Website Development

Akron Canton Airport Wins 2009 Zenith Award with TKG-Built Website

Phil — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:41:57 +0000

The Akron Canton Airport received the Hospitality Website of the Year Award today at the 8th annual Zenith Awards ceremony held at the John S. Knight Center in Akron (really JSKC, ranked third for your own name in Google? Give us a call, I think we need to talk…). The Zenith awards are presented annually by the Akron/Summit Convention and Visitors Bureau to recognize contributions made to the Akron and Summit County Hospitality Industry. They are held around this time each year to coincide with National Tourism Week, which you totally already knew happens every May. No official word on which elements of the airport’s site put it over the top as the winner, but we are guessing that the Quick and Advanced Flight Searches, detailed services information, easy to use arrivals and departures information, tons of interactive content, and online booking integrations for flights, hotels and cars didn’t hurt.

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TKG Now Offering Six Months of Free Web Hosting

Phil — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:08:31 +0000

Related to web development? Absolutely not. Well, maybe. If you have developed, or are presently in the process of developing, a site which you would like to have hosted for free for six months, then this is completely applicable and something you should sign up for immediately. Was that awkward false start of a marketing message not enough to convince you? Then check out this amusing video starring a certified TKG personnel person. No commitment, no initial costs or termination fees; we’re just so sure that you will get addicted to our service and reliability that you will gladly stick around after the free six months and start paying us for it. Or you’ll be too lazy to move your hosting again and the personal service and reliable uptime will just be a perk. We’re cool with it either way.

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Network Socially While Learning About Social Networking

Phil — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:21:31 +0000

WebSIG Cleveland’s next meetup will be focused on the increasingly-important topic of social networking. Let’s go to the official announcement text:

“ In this session, discover how to effectively use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn to fuel traffic to your online channels of business. What does it take to harness the power of these interactive tools? How much time does it take? Why should I bother with them?”

The meetup is scheduled for Saturday, February 21st, from 10:30 AM until noon, and will take place here:

Barudan America
29500 Fountain Parkway
Solon, OH 44139-4350

Sound good? Damn right it does. If you need any more information (or if just enjoy opening additional browser windows), you can checkout the meetup’s detail page.

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CWSA Meetup Tomorrow – Your first date with Object Oriented Programming

Phil — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:15:00 +0000

The Cleveland Web Standards Association’s next meetup is Wednesday, February 3rd, from 6:30pm to 8:00pm, at Progressive Insurance (details below). The subject is an introduction to object oriented programming, the speaker is Dave Goerlich, nature/location of the after-party is to be determined on the night, and the write-up from the CWSA themselves is as follows:

“Have you had to endure developers talking about objects, classes, interfaces, inheritance and the like and not really understood what they were talking about? Are you a beginning or self-taught developer, and are still trying to get your head around the concepts of OO? This presentation is for you. Dave Goerlich will explain the fundamentals of OO without getting code in the way.”

As promised, here are some more details on the location. The Progressive Campus is located off the Wilson Mills Road exit on I-271. Check in at the Visitor’s Center in the West Building at the 6300 Wilson Mills Rd. Campus.The meeting will be in the Campus 1 West Lower Wintergarden room. Hope to see you all there.

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The New TKG.Com

Phil — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:28:41 +0000

Sometimes a new design is a great idea, while other times, dear sweet everything even remotely holy, maybe not so much. The good news is we’re pretty sure ours falls under the former.

You can probably guess by how often I’ve been blogging lately just how much I can come up with to write about this, so instead of trying and risking humiliating failure, I will instead direct you to what our professional writing-stuff-about-stuff people had to say about it, as well as list some quotes from the key people who actually built it about why the new site is so sweet:

Colin: Development Team Lead “I like the simplified homepage experience. It directs users to our major areas of interest so they don’t get lost. I think we made a more typographically engaging website, which is easier to read and digest.”

David: Senior Designer “It’s search engine optimized, user experience driven, and pretty darn cute… it’s custom tailored for our users based on statistical analysis and client feedback, we’re deploying a strategy that has been 10 years in the making. Looking good, being seen.”

Kyle: HTML Programmer “The new site is a lot more “clean” and more focused… I think it is more engaging overall with more of a doorway into our office instead of a window peek.”

… and new individual section designs are still being added to the site, so keep checking back. Hey, we might even fix my bio pic so that I no longer appear to have lost both of my eyes and then had the side of my forehead caved in by a shovel (which I presumably couldn’t dodge due to the aforementioned eye deficit).

