A recent project I was working on required some rollover tooltips. Easy right? Well, usually. However, this project threw me a curve ball. I needed to have my tooltips work with an image map and be powered by javascript. The problems I found with image maps is that due to the hotspots using the “<area />” tag, most javascript tooltips would not work. Even though you can apply “classes” and “id”’s to the image map, the tooltip just would not acknowledge the hotspot. So finally, after scouring the internet, mckay.cshl.edu/balloons3.html came to my rescue with a lightweight, good looking, “mousover” powered tooltip. This solution proved to be quick and easily customizable.

Here is a screencast I made on creating a single page in Photoshop and how to slice it. This is the first screencast in a series. Later in part 2 I am going to show you how to take the sliced up image and create a HTML and CSS page out of it. In part 3 I will show you how to take the HTML and CSS page and turn it into a template for Joomla! and WordPress.

Check back in the coming weeks for the rest of the screencasts in this series.

I don’t know where I found time to watch this video but I am ecstatic that I did. This video is of Randy Pausch who has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He is the self-proclaimed expert on time management since doctors have given him just a few months to live. I can say that this has changed the way that I look at how I am spending my time.

After 3 major issues with GoDaddy’s dedicated hosting we have decided to move all hosting to Mosso. I have had very positive experiences with Rackspace in the past, and since Mosso is backed by Rackspace I feel like this will be a very positive move.

Mosso has many features that are either improved or weren’t available with GoDaddy.

Improved web mail

Spam filters

• There is a new and improved web mail interface.
• Mosso is a hosting cloud, which means a whole cluster of servers will be serving up the sites. This results in faster page load times - especially at peak hours.
• Clients will have access to add, remove, and edit email accounts and ftp users.
• Mosso has spam filtering that can be adjusted in the web mail interface or in the client control panel.
• Mosso is environmentally friendly.

We will be contacting all of our clients as we move them to the new server. We are using this as an opportunity to clean up accounts and remove any unwanted email addresses that might be collecting email and eating up space.

Don’t hesitate to email support with any questions you may have. I would like to thank all of our clients in advance for cooperation during the migration process. I promise it will be worth it.

We are now in a time where static HTML sites just won’t do. We have moved from a workflow where every page was built in an editor like FrontPage (hopefully not) or Dreamweaver to building just a template and using a CMS (content management system) to place the content into the template. This sounds great but there is a major flaw in every CMS I have seen that currently exists. End users do not equal computer experts.

I can spend as much time training a client on how to use a CMS, no matter if it is Joomla, Drupal, or wordpress, as I do building the whole site. Most of the problems they encounter are trivial things that were easy back when they used Dreamweaver or some wysiwyg front-end editor (I say front-end because they were looking at what looked like the page, not a back-end control panel). “How do I insert an image on the page?” or “How do I change the page title?” and the most common of course, “How do I add a page?”. In trying to make content management systems flexible, adding a simple page means you must first make a content item Read the rest of this entry »

Hello all, this is John Goodman, the new Creative Developer at Poetic Systems. I’m excited about joining the PS team and cannot wait to get started. Hope to be designing for you soon. Check out my bio.

We had a great time filming the Houston Business Show event at El Tiempo. There were a lot of interesting local people there and I would definitely recommend going to the next one when it comes up. For more information on future events visit HoustonBusinessShow.com. Here is the footage… Enjoy!

 

 Houston Business Show at El Tiempo 2/27/08: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (289)

The time to upgrade your Internet Explorer 6 is not now, it was 2 years ago. It is disturbing to think about the suffering and pain IE6 is still causing, and how many victims it still torments on a daily basis even in 2008. People who haven’t upgraded to either Firefox, Safari, or even Internet Explorer 7 need to simply step into the light. It’s free, takes 5 minutes or less, and you will wonder why you stayed in the dark for so long.

Tabbed browsing, better page presentations, and extensive plug-in libraries to add functionality and convenience are not the only reasons you should upgrade.  It’s important for your security, and better for the community as a whole.

Why would it help the communty? Web developers all over the world have to jump through flaming hoops to make web sites “appear” properly for the high-percentage of users still using IE6. The result is less feature rich sites for everyone, because designers must compromise and fix layouts when attempting to use modern CSS design elements.

To be fair, all browsers behave slightly different when displaying a site as it’s intended to look by the designer. Huge leaps of progress have been made between IE6 days and 2008. All the differences will be clear to you after upgrading, if you haven’t already. We may be preaching to the choir, but if this post causes just one existing IE6 user to upgrade to a current version of Firefox, Safari, Opera, or anything other than Internet Explorer Version 6.x, it was worthwhile.

CSSEdit takes the pain out of CSS. I usually use google to lookup CSS properties I don’t have memorized. With the full featured sidebar built into CSSEdit you will find yourself building complex styles in minutes and learning many of the CSS properties it generates in the process.

This was the final blow to Dreamweaver which I don’t use at all now. Between CSSEdit and TextMate I have everything I need to turn my image slices into fully functional websites.

Welcome to the Poetic Systems Blog. We will be featuring articles, how-to’s, reviews, screen-cast tutorials, tips, tools, and marketing advice to help you get ahead on the web and stay there. Poetic Systems is a web development and marketing firm based in Houston Texas, serving clients across many industries including publishing, real estate, media, non-profits and more. Check out our services page to find out how we can help you, or just help yourself to our articles and screen-casts we will feature regularly on the blog.

I hope you enjoy the information to come, and it helps you on your journey to market more effectively online. Please bookmark, subscribe to our RSS feed, or whatever it takes to remember to stop by again and see what’s new.