Caty's Blog

Webshop v5.5 by Dandomain

Caty — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:38:31 +0000

I have been working on DanDomain Webshop software as early as Feb this year and as the project is drawing nearer to an end, just thinking to leave some thoughts here as compare with Zen cart and osCommerce.

Before I start, I would like to emphasize that this is solely based on the view point of a designer regarding the template system and not on a standpoint of an owner. Why would I say so? Well, for owner or anyone else who wish to open a webshop and start selling right away, webshop v5.5 is a good start, simply because the ease of use as most of the settings are controlled in the admin panel. There are a number of default templates and styles that one can set easily with very little knowledge of html programming. As far as I can see, this webshop is rather popular with its Danish clients.

But on a designer point of view, it is really a pain in terms of programming and setting up custom templates here and there. As I mentioned earlier, most settings, including templates, css styles and add-on modules has to be done via admin panel. The codes are pretty messy as the system auto-inserts quite a number of redundant codes which in returns, designer will need to find ways to "hide" it in order not to disrupt with the intended design. An example is that many non-semantic "" tags are added un-neccessary here and there and therefore efforts need to be taken if a block level element is required here, either by changing its’ default display property with css or doing a small "hack" of "un-span" and "re-span" later in between the block level elements that one intend to insert.

In addition, this system is "table" codes based and hence messy nested table are seen every where. I have to close one eye on my developer tool "HTML tidy" sitting right at the bottom of Firefox window where warnings statistics show up with a flying color. To name a few: "" and "" tags can appear in the middle of some content pages, styles declared inside elements etc..

Finally I survive through the design and implementation phases by significantly lowering down my expectation towards producing a design that passes W3C validation with warning and error free. And most of all, with great patience. Giving me a choice, Zen-cart is still my preferred option so far.

Huck Gee Dunny - golden ticket

Caty — Tue, 26 May 2009 07:20:41 +0000

Finally received the exclusive 3-inch Huck Gee Dunny, the redemption of my Golden Ticket for Dunny Series 5.

What am I doing lately?

Caty — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:36:10 +0000

It has been quite some time since the last update of my blog, I know, I know. I am evaluating on a new project lately and kind of my longest preliminary evaluation phase. On and off I have been taking in little new tasks here and there, browsing the net, reading Smashing Magazine, watching YouTube and listening to my favorite music on iTunes. Recent big news is the ongoing Swine flu epidemic which “forces” to me to cancel my 2nd Japan trip on June just for the safety of my family. Looking into the death toll in Mexico indeed make my heart sink, wish that the H1N1 virus will soon rest in peace.

This much for now…. and last but not least, just for sharing, a nice piece of artwork from deviantArt by gigi4g.

My vinyl toys collection 3

Caty — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 01:24:56 +0000

Here are my Trexi Series 3.

Tinkle Pants by Melovision

Tinkle Pants (back view)

Kimona by Septh

Kimona (back view)

Asteria trexi by Alice Chan

Asteria trexi (back view)

Protect Ya Face by Satoshi Okano

Protect Ya Face (back view)

Protect Ya Face (side view)

jQuery plugins

Caty — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:37:34 +0000

We have been hearing a lot about jQuery plugins in the recent years and here I compile a list of them for self-reference, hopefully it will be useful for some of you. For those who are new to jQuery, you might ask:

What is jQuery?

Extracted from the official home of jQuery.com:

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

Let’s go straight to explore the cool plugins now…

1. Accordion

This plugin creates an accordion menu. It works with nested lists, definition lists, or just nested divs. Options are available to specify the structure, if necessary, the active element (to display at first) and to customize animations. Read more »

2. jQuery Menu

This is a powerful jQuery component to build easily a multilevel tree menu or a contextual menu (right click) in an intuitive way! You can add as many submenus as you want; Read more »

3. Superfish: Suckerfish-style menu

Superfish is an enhanced Suckerfish-style menu jQuery plugin that takes an existing pure CSS drop-down menu (so it degrades gracefully without JavaScript). Read more »

4. Cool animated navigation menu

A cool animated menu built with css and jQuery. Read more »