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Release of Google Chrome good for Developers

Phil — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 14:54:28 +0000

Whether or not you like the idea of turning over yet another aspect of your life to Google, Chrome is a great tool for developers. If for no other reason than being the newest browser base built with the most recent standards and technology in mind, it offers us some great new opportunities. Here is a quick hit list of how you can use Google Chrome can help you as a developer:

Chrome is based on multiple processes, not a single thread. While existing browsers would get hung up waiting for an intensive Javascript to finish running for example, Chrome is able to work around it.
Chrome’s Process Viewer lets you examine the individual components of a webpage to allow developers to diagnose slow spots and more finite issues easily.
Chrome uses Google’s V8 javascript engine, and Sand Box security provides safety and independence of platform.
Chrome’s code base was built from the ground up with an understanding of where the web is today, not 7 years ago.
Javascript used to mean smaller apps and programs. Chrome is designed to handle the large and complex Javascript applications that the web is comprised of today, such as gmail.

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TKG Project Wins Award with Name Too Long for this Post Title

Phil — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 20:03:19 +0000

I’d like to take this moment (and this incredibly long sentence) to announce that Buckle Down Publishing’s website has won The Association of Educational Publisher’s 2008 Beacon Award for Excellence in Website / E-Commerce. The name kinda lost me there at the end, but I’m pretty sure that this means that we, as the developers of this site, did something good. Good for Buckle Down Publishing as well for conceiving (and constantly revewing and improving) a clear and strong vision for how their site should look and function to best serve their customers. And for giving us money. Definately never a bad idea to give us money.

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Applying semantics the “old school” way?

james — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:45:16 +0000

I was having an interesting conversation today regarding POSH with a colleague during the development of a back-end system. Over the years, we have both detached ourselves from the mind-set/methodology of using tables for layout in our markup (generally speaking – properly separating content from presentation). Although, towards the end of the conversation, we delved into the use of Microformats to further semantically markup items such as contact information and mailing addresses, and my colleague brought up an interesting assumption that he made regarding use of the class=”" on HTML markup to Microformat it. Essentially with this assumption, he concluded that applying CSS was the sole purpose of the class attribute and therefore applying classes to the markup only to get the data microformatted was the same as using the “table” tag to layout a page.

Now, I voluntarily teach a class covering semantic markup of HTML and applied CSS. A good number of the students traditionally in attendance are those that are still familiar with the “old school” markup techniques (and fresh out of college, no less). I have yet to have a student or another colleague have the same assumption, but I can clearly see now how that could be concluded without a proper education, so I am putting this out there educationally to help others with a similar assumption.

Here is what I quickly found on the topic to help him understand the “old school” way is not being duplicated again by “presentationally” applying classes to markup to solely “format” it. The first two seem a little light in their description though, so this has spurred my colleague to seek out what those “other” straight-forward uses of the class attribute are. What do you know of? Drop me a line and let me know.

W3C – says For general purpose processing by user agents
Web Design Group says An author could use when giving Java code – so use for self-identification in programming or further development


Tantek’s Blog – some other things to note


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TKG Accepted as Judge for 2008 WebAwards
Phil — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:28:48 +0000
The Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards have added something new for 2008 – the critical eye of our own James Golden. Since 1997, these annual awards have recognized websites in 96 different industries for achievement and excellence in original design, technical development, functionality, SEO efforts and marketing campaigns. We figured we should get involved due to the organization’s goals of encouraging standards and rewarding innovation in the web industry (causes whose banners we have been known to raise from time to time). We gave them James as he is our own personal project critic. Once James is okay with it, it is certain that the client – being a mere mortal – will most assuredly approve.
We first became involved with the awards last year with the most positive of possible introductions – we won one (Outstanding Achievement in Website Development for Schumacher Homes). So this year James will join judges from 37 different countries and countless organizations (seriously, I tried) in determining who this year’s winners will be. This of course means that our projects are no longer eligible to win, but that’s a price we’re willing to pay to have James scrutinize someone else’s work for a few weeks.
If you have a site that you would like to nominate, click here , and hurry as the nomination process wraps up this Friday, June 13th.
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A Blank Canvas
David — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:47:27 +0000
It’s fitting that I should choose to begin this (my first design blog) where all design projects begin…with “a blank canvas”.  I would like to emphasize how blank space can be a useful design element if used properly. I’ve noticed that many designers rush to fill in  the canvas with anything, and everything they can, as though the canvas were something to be ashamed of (even to the extent of placing animated flame gifs on their sites). Sometimes we are afraid to show a design-in-progress for fear that others will see our designs half dressed. Well I’m taking a stand to liberate the web. Don’t cover it up, learn to love your canvas. Now obviously you can’t always control the amount of content, or imagery that is required for every site, but a well spaced layout is far more appealing than you may have realized. When you clutter a design you lose symmetry quickly, and symmetry is one of the primary principles of good design. Large fonts, and big logos are the most common violations in this regard. These are usually the first elements used in the design, and thus their size is often increased to fill that shameful canvas. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not promoting minimalism on the web, I’m just hoping to reduce some needless clutter and maybe increase the symmetry.
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