Stikmen Graphic Design Blog

It's the End of an Internet (Explorer) Era

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:18:00 +0000

Cross-posted from: http://blog.mroberts.me

It’s about time! According to Arstechnica, http://arst.ch/rg6 which cites http://www.netmarketshare.com, Internet Explorer has finally dropped below 50% browser market share. As a web designer, this comes as a great relief.

Microsoft’s slow adoption (read: blatant ignorance) to web standards, has been a curse to web designers for years. Instead of focusing on design and usability, the design process becomes more about fixing all the little bugs that IE throws as it tries to load and display W3C compliant web pages which should render perfectly.

This is not my first IE post nor my business partner’s, as early as 2007 Malcolm’s posted:

and I’ve posted:

We’ve been disappointing since we started our company and unfortunately, unlike my last post suggested, Microsoft never really did accept standards.

For the same reason that Microsoft swept Netscape Navigator out of the browser wars, (before they even started) Microsoft installing Internet Explorer as the default browser on all Windows machines skyrocketed their market share because for the average user, the E icon was the internet.

The increasing publicity of alternative browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari; and Google’s educational website, http://www.whatbrowser.com are trying to increase the knowledge of the average user so they can make an informed decision and not just blindly accept IE.

An other aspect cited in the article is the increasing usage of mobile devices, a market in which Microsoft has yet to make any significant contribution.

I hope that Microsoft does step up it’s game, competition is key to any healthy marketplace and when corporations compete, it’s the users who benefit, but the way thing’s are going doesn’t look hopeful.

Hiatus, Social Networking & Asphalt Sealcoating

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:42:00 +0000

After a very frustrating spring season in which our website was down for three months I am glad to say Stikmen Graphic Design is back in action. We have migrated hosting and domain providers and things are finally settling down.
Malcolm and I both purchased our own personal domains during this time, mroberts.me and malcolmm.cc, I have placed a small "business card / dashboard" type of site on mine, inspired by the simple link-driven about.me and flavors.me sites, which many individuals are starting to have as a simple way of collecting their various social networking profiles from across different internet services into one aggregate place. I decided since I was a web designer, I would code my own instead of using one of the pre-built services. (I also wanted to give jQuery a try, which I believe worked out well. I am quite pleased with the resulting website. (The fact that I am using a .me domain just like the other services is purely coincidental.)

In design news, I have just completed a design for Seal-Pro's Asphalt Sealcoating, a business run by a high-school friend of mine, and added some social media aspects to Rockcliffe By-the-Sea - Tweet, Share on Facebook and Download as PDF buttons, as well as links in the header to Rockcliffe's Facebook, Twitter and Blog.
I have also been asked to complete a "Member's Area" on the site, for the property owners to share thoughts and contact information with each other. It should be completed within the next couple weeks. It will be password protected, so unfortunately only the owners will get to see it. I have decided to on a PHP MySQL backend.
If everything goes well with that, I have been thinking about designing a CMS for a while - possibly in PHP MySQL, though I may try Ruby on Rails. In any case, I will post an update when I start thinking about it more seriously.

Berwick United Church Camp Emergency Update

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:45:00 +0000

Right before Christmas, a large storm rolled through the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia. The campground of one of our clients, Berwick United Church Camp, got hit hard. Stikmen Graphic Design immediately mobilized and started publishing information on the website to keep the many campers around the country updated on the events and clean up operations.

Once the temporary solution, an updates page, was successfully implemented, we began to think about the long term updating process, as the rebuild effort will likely take a couple of years. Through communication with the Berwick Rebuild Committee, we decided to set up a blog platform to allow the executive to post information & pictures as well as allow the members of the community to post replies and their own information.

In under a week, the Berwick Rebuild Blog was brought online and began to be populated with regularly updated information, directly from the Camp Executive. We utilized the wordpress.org blogging platform, as it could be directly administered from the Berwick Camp website, and has a plethora of addon features as well as a completely customizable design. In addition to the blog, a feedburner rss feed was set up, that allows people to subscribe to the updates in a feed reader, like Google Reader, and the unique ability to allow people to subscribe to updates sent directly to their email, for those of the internet community who do not use feed readers.

A month later, we are proud to see that the blog has blossomed into a large community site, with many comments of support and requests to help from the camp community.

Cheers,
Matthew

Rayworth & Roberts Website Finally Here!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:38:00 +0000

I have recently finished designing a website for Rayworth & Roberts Surveys Ltd, my father's surveying company.
I am still receiving some new information, adjusting the wording and design features a bit, but the basic design is complete. This project should be wrapped up within the week.