5. JQZoom

JQZoom is a javascript image magnifier built at the top of the popular jQuery javascript framework. It uses script to magnify what you want. Read more »

6. Smooth Div Scroll

Smooth Div Scroll is a jQuery plugin that scrolls content left or right which does not limit the scroling to distinct steps. Scrolling is smooth and there are no visible buttons or links since the scrolling is done using hotspots within the scrollable area. Read more »

7. jQuery lightBox plugin

jQuery lightBox plugin is simple, elegant, unobtrusive, no need extra markup and is used to overlay images on the current page through the power and flexibility of jQuery´s selector. Read more »

8. BeautyTips

BeautyTips is a jQuery tooltips plugin which uses the canvas drawing element in the HTML5 spec in order to dynamically draw tooltips (sometimes called “talk bubbles” or “help balloons”) associated with a html element on the page. These tips are highly configurable and can be triggered in many different ways. Read more »

9. jCountdown

Creates a visual countdown timer of days, hours, minutes and seconds till the provided date. Read more »

10. Animated Hover

Animated Hover is a plugin for jQuery to create animated hover effects. Read more »

11. jCarousel

jCarousel is a jQuery plugin for controlling a list of items in horizontal or vertical order. The items, which can be static HTML content or loaded with (or without) AJAX, can be scrolled back and forth (with or without animation). Read more »

12. iconDock

iconDock is a jQuery JavaScript library plugin that allows you to create a menu on your web like the Mac OS X operating system dock effect one. It is based on the Google X menu, an approach that Google did to create this effect on the web. Read more »

13. Accessible News Slider

Accessible News Slider is a JavaScript plugin built for the jQuery library. Read more »

14. Slide out and drawer effect

Slide out and drawer effect is commonly known as an ‘accordion’ and it’s usually used to slide up, or down blocks of content to expose new blocks. Read more »

15. News ticker (BBC style)

News ticker in the style of that used on the BBC news site. See Demo »

There are still tons of great jQuery plugins out there. Simply google it and you’ll see what I mean.

And now, last but not least, here is a great tutorial about jQuery Sequential List, a good example to make use of jQuery. This tutorial will show you how to use jQuery to add a sequent of CSS classes to create a graphical list. Read more »

Inspiring wallpapers

Caty — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:39:31 +0000

I have make a compilation of some awesome and inspiring wallpapers, simply click on the wallpapers to download them. Enjoy!

Cat papercrafts

Caty — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:19:21 +0000

Below are my papercraft cat-friends… You can download them from CatCubeTopia.

I will be building more of these paper toys and post them here, hmm…they are indeed super cute! Thanks to the generous friends from CubeeCraft and CatCubeTopia.

Warning: You will get addicted to it, Caty do not hold responsibility to your newly found hobby in any case!

Fantastic papercraft design

Caty — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:42:56 +0000

Interested to create your own papercraft of some really kawaii figures? I have found quite a number of good sites that provide awesome papercrafts and therefore compile a list of them in this post. This really helps to de-stress when you look at those cute faces that you have built. Enjoy!

Your first stop: Cubeecraft

Harlancore papertoy

Bullet train papercraft from Sanrio

How about a cute Hello Kitty papercraft?

Amazing anime papercraft for manga fan, need a bit of patience for these…

More famous cartoon characters here from 4kids.tv

Free icons

Caty — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:02:03 +0000

Good thing in life usually don’t come free but sometimes there is exception some where. Look at all these FREE icon sets which featured on Smashing Magazine. Most of them are available for free download and can be used without any restrictions whatsoever, please check on the individual post for details. Here are the compilation:

» 20+ Free And Fresh Icon Sets

» Office Mouse Icons Set

» Free Vector PSD Icon Set

» Free Icon Set

» Free and Gorgeous RSS/Feed Icons

More links of free icon sets are featured on Smashing Magazine.

An update

Caty — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:22:37 +0000

Have been a little dated in updating this blog. Away for a 2 weeks holiday in Malaysia and back now with a design job and couple of ongoing queries. Guess will stay busy till after the New Year, wish everybody an early Happy New 2009!