Review: Freelanceswitch.com
For the last few weeks, I have been spending a good bit of time on Freelanceswitch.com. This site is awesome and offers up some excellent articles, tools, and info for the freelancing professional. Here is a quick rundown of things that I like and do not like about the site:
What I like
- The design of the site is very clean and probably one of the best designs of 2007 for me.
- The articles are great and always well informative about various freelancing topics.
- The tools are a godsend! The rates calculator is very helpful in figuring out what you need to be charging per hour for your freelance work.
- The podcast is great! Very informative podcast discussing important freelancing topics.
What I don’t like
- Even though they released a book, it should not cost $29 in my opinion. Once the paperback is released, a $29 tag may be alright, but for a PDF download, I would like to see the price in $14-$18 range.
- The job board, while great, is not free. It requires a monthly fee in order to view/post job listings.
- The forums could be better and a little more lively. I would like to see something more along the lines of the forums over at sitepoint.com.
All in all, freelanceswitch.com is an awesome place if you are a freelancer or thinking of becoming a freelancer. You will find a plethora of great information there and some handy tools that will help you along the way. If you have the cash, I would recommend that you pick up the book, as you will find it to be another great source of info.
I would love to hear your thoughts about the site, so check it out and then drop back by and leave me a comment on it!
Share your Mac’s wireless with your XBOX 360
In case you were wondering if you could hook up your 360 to your Mac and piggy back the wireless, why yes you can! Check out this article that explains how to share your Mac’s wireless connection with your XBOX 360. It takes a fair amount of configuration, but appears to work for everyone that has went through the process. This will certainly save you that $100 that MS wants for their wireless network adapter. Good luck with it.
My typical design process
I often times get asked what my process is for designing and building a typical website. And, while my process is probably not much different than others, I thought I would share it for people that are maybe looking to simplify the process of designing a site. I have broken the process down into 5 steps.
Step 1. Sketch Phase
When it comes time to design a new site, I start out by sketching all of my ideas out on paper. I first begin with writing down all of the initial thoughts I have about the company, the logo, the branding idea, etc. This allows me to free flow my thinking and get it all on paper to go back and use later. Once I do that, I sketch out some layout ideas and starting forming the look and feel as well as the flow of the site. Sketching on paper saves loads of time in this process, because it is quick and you can quickly get a good idea of where the site is headed without spending a lot of time mocking stuff up. Once I have a good sketch in place, and I am happy with the layout ideas, I move on to mocking it up.
Step 2. Mock-up
With my layout ideas sketched out, I move on to Photoshop to actually mock up the layout in a clean fashion. I build the site and place everything as it will look once it is actually usable. This is where I can move things around to better suit the site and finalize the layout before actually coding anything. Once I have the site mocked up and I am happy with the final version, I build it.
Step 3. Slice/Code
With my mock-up now complete, I can slice it up to get my images, logos, background images, etc. I then being the coding process by coding out all of the framework in an xhtml document. I typically use Textmate or skEdit for this but Dreamweaver is also a tool in my arsenal that gets plenty of use. Once I have the initial framework coded out, I then begin my CSS coding and putting some life to that xhtml code that I have created. Once I have the CSS and the xhtml code, I can build the complete site and fine tune the design to my liking.
Step 4. Testing
After I have the site built and looking like I want it to, I then begin the testing process in multiple browsers and platforms. I design and build everything in Firefox on the Mac, and I get the site looking perfect there first. Once I have that, I then go back and tweak for IE6, IE7, and some of the other lesser known browsers. I test everything for xhtml and css compliance and make all of my final tweaks at that point.
Step 5. Launch!
Once the site is designed, built, and tested….I launch it! Usually after a site launch, I often have to go back and make some other subtle tweaks to get everything pixel perfect. I set up hosting, domain name, etc. and upload everything to the new hosting server.
So, although what I have described above is brief, it gives you a good idea of my overall process. Obviously, there are further details that go into this such as client revisions, color schemes, etc., but you should now have a really good idea of my basic process. I hope that you find it useful and hopefully it helps you better refine your process for building sites.
As always, no process is perfect, so if you have any ideas or comments, I would be glad to head them. Maybe you have some ideas for making my process better. If so, please comment and share your ideas!
Design Float - Digg for Designers
I stumbled upon a new site today that is pretty cool if you are A) a designer of some type and B) you are a fan of the Digg. The site is called Design Float and it is a Digg clone that focuses on design in particular.
I like this site because it focuses on more of what I find interesting, without having to search for it like I would have to on Digg. My other complaint with Digg, is the fact that a lot of the content on Digg is useless in my opinion. A lot of content makes the front page that has absolutely no reason to be there, which can often times put better content on lower pages.
Design Float seems to already have a pretty good following and there seems to be a pretty good collection of information hitting the front page. I also like the fact that even though the primary content is based around design, the content is still categorized into more specific areas of design. This is great because I can immediately browse my particular area of interest quickly, without reading through content that may not be of interest to me.
All in all, even though the whole “Digg” type of site has been cloned countless times, I think that Design Float has cloned the concept well. Hopefully the site will gain a bigger following and continue to provide worthy content to the design industry. Check out the site and let me know what you think.
Freelance Business Processes
Freelanceswitch.com has posted a great article titled The Beginner’s Guide to Freelance Business Processes. There is some really good info in this article if you are a freelance designer or thinking of going out on your own. Freelancing is not an easy task to take on when first starting out, so this article should certainly help point you in the right direction.
XBOX 360 is amazing!
My wife was gracious enough to buy me an XBOX 360 for Christmas this year. This thing is totally amazing. I have been playing a PS2 for a few years now and had only briefly gotten to play the 360 here and there. Once I got it all setup and started to run it through a few games that I picked up, all I could say was “Wow!”.
What I like about it
First, the graphics are simply amazing. After playing the PS2 for a while, jumping to the 360 is like moving from a Civic to a Ferrari. Playing Madden now is just so much better that it is almost too much to comprehend. Start-up time is quick, the dashboard interface is laid out really well, and keeping track of game play and other stuff is a breeze. Finally, the wireless controller rocks! Being able to play from anywhere in the room is cool, as I am not limited to sitting right near the console to play.
What I don’t like about it
The controller itself is a little sketchy. I do like the wireless part, but the button layout could have been much better I think. I also think that it is a little too thick and could have been slimmed down just a bit. Next, the console is freaking loud! It sounds like a jet about to take off while it is running. I am sure it takes some really heavy air flow to cool this thing, but it is a little loud for me.
All in all, the 360 is completely insane! I have yet to play XBOX Live but I will be doing that as soon as I get my network adapter for the wireless network in my house. I am certainly happy with the 360 as a whole, now I just have to put it through some work and hope that it hangs in there to be a great gaming console.
Finally, a new blog!
So, with the new year coming up, I figured I would launch a new blog. I am using WordPress for this blog and I am also using a temporary template called i3Theme and you can download it here if you like it. It is pretty cool, and it will work until I can launch my more permanent look and feel. So why the new blog? For one, I miss blogging. Blogging is fun for me and after a small break, I am ready to go again with a fresh new blog.
I am going to be blogging about several things here including gaming, design, Rails, and life. This is my personal blog so I really want to incorporate more of my personal thought into this blog. Anyway, should be fun so stick around. I should have this puppy up and running smoothly in a few days. Thanks for stopping by!