The website design has been donated to R&R in the Christmas spirit.

Regards,

Rockcliffe By-the-Sea

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 02:18:00 +0000

Hello,
I have just finished updating the Rockcliffe By-the-Sea website. The site was in old HTML4 code and to keep with the times (conform to standards), I have updated it to XHTML1.1 and tweaked the style.

Some tweaking includes: widening (because most monitors are bigger than 800x600 now), adding menu items, playing around with triadic complimentary colours, adding background style and some additional style features to a site that was designed in the early 2000s.

On a side note: it amazes me that I am able to say "the early 2000s" whilst discussing something which is outdated. I can remember New Years Eve- December 31st, 1999 and it astounds me the technological advancements that have happened in the last 10 years, including how far web design has come.

But I digress. The important features of this update are the added Photo & Webcam page, showcasing user submitted photos of the area plus a live webcam feed and a link to their Blog.

Cheers,
Matthew

Rockcliffe By-the-Sea Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 17 May 2010 18:51:00 +0000

Salutations,
It's Matthew here with a quick update on the status of Rockcliffe By-the-Sea's web presence:

Stikmen Graphic Design has been commissioned to design and maintain a blog for Rockcliffe By-the-Sea. I have utilized the Blogger backend and the blog is currently residing at http://rockcliffebythesea.blogspot.com although once everything gets set up, I shall migrate to blog.rockcliffebythesea.com.
Also SGD is setting Rockcliffe up with a webcam, showcasing the oceanfront scenery of the land development company. So check back here or on the Rockcliffe blog for updates on when this will be put in place. (Current estimate: within a month!)

Cheers,

New Website Maintenance Contract

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:03:00 +0000

Stikmen Graphic Design has recently embarked on a long-term contract for management and updates of Rockcliffe By-the-Sea, a land development company in Parrsboro.

The website was not designed by us and not only does the content need to be updated, the code is outdated as well (HTML 4 Transitional). I will be updating the site to conform with the W3C recommendations as well as adding new content and linking to the Rockcliffe Picasa Web Albums which contains a vast number of photos uploaded by various members of the seaside community.

Malcolm and I begin to prepare to return to school within the week with busy days and long nights in the foreseeable future but we will continue to offer our web design services

Peace,

In Recent Times

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:11:00 +0000

It has been a while since we have updated, we have been busy with school work and of course some web design.

Since we have last updated we have completed two contracts.

Malcolm, on his own, created a very nice website for Professional Public Speaker, Peter Davison and together we have collaborated on updating the Berwick United Church Camp's online presence.

Peace,

Blog Action Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:50:00 +0000

Harper is back, with even more MPs than before. Gah. People are worried about our economic crisis but forget to step back and notice the poverty crisis:

30 000 children die every day from poverty-related causes [www.freethechildren.com]

That's one child every 3 seconds! That means in the time it takes you to read this post, 20-50 children will die, depending on how long it ends up being and how fast you read.

However, this poverty could be prevented! All it would take is 0.7% of the national income of 22 developed nations. This would raise the $195 billion needed to combat poverty effectively.[1] They pledged to do this in 2000, and many nations have already reached this goal. Canada has no plan whatsoever, and is currently only giving 0.28%.

Stephen Harper is doing nothing about this, and yet he gets re-elected - despite the conservative government having only 37% of votes. These extremely disproportionate results highlight the growing problem in Canada of the outdated plurality voting system. The Green Party (which, not incidentally, does have a plan to meet the 0.7% aid) had 900 000 votes nationwide (out of 13 million) and yet got not a single seat, where fewer than that number of voters in the west produced 27 conservative seats. Add to that an all-time low of 59.1% voter turnout,[2] and there is clearly something wrong.

...so we need a change. Forget potential change in governing party – we need a change in government policy at the electoral level. Canada's voting system dates back to the 12th century! It is outdated and does not work in a country that is no longer composed of just two parties. I still don't know exactly what we need, but the solution is out there. Here are some links for your readage:

B. O.

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 11:12:00 +0000

No, not Body Odor.

Bedford Orthotics.

Great Success

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:02:00 +0000

Stikmen Graphic Design has just purchased and setup the domain http://www.stikmen.ca. How cool is that? Pretty darn cool.
I have set the domain up with Google Apps and am very very impressed with what is offered. I would recommend it for any company.

On the heels of the new domain, I have changed the location of this blog from http://stikmen.blogspot.com to http://blog.stikmen.ca. Fortunately Blogger is well prepared to deal with this and makes the transition seamlessly.

