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NBD News
January 26, 2009

2009 Is Here...

...and moving fast! After a December hiatus, I'm sending my first newsletter of 2009, and it's nearly February. Does time fly when it's only 9 degrees out? 

I think you'll enjoy exploring my Featured Client Vaughn Sills' photography, at www.vaughnsills.com. This month's Explainer is on javascript, which helps make Vaughn's gallery slideshows possible. In What's Next I introduce Twitter, yet another web application for keeping in touch. And I announce the Second Ever NBD News Contest, in which you can win a free custom Twitter homepage.

Featured Client: Vaughn Sills

Vaughn Sills is a photographer and professor of photography living in Boston. The portfolio website we put together, www.vaughnsills.com, shows the range of her work from portraiture to landscape to still life. The initial design process was largely one of stripping down--to finally achieve a minimalist design that recedes into the background in order to focus on the photographs. It's been a privilege to work with Vaughn, and a pleasurable departure to work on a site that, like her husband's (a previous Featured Client), is more about expression than imparting information.

Explainer: Javascript

If html is used to structure web content, and css is used to style it (check out my article "What is a website made of?"), then javascript is used to manipulate it. Javascript commands run in your browser, and can add elements to a page, hide others, change colors or images, and perhaps most importantly, react to user actions, like mouse clicks and movements. Vaughn Sills' galleries are a good example of javascript in action. Without javascript, the display would be very basic. But with javascript, when a visitor clicks on an image, she is taken to a slideshow beginning with that image. Javascript can also be used to draw in information from remote sources--for example allowing your Twitter feed (more on that below) to show up on your Facebook page. In the early days of the web, javascript was mainly used for popping up windows and adding flashy buttons, but now entire web applications like Gmail are heavily reliant on javascript.

What's Next: Twitter

A few of my clients are already hip to the "micro-blogging", social-networking site Twitter. I first learned of it through a web design podcast I listen to, and while I was skeptical at first, it's definitely growing on me.

The premise is that you can post (from the web, mobile phone, or chat client) a very short snippet (a "tweet") about what you are up to--though this gets stretched to short rants, questions, resource recommendations, advertisements, etc. You can then "follow" others' tweets, and they in turn can follow you. Your Twitter homepage becomes a timeline of your updates and those of the Twitterers you're following.

A fun and interesting twist is for a group to use Twitter like a chat room, by using the website tweetchat.com. You can also use Twitter right from Facebook, and have your updates post to your Wall.

And for your own site, Twitter can be integrated with a blog in two ways--by importing your Twitter posts to display on your blog, or by automatically posting a tweet when you publish a new post.

You can check out my Twitter page, or start one of your own--if you do, check out my new contest below!

New Twittastic Contest

Due to the overwhelming popularity of my first contest (thank you Jacqui, Jan, Janine, and Sue for commenting, and congrats to Jacqui on winning a free Gravatar), I'm introducing my second NBD Contest: a custom Twitter page! You can make your Twitter homepage your own with personalized colors and a custom background image. If you win this contest, I will do it for you for free! To enter, simply email me an idea for a blog post or Explainer topic. Any one that I write up will win a custom Twitter homepage.