pts)
- Interactivity (10 pts)
- Access to Essential Information (20 pts)
- Do I Care? (10 pts)
Lets get started.
Logo (10 pts)
McCain’s logo is pretty decent. It’s simple, straightforward and what you would expect from a war veteran’s logo.
It goes along with the general look of his page and the demographic he is going after. It has that good ol’ strong republican feel too it, stocky and straightforward.
Obama’s logo represents his campaign perfectly. It’s light an airy with a great web 2.0 feel to it. While the designing of his logo reflects the most current change in web design, Obama’s campaign reflects the most current change in politics.
This one is the winner in the logo category by far. The way it just meshes in to his site and its use throughout is truely impressive.
Hillary’s logo is a little lacking. You can get the general idea…but there really isn’t too much to it. This is the worst of the three logos. There is a patriotic theme behind it, like Obama’s logo, but no real story.
Hillary’s logo scores the worst. I’m pretty confident I could have come up with something better. While McCain’s logo symbolizes his military experience and Obama’s his desire for change, Hillary’s just symbolizes a ribbon…cool.
The Points:
McCain: 7 (+7)
Obama: 9 (+9)
Hillary: 5 (+5)
Organization of Index (10 pts)
When you first glance over McCain’s index, you notice that the majority of the visible space is devoted to his “It’s Time for Action Tour”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t include a description of what this tour is…or anything about what he’s aiming to do with it for that matter. For something you’re devoting about 20% of your initial index space too, you think you could just throw a little text next to that amazing image of McCain staring off in to the future of our country to let us know what’s up. He does have an appealing image talking about a tax holiday on gas (whoooo!) and also has three (count ‘em, 3) ways to sign up for his newsletter all with a cramped 300×600 pixel area on the right side of the screen. The navigation is pretty well organized, and the content on the front page is pretty useful. He does have two links to his store and his News box is full with entries from yesterday, both of which are pretty useless.
Obama’s index is extremely well thought out. There is no repeated information throughout the entire page. The heirarchy of information is pretty well thought out too, with interactivity obviously being the main priority. On the right side of the page there are a good 5 divs devoted to interaction, including the top div which lays out four simple ways to get involved. Obama’s 20% of image dedicated space (seems to be a trend…) is a group of rotating images, all of which are well styled and fully explained, allowing him the maximum use of the space. Under that, his first two largest sections are blog and news, both of which span the past couple of days and have enough room to display a good amount of content. Great organization, again the winner in this category.
HILLARY WANTS YOUR MONEY! Or at least thats what her site screams. While she is going to make up some lost ground where her logo is concerned, the one piece of repeated information is really bugging me. When I first went to the site, I got hit with a splash page not asking me to sign up for a newsletter, but instead ordering me to donate.
The “Contribute” links are also scattered around her homepage (three within a good 200 pixels of each other, all brightly styled), as well as repeated links to her store. The rest of her information is well organized. Her 20% image (yup, it was a trend) is static, but is well used by also containing a form to sign up for her newsletter and, you guessed it, a link to “contribute”. A small focus on interactivity, with a somewhat cramped feel.
The Points:
McCain: 14 (+7)
Obama: 18 (+9)
Hillary: 12 (+7)
Code (15 pts)
McCain’s page doesn’t even have a doctype and is a tabled layout. I’m just stopping there.
While Obama’s site does go through the validator with 48 errors, most are in code other than HTML. There are some basic errors, such as not closing img tags and a mix-up with the head tag. The CSS is well coded with only 12 errors in over 1,000 lines of code. Good score overall, but not perfect.
Hillary’s code is ok, there is some HTML being used for styling, but at least it isn’t tables. She comes through the validator the cleanest with only 37 errors. Her styles are well organized and easy to sift through. Hillary saves herself with the code.
The Points:
McCain: 18 (+4)
Obama: 28 (+10)
Hillary: 27 (+13)
And with Hillary pulling a suprising comback from her poor logo, we now have Obama in first, Hillary in second and McCain in a far third.
Check back in a couple days for the conclusion and you’re winner for Design ‘08!
Posted in Site o' the Week | 1 Comment
April 24th, 2008 by Matt
BulletProofLinks.com is coming soon! You may remember the old site, which I developed with Peter MacDonald. When it was released, it actually gained popularity very fast as a good resource for web designers. Our goal with the re-release of BPL is to provide the same resource that the original BPL did, with the added bonus of a completely new back end, new design, new catagories, new admins, new moderators, new blog and so much more…
Right now, I need to reach out to the community for help. We’re currently working on a beta version of BPL, and need some testers. These testers get a user name, complimentary @bulletprooflinks.com email and free access to the beta version. In return we ask that they submit all of their resources to the database so we can have a base of links and make sure that the site has no bugs. We’re also looking for four more moderators to help with approving links when they are submitted. If you are interested, just leave a comment to this post.
As BPL is developed, we’re looking to add new features on to it. Some of these features include editing links, purchasing sponsored links and creating a list of favorite links to be displayed in the manage section. We hope that with these features BPL will become an even more powerful resource for the community.