So far I have nothing to complain about except that Oh-My-God, it's 4AM! Why don't I sleep??

Microsoft + Support + Web Standards?

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:34:00 +0000

I never thought I would see those three things in a sentence together without all molecular motion ceasing.

Microsoft has decided to make the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 support Web Standards according to http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/03/microsoft-backs.html. Before we know it, the cows will come home and pigs will be flying around like airplanes!

This doesn't seem like much, but means a lot to web designers such as myself and my partner. Bringing Internet Explorer up to speed will mean less tedious work for us.
Currently web designing involves a process of converting perfectly compliant code into code which is both compliant and works in Internet Explorer. We're glad to see that this process will no longer be necessary.

GITK gets a slideshow

noreply@blogger.com (Malcolm) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:00:00 +0000

I made a slideshow in PHP for Ghost in the Kitchen .... its pretty awesome =) As of right now, it can be found by clicking on the thumbnail on the bottom of the events page.

Winter Status Update

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 23:47:00 +0000

Exams, exams, exams oh my. It is almost Christmas break and with that comes.. gasp! Something called free time. Something which neither Malcolm nor I have experienced in so, so many weeks. Maybe we will finally get around to doing some updates and server maintenance that has been getting piled on top of everything else that we have to do academically.

We are still alive, barely at times but we're hanging in there. I'm hoping for some more updates soon, as we get back home for a restful and calming break.

Peace,

Blog Action Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 20:08:00 +0000

Today is Blog Action Day and though I am away at school, there are still ways which I can help the environment and I try to do as much as I can. Being at a large institution like a school, it is sometimes difficult to stay aware, but at the end of last month we did have a guest speaker - Gwynne Dyer, talking about some of the long term effects of climate change and how we need to change what we are doing now. He was very informative and even if not everyone who attended his lecture paid attention or cared about what he was saying - at least they heard it and the message was spread.

That is what is going on now, Blog Action Day is today and approximately twelve million blog readers will, if not participate, at least be exposed to the message about the environment - that we as the human race is harming this planet's environment. We need to do something about it too, this isn't a problem of the future, if we do not fix what we are doing - there won't be a future or at least it will be a very dismal one. Climate change and environmental awareness are subjects that should be branded into our brains and we have to realize the significance of what they mean.

Fall Updates
Malcolm and I are at school, lots of work and no free time so there are no updates on any projects at this time.

A Fresh Start to a New School Year

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:44:00 +0000

... well not really for Malcolm nor I, school will pretty much be the
same. But for the Town of Parrsboro, they should be quite impressed by their NEW, CUSTOM DESIGNED website!!!

SGD is proud to present the new Town of Parrsboro Website!
http://www.town.parrsboro.ns.ca

(and now Matt needs sleep!) =)

We have a site!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 15:28:00 +0000

Yes an actual website, that is ours!
http://www.stikmen.co.nr

Also a small status update:
We are not doing Jennifer Harrison's site
We just got confirmation from the Town of Parrsboro and we are starting that today.

Other than that, Rayworth & Roberts is coming along nicely and we have had a couple small updates on Ghost in the Kitchen.

I expect we will have some more posts soon as we get some stuff online.

Peace,

Summer Status Update and Firefox Persuasion!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:33:00 +0000

Status Update
We are quite literately very busy this summer, and this status update reflects some changes from the previous one in May: (Which is a good thing, it means we accomplished stuff!)

Current Projects:

Our own site - Stikmen Graphic Design. (This is very liable to get shoved back down to Backburner Projects when our Upcoming Projects get underway.)
Rayworth & Roberts Surveys Ltd.

Upcoming Projects:

Jennifer Harrison, Photographer
Town of Parrsboro (Complete Revamp)

Finished Projects:

Ghost in the Kitchen, the update went very smoothly - we added two new pages: Current Events and Links. Using some PHP, we set up online booking and reservations for Glenn's dinners as well as Photo Gallery. The links page has links to other websites of interest in the Parrsboro / Minas Basin shore area. There still might be a few more little updates to do but for the most part- it is complete.

Firefox Persuasion
As Malcolm so subtly stated, yes, Internet Explorer is a problem - as displayed in this nice, fun pie chart. Which makes me laugh every time I look at it... because it is so true.Internet Explorer is a problem because not only does it not display PNG images properly, as Malcolm stated. Microsoft fixed the transparency issue - but not the gamma issue. It does not fully support CSS, which is necessary in this ever expanding Web 2.0 world. Many people do not even know that there are alternatives to Internet Explorer, to some, mostly the older generations - Internet Explorer is "The Internet". They use it because it is installed default on Windows computers and they don't know that they have a choice. Internet Explorer has many bugs and problems with it including the big problem that it is very susceptible to viruses and other attacks.

