Category Archives: Reviews

Introducing HTML5 and HTML5 for Web Designers, a review

Posted Monday, January 10th, 2011 05:00 pm GMT +8 | Books |

HTML5FWD-feature.png

I wasn’t really HTML5′s biggest fan. The fact that you can write it however you want made me very worried that it might result in poor coding again (unclosed tags, or mismatched closing tags). But after reading Introducing HTML5 and HTML5 for Web Designers, I realized that what it lacked in rigid coding conventions it made up with semantic elements like section, article, nav, aside, header and footer to name a few. If you’re planning on learning more about HTML5 then I suggest that you pick up these two books as it will help you immensely. Funny enough, while I’m reading these books, I suddenly realized how bad I did in coding this site up. I’m currently in the process of re-writing the entire thing while keeping in mind the mobile first philosophy. It’s a little challenging, but that’s how things get more fun, right? (I sure miss IE a … Continue reading →

Volusion, every themer’s nightmare

Posted Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 11:12 pm GMT +8 | Shopping Carts |

Volusion Logo

Recently, I had to convert a PSD into a theme for a Volusion store. I don’t really mind doing something new because I know that you’ll always, always learn something from it. But volusion just made me appreciate WordPress, Drupal and MVC frameworks more. When I first looked at the code within Volusion’s LiveEditor, I thought “Well this is going to be simple and easy.” But I was so, so, so wrong. It was a nightmare so hard, I’m not used to making the design work for the CMS — I’m used to bending it with my jedi mind tricks (or well, try). Volusion only has one theme for everything. Ever since I started learning more and more about Drupal, I’ve started to appreciate this one-theme-for-all-page strategy where you update all of the options in the admin panel instead of in the theme itself. It wasn’t easy at first because … Continue reading →

On creating themes and going out of your comfort zone

Posted Friday, October 2nd, 2009 12:55 pm GMT +8 | CMS |

Social Media

I have always been a WordPress girl, but you have to admit that there are instances where you just have to use something that specializes in that area. I’ve recently overhauled Last Leaf and turned it into a lifestream. I have stopped blogging there since the start of the year and have always thought of turning it into just that but I haven’t because creating themes for another CMS seemed intimidating. At first, I thought of writing my own lifestream, it should have been my way of learning more about RoR but until now, all I have in my folder is the basic install (which I have forgotten how I was able to produce) so I turned to the next best thing: Sweetcron. It’s been months since I have looked at Sweetcron, I remember that I found it so unfriendly to customize to one’s needs before. Turns out, all I … Continue reading →