Web Designer and Hosting Jakarta | Stucel » Blog

Looking Back at 2011

Felix Widjaja — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:52:01 +0000

Hey it’s almost 2012 and it’s time to remember what we’ve done in 2011. Well, it has been a roller coaster year, and here’s something worth remembering:

Roughly 400 – 500 Adobe Photoshop documents were drilled in 2011.
Surprisingly there is a 1 year old project since 2010 that is still under development.
The farthest signed project is from Angola, in Africa.
We begin accepting Hosting service for public in February, with 39 happy clients.
We still haven’t manage to discover the right person for senior designer / senior developer position.
I totally forgot to write a Merry Christmas blog.

We wish you a prosperous 2012 and luck to you, your business and your family.

Big and Wide Header Image

Felix Widjaja — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 08:23:02 +0000

Website with big header (or stage) image is getting more and more popular. I love them, because it usually help the user to experience the design/branding by pulling down the atmosphere. Impact, vibrant and rich are the keywords. But there’s a big sacrifice: slower loading time.

They usually dominating the header, go 100% full width in browser, hugging the content. And, combined with slider effect. Here’s some sample:

Nest

The Wistar Institute

Nintendo Holiday Gift Guide

HatBox

Lakehouse

War Child

Jones Film & Video

Peter Nappi

PUMA

Speak

illy issimo

Surfcamp Portugal

City of Camden, South Carolina

Philadelphia - Official Visitor Site

Harlingen Sail

Bluecadet Interactive

St Paul’s School

True Tea

Fish

Icon Resource

Felix Widjaja — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:49:30 +0000

Often, when designing website, I need to use specific icon fast, because they are important (explained in this post). The usual suspects are social media icons (Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn), email icon, login icon, country flag, phone icon, document icon). There’s no way to use the same resource in my personal folder collection for over and over again, for every single project. My favorit resource to find them are from:

Icon Finder

Find Icons

Icon Archive

Icon Wanted

What I really like about them is the ability to search “free for commercial use” license icons.

Unique Logo Treatment in Web Design

Felix Widjaja — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 04:47:33 +0000

Awesome website designer has to make every project unique. One of the way to achieve that, is by unique logo treatment. The traditional, safe, and familiar place to put logo is of course on the left side of the screen. But, why not putting it on center, or maybe on the right, or maybe still on left but spice it a bit? We all know it’s not that easy to get client approval for those unorthodox treatment, even though it’s looking great.

Let’s see some samples shall we?

Raise the Roof Productions

Dixon's Apples

Jux

Summit Brewing Company

Creative Jar

Moody International

Carnivale du Vin 2011

Forside

Lost Type Co-op

Dust and Mold Design

Bookish

Tech Jobs Under The Big Top

Love for Japan

Aussie Living

tapmates

What is Your Problem

Hungarian Wine Society

Beanstalk

JDW

Pointless Corp

Casa Laura

Macaroni Bros

Greater Dunnellon Historical Society

Cascade Brewery Co

Cognition

Themes kingdom

Joseph Cohen

FHOKE

Bakersfield Oktoberfest

Galpin Industries

Word Refuge

Lumin Solar

OpenCongress

nGen Works

Creative Mints

McKinney

City Of Katy, TX

Flipboard

Steinway & Sons

AWP Express

The Ernest Hemingway Collection

Cookmate

Saul Craviotto

Ramp Champ

Beautiful and Inspirational iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad App Website Design

Felix Widjaja — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:21:49 +0000

iOS applications are hot and beautifully executed and eye pleasing. They really follow the Apple’s way to do things perfect in its iOS and hardware. But these thousands of apps are competing each other in blood bath, dying to get us notice. So how they get stand out? The answer is cool website design for showcasing their apps.

To get their customer hit the “Available now on the App Store” button, they usually show:

big and cool application icon,
one page format,
price,
video or animated screenshots that shows how the application are used,
awesome illustration.

Below are my favorite list:

Tipulator

Convertbot

Finger

Tripmix

Bills

Tea Round

Ben The Bodyguard

Stop The Vom

Ecoki

Friends

Leaflet

Movies Now

Weet

Calcbot

OldBooth

Cookmate

Faces

Ramp Champ

ShakeItPhoto

Essential (Supportive) Apps for Web Designer in Mac

Felix Widjaja — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 04:56:34 +0000

Adobe Photoshop can’t live alone, she needs companions. During work, I can’t rely to her only, I’m using these must-have applications to accompany her:

LittleSnapper

I need LittleSnapper ($39.99) to snap / take screenshot all my favorite or unique websites that is very useful during rainy days. Before using this app, I used to manually screenshot them and put the files in a folder (lucky I didn’t print them all). In LittleSnapper, I can organize all my 1749 screenshots i.e add tags, give rates, get the original URL, or maybe put the best in smart folder. Just like Finder, it is possible to quick change the thumbnail size. Very convenient and time saver.