The alternative that I suggest to everyone is Firefox, a cross platform, highly customizable, open source browser that is currently being used by 14% of internet users. It is more secure and though the current version does not fully support CSS like IE, it does a much better job and the next version (Firefox 3 coming Fall, 2007) does.

Firefox is widely used and appreciated by web designers for its many features and support for "Open Standards" which IE lacks.

I suggest to every internet user to at least try Firefox. If you hate it that much, sure go back to IE, but I feel the advantages definitively out way the... wait a sec, there are no disadvantages.

So please give it a try. we have a link at the bottom-right of this page. Seriously, you will make your web designers happy!

Internet Explorer

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:55:00 +0000

...sucks! It doesn't support PNGs properly, meaning that Matthew and I and Graphic Designers everywhere have to go out of our way to use imperfect image formats that are compatible with IE.

Get Firefox, and do a favour to every Web Developer in the world.

This afternoon, though, I found a little javascript fix for this, but it's still no excuse for Microsoft to be lazy with their browser.

*Sigh*

I think I may soon start boycotting the friends I have who use IE....

GitK Photo Update, amongst other things

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 04:59:00 +0000

Matthew and I updated Ghost in the Kitchen this evening, with a fancy new image gallery made with PHP... nice photos too...

Oh yeah, and I made my own personal blog! (yesterday haha)

Hey Peoples!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:12:00 +0000

So I'm chilling here, just a few feet away from Matt, who has been up for 22 hours straight, and he says he's posting to our blog. I was like "whoa! we have a blog!". I mean, he showed me at one point, but I had promptly forgotten all about it. So then I figured I should post something to here, because, after all, it is the "Stikmen Graphic Design Blog" and not the "Matt's Blog About Fun Things In Matt's Life" (no offense to Matt's life or any fun things therein) but anyway, here is my first blog post! Woohoo!

*waits for something exciting to happen*

Hmm... maybe not? oh well, Glenn's catering site is all shiny now, with some Ajax even! (if you want to reserve seats for a tasty dinner at an Art Gallery in our town of Parrsboro.)

So yeah, that's what I did last night... wait... this morning? Hmm....

-- Malcolm

Ghost in the Kitchen is Rockin!

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 10:44:00 +0000

Hello and a happy morning to everyone, Malcolm and I just finished updating the Ghost in the Kitchen website. Yes, I realize that it is only 7:46. Many people may wonder how we just finished updating so early in the morning and many people may ask - when did you guys get up? The fun answer to that question is that to wake up, we have to fall asleep first. After a solid six hours, the site is looking sweet. We added a new page - Current Events and added a form to submit dinner registrations. As well, I added a bunch of pics to the site, to try to show the quality of Glenn's meals and his expertise.

Now, as I am getting closer and closer to becoming legally intoxicated (24 hours straight) I am going to sit in my chair and laugh at random things that make me laugh... which is a lot at this moment.

Oh yea.... here is the site http://www.ghostinthekitchen.com

Taadaa! Tacos Rule.

Maritime Tidal is Done

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:07:00 +0000

Malcolm has just finished the Maritime Tidal website.

go check it out:
http://www.maritimetidal.com

Status Update

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:35:00 +0000

Here is a status update for the month:

Current Projects:

Rayworth & Roberts Surveys Ltd.

Current Updates:

Ghost in the Kitchen

Upcoming Projects:

Town of Parrsboro (Complete Revamp)

Backburner Projects:

Stikmen Graphic Design (our own website)
Folding@Home Team

Hello World

noreply@blogger.com (Matt) — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:10:00 +0000

So this is a blog... Welcome to this blog... does anyone actually welcome people to a blog... I don't know...

Right now we have no time to do anything, either with clients or our own site, which is hopelessly overdue. If we ever do get time, it will be spent on our clients.. so I am predicting that our site will never be finished, all though I do have some nice ideas for it, if it ever comes to pass.

I figure that, since a blog is already set up and requires very little maintenance, we might as well use it for news, as apposed to our site which is currently a very interesting splash image... as interesting as a splash image can be. It will be easier and give us a little more free time because it is already set up.

This is meant to be a resource for past and current clients who are interested in what is going on and to anyone else who may care.