The Sponsored Link is a feature which aims to give users extra exposure while also allowing BPL to make a small profit in order to keep up with the cost of running the site. Sponsored Links appear at the top of each category with brighter styling. They also get a screenshot displayed with their description, which is twice as long as that of a normal link. When your link is first submitted, it gets a week on the front page about the top ten links for the site. Sponsored Links are not going to be implemented with the beta release or right after the site releases. We want to try and let the site get popular enough so that having a sponsored link actually makes a difference with your sites traffic, hence, you get what you pay for. The cost will be a minimal one for a year, giving you great exposure for a low cost.
The new Manage area is going to allow for admins and moderators to approve links while users will have an area to manage their experience with BPL. In the beta version it will simply be where you go to submit a link, requiring a username and password to get to. As the site develops it will be where you edit your links, buy sponsored links and manage your favorite links.
The Manage area is going to allow BPL to expand its interactivity to a point where the original version of BPL could not go. Having usernames will make the moderator’s job of maintaining link quality much easier, as users who are constantly violating the rules can be singled out and if needed, banned.
I just wanted to give the community a heads up on what is soon to come. The release date is unknown at the moment, but it doesn’t hurt to volunteer to been a tester now! The current categories are:
- RESOURCES:
- HTML
- CSS
- PHP
- JavaScript
- CMS Theming
- TOOLS:
- Software
- Color
- Validation
- Browser Ext.
- CMS
- Graphics
- GRAPHICS:
- DESIGNERS:
If you have any other suggestions, feel free to post them.
Posted in The Three | No Comments
April 21st, 2008 by Matt
Just thought I would give a quick update as to where I am and what I’m doing.
Right now I’ve got a couple posts in draft form. My first “Work” post, which will talk about my site for reality TV star Angelique Morgan, is about halfway done. I can promise you that post, a very interesting one, probably some time tomorrow or Wednesday.
My next posts, which there will be three of, will be a series on the presidential candidates (John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama). Now, you may think that I’m going to go on to make some great political arguments why you should or shouldn’t vote for one candidate or the other, but I’m not. I’m instead going to look at each candidates web page, and tell you who you should vote for if it were solely on the basis of web design. So far this is what I’m going to be evaluating:
- Splash Page (5 pts)
- Organization of Index (10 pts)
- Code (15 pts)
- Interactivity (10 pts)
- Access to Essential Information (20 pts)
If you can think of anything else that I should be looking at, let me know. I’ll be starting with John McCain’s page, seeing as he’s already won the republican primary. Depending on how PA goes tomorrow, maybe I won’t have to do both Barack and Hillary.
Posted in General Stuff | No Comments
April 15th, 2008 by Matt
The first site of the week, what an honor! I’ll start of simple, not getting too far over my head, by bestowing this honor on Open Designs.org. The purpose of the site:
The Open Design Community (TODC) is a group of Open Source Website Designers providing hundreds of XHTML and CSS based free web design templates available for download.
The main page goes on to say that “The main goal of TODC is helping to make the internet a prettier place.” When the dust settles, TODC accomplishes much more than that.
The site started a little over a year ago, but the community has been around much much longer. A core group of users date back over five years to a very different, but similarly oriented site. After much growth (and several domain switches), the site is now run completely by the community. The site itself is run by a hybrid mix of WordPress and Vanilla. The admins moderate the designs coming in and the moderators keep the forum in check. A little more on both of those aspects…
The Designs
The designs that are submitted to Open Designs are created by a range of experience in designers, from first timers to professionals who are making a living off of their work.
Likewise, the quality of the templates fluctuates between good to extremely professional.
Some of the most notorious designers include Andreas Viklund, Pat Heard (who also created the design for Open Designs), James Koster and Christopher. While most designers aren’t up to par with the work that these design gurus are submitting, there is a standard for the quality of work which is upheld through both the approval of the design (all of the designs must contain valid XHTML mark-up and not use tables except for tabular data) and…
The Forum
The forum is probably the best thing a first time designer could come across. It is a wealth of information for a designer at any level, but for a first time the advice offered by experienced users can be invaluable. I myself started learning how to manipulate styles by downloading a design and editing it with help from those in the forum.
The comments on the threads are quality and some are truly intellectual (making up for the threads about…well…cookies?). If I had to give the forum a rating, it would be 5/5. Has anyone happened to notice I’m a moderator there yet?
In Conclusion
Whether you’re looking for a new template for your site, help on developing your design or a way to give back to the community, Open Designs is the site for you. The level of quality is directly related to the commitment put in by its users, who are a community to be reckoned with. Overall, a great site and a real resource for the Open Source Community.
Other Sites of Interest:
April 15th, 2008 by Matt
This post would be pretty infamous, if only the site was done…
In the interest of getting the site up as soon as possible (aka getting me off of my ass and making me get some work done), I’ve decided to make the site live. The pages to the site are currently in progress, as well as the tweaking of the rest of the site. Give it a couple more weeks and the site will be fully functional. Until then, I plan on giving you some content to enjoy. So what is the point of this blog? Here are some of the things I’ll be posting about:
- Sites I’m working on
- Designs on making
- Free templates
- Site o’ the Week
- General stuff
- The Three: BPL, SiS, MattDeasy.net
I’m going to try and post every couple days. Since I have some inspiration, the “Site o’ the Week” will most likely be posted shortly. Hit me up if you think your site is deserving of the sweet title. If people actually end up caring enough, maybe I’ll make a sweet badge to put on your site. That might take a couple weeks months years…
Posted in General Stuff, The Three | No Comments