PS. LittleSnapper has some limitation when snapping Adobe Flash element. It will be left blank, while the other non Flash element will be included in the shot.

1749 shots. Told you! Heh-heh-heh-heh (Green Pig laugh)

Taking website screenshot has never been this easier

The Hit List

To Get Things Done in awesome way, I like to use The Hit List ($49.95). Why not Things, or maybe Wunderlist? In THL, it’s allowed to paste or drag any kind of text, list formatted texts, line-break separated texts, even email message from Mail.app into THL and it automatically convert it into list of tasks. Organizing tasks is so dead simple easy by using the award winning shortcuts just like playing Counter Strike: w, a, s, d. Tip: If you like to play with GeekTool, it’s also possible to display The Hit List tasks in desktop.

My first training list in THL Dojo, and I've mastered it all! Well, except this one –it's because I always love to repeat it, I don't know why

The Card View. So I can focus on 1 task per time

OS wide quick entry task

Very handy for hourly-based job

Transmit

After 5 years of happy and loyal Cyberduck user and took some peeks to Flow, I think it’s safe to say that Transmit ($34) is the best FTP client in Mac. It has all the stuffs I love, not just wide protocol support; but super gorgeous interface, mount any FTP to Finder, sync your local development folder content to the production server, breadcrumb navigation, or maybe create some Droplets. My favorite feature is Places. Places is a drag-drop activated bookmark. Accessing my the WordPress theme directory is just one click away, instead of four clicks of /public_html/wp-content/themes/_themename

Easy to create, easy to access. Just one click away to the bookmarks.

Favorite screen. The dark design is really hypnotizing in a good way, can't deny that

LittleIpsum

LittleIpsum (free, but donation is suggested) is the best Latin text generator for OS X. It’s Incredibly quick and lightweight.

It’s very great to know that I have a quick access to grab some random latin text aka “Lorem ipsum” for dummy text purpose when I’m working. Dustin Senos (the author of this wonderful app) is really know how to differentiate paragraph, title and sentences.

How to use LittleIpsum

LittleIpsum in Action

Droplr

Showing design progress in chat or email conversation shouldn’t always be: direct send or attach the file. Not all people that I know, likes to receive big attachment emails. Giving short links for them to download is more safe. Droplr (free) is helping me to do that. I just drag file to the app (in Dock or in menu bar). Post uploaded, Droplr automatically copy the download URL into clipboard. You can paste it everywhere, example: http://d.pr/AbcD

Quickly access to Recent Drops is possible

If you thinking to use your own domain, instead of d.pr, then you like me. I use drop.stucel.com to make it more personal and professional. Go to settings and you can customize your domain there. Warning, you need to modify your DNS settings in your web hosting control panel. Don’t do it if you have no experience, otherwise there’s a risk your domain won’t load your website.

Can't wait to do it right?

Icons in Web Design Trend

Felix Widjaja — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 04:40:53 +0000

The current state of web design trend are fancy fonts and icons. Icons (or in this case: glyph) are usually enlarged, and colored by less than 3 tones. Usual suspects are: social media icons and company services. I can’t imagine a web design without icons, because to me they really add spices, and visual impact to the design.

Let’s see some examples:

Galpin

Threadbird

Postmark

Foound

Keith Cakes

True tea

Zabawnik

Column Five Media

There are numerous free resources for this. But as you see, they mostly come in small size. For serious web designers like us, we need premium icons in vector format. Here’s some list that I know:

Google Apps Email Setup in cPanel

Felix Widjaja — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:34:58 +0000

The guide for setting up email for Google Apps in cPanel is surprisingly minimum. To set up, it’s very simple, just log on to your cPanel hosting account, and go to Mail > MX Entry.

Once there, select your domain from the drop down menu, and Add New Record with this following rules:

Priority: 0
Destination: aspmx.l.google.com

Done.

Skype Mac Chat Style Competition

Felix Widjaja — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:47:07 +0000

I just submitted a theme for the Skype Mac Chat Style competition. It’s called Fish and Chips. The name came from one of my favorite food (yummy!)

To demo the skin, look for this button in the above link:

Please cast your vote and support us by clicking the blue Vote button in here (you have to register first – you can not login using Skype ID). And help retweet this post Tweet

Several screenshots to convince you (click to enlarge):

Coming Soon: GlassWorks WordPress Theme at Wordspop

Felix Widjaja — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 05:24:12 +0000

We submitted a WordPress theme named GlassWorks intended for web designer, photographer, graphic designer, and related fields to Wordspop. Wordspop has been known for their flagship & delicious theme: Fotofolio (version 1 and 2). Currently GlassWorks is in slicing progress and I’m still designing the mobile version.

Here’s the preview: