If you use Dreamweaver CS2 or CS3 and code in ASP.NET you’ll know about an annoying problem it has (I’m not sure if they have fixed it for CS4) – Dreamweaver doesn’t know what a Master page is and tus treats it like plain text, meaning when you open it up you get no intelli-sense or ASP.NET support!   This is really easy to fix with a quick edit of an XML file in the install directory of Dreamweaver More...

I had the challenge recently of creating an A5 flyer that we could use to hand out round local business parks, I say challenge in the fact that anyone in this industry knows how 'touchy' people and businesses can be when approaching them about their website.

Because a lot of small businesses get friends or associates to design and build their website, or they have had a lot of input in the design and functionality - Even with the most innocent suggestions of improving the site to help the business, people tend to jump straight into a defensive mode and trying to have a conversation about improving anything is almost impossible!

So to try and get our name about, my mission was to create a double sided flyer that:

1. Caught peoples eye
2. Instantly let the person know what type of service we are offering
3. Wasn't pushy but got to the point
4. Came across as friendly and warm More...

I know everyone and their uncle does these types of lists, but as I have about 4 zillion bookmarks I thought I would collate them here and maybe the list could be useful to other people.  I find the design part of web design the hardest and takes me the longest (Being an in-training programmer ) so these types of site are great and give me a lot of inspiration and help with colour matching / schemes.

1. http://cssremix.com/
2. http://cssmania.com/
3. http://www.cssheaven.com/
4. http://www.cssbeauty.com/
5. http://bestwebgallery.com/
6. http://screenfluent.com/
7. http://cssprincess.com/
8. http://www.cssclip.com/
9. http://www.csselite.com.ar/
10. http://www.piepmatzel.de/
11. http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
12. http://www.studio7designs.com/
13. http://www.thedesignedtree.com/
14. http://www.professionalontheweb.com/
15. http://freelanceswitch.com/working/34-places-to-get-design-inspiration-online-and-off/
16. http://www.designbyfront.com/portfolio/index.html
17. http://www.flickr.com/photos/splat/sets/981332/
18. http://www.stare-at.com/
19. http://www.n3o.co.uk/portfolio.aspx
    
20. http://www.clearleft.com/portfolio/

Well I have finally done it...  I managed to finish the first version of ASPLD and have decided to open it up to the ASP.NET open source scene.  I was going to charge few bucks initially but just decided it would be much better all round if I just let it be open source, in the hope people might submit a few themes and if it becomes fairly popular I'll really give version 2 a lot of time.

This version 1 is pretty scaleable and you can customise it fairly easily, being fairly new to ASP.NET (Been doing it about 12 months) I hope to really make the code more efficient over the next versions as I gain more experience, and maybe even change to MVC once its released.. But we'll see! More...

With more and more people turning to the web for products and business services, it’s no wonder why more and more businesses are realising they need to have some sort of presence on the web in the form of a website. But with the economy being as it is, and businesses having such a tough time with start-up and running costs a website is usually something that is at the bottom of the financial list... Unfortunately this is can be a big mistake.

Due to budget constraints, and the ease of information on the internet we find that businesses are split into three groups when it comes to their business website design.

The Inhousers / Friends:
This group of people will usually try and get a member to staff or a friend to try and build their website.

The Cheapest:
This group will phone round and email as many web design companies as possible, getting the cheapest website price and then usually going with them.

The Realistic:
This group actually understands how important their website should be to their business.

The first two in the list are usually good companies just trying to make a living and keep their costs down, and thus hopefully making more profit. The third group is the company that realises how much business is on the internet and how important good web design is, from the design, coding, accessibility to how the site appears in the search engine result pages (SERPS).More...

I have been messing around with Google maps quite a bit over the last year or so, both for myself and for clients I have been contracted with.  One of the most time consuming things (Apart from wading through the actual API) is creating either numbered or alphabetised google map icons - Especially if you are plotting alot of data on the maps.

So I thought I would put up a selection of Coloured Alphabetised Google Map Icons for free download - Enjoy More...

This is a question I see thrown about quite alot, especially with people who are tinkering with the idea of giving up the 9 till 5.

Before I run into how I work out costs I must state one thing, being a freelancer IS hard work.... Theres no more 9 till 5 and you will find yourself working at weekends and evenings!  Also on the flip side to that, I can gaurantee all the work you have had coming in while you are stilldoing you're 9 till 5 job WILL just dry up - I don't know what it is, but it seems to happen to everyone.  You must spend some time actively looking for work in the early days, even if you have a few large projects on the go still look for more (Because when they finish you will find yourself with nothing to do, and nothing to do = no money!)

Anyway back on track ....  I find the best way to price for jobs, is to price by the day; Although obviously you need to work out you're daily rate first, which is actually quite simple. More...

Putting your email address on your website in this day and age is just asking for copious amounts of spam sent to your inbox.

A very easy way round this is display your email address on the page using JavaScript; because as yet those nasty spammer bots having figured out how to crawl JavaScript...

Here's the very simple bit of JavaScript to create your email

<script type="text/javascript">
/* Just change a and b to your email address without the @ */
a="lee";
b="leemessenger.co.uk";
document.write('<a href=\"mailto:'+a+'@'+b+'\">');
document.write(a+'@'+b+'<\/a>');
</script>

Simply copy and paste the code into your page where you want the email address to appear and change the name and domain to whatever your email address is without the @ symbol.

When you really start getting into CSS, you really start to hate IE6....  Personally, one of the most annoying things I have found is if you use a background image on a link, when you hover over the link in IE6 the background image seems to disappear then re-appear.. A flickering effect.

A quick and quite brutal way to get round this is to add the following to you code, either add it to the page as shown below or just just it in your external JavaScript file

[CODE]<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
try {
  document.execCommand('BackgroundImageCache', false, true);
} catch(e) {}
//]]>
</script>[/CODE]