Happy Birthday Bruce Lee

Nov 27, 2009 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Thank you for all your hard work and inspiration. We are all thankful for your gift of knowledge and may you be at peace. 

Updated the look of my website

Nov 16, 2009 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

I finally had some time to update the look of my website this weekend. I went with the painterly background and texture; it sort of gives a feel of my traditional background with a technology edge in the foreground.

There are a couple of acrylic paint strokes that was converted into a Photoshop® brush. I can do a write-up on how that is done later. Feel free to look around, if you’ve been here before, there’s nothing new content wise. I will start adding more work soon. Thanks for visiting!

Web designers, learn to markup

Nov 13, 2009 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Web designers, please learn to code. It will help both yourself as well as the web developers and web developers, learn about design. As one of the few people who can design as well as program, I see this all too often working with designers and developers. The developers get frustrated with designers and vice versa.... “designer: I want rounded corners and drop shadows! developer: That’s too much code to do that.” First of all, HTML/CSS is not code, they’re markup languages and it’s not rocket science either. Learn it.

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/11/coding-a-web-design-for-speed-and-quality/

iPhone 3G wasn’t worth the update

Jul 28, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

It wasn’t that long ago when I bought an iPhone. A year and a month ago today. I was one of the fools to stand in line. I waited for an hour… which wasn’t so bad if I didn’t have my 2 year old daughter with me at the time (she’s three now) and did not get an iPhone! It was at the AT&T store near my house. After that frustration, I took my daughter home to go potty. It was 9pm at the time. So, not feeling fulfilled for the night, I had the urge to call the Apple Store Woodfield just to see if they had any iPhones left. Luckily for me, they did. Plenty of them! So I hopped into my car and went and got one!

A year passed. New iPhone is out. Yay!!! as most people would think (me for one). I went to same Apple Store to go wait in line with a friend of mine and saw a HUGE line. There was no way I’m going to wait in THAT line. I met up with another friend of mine who had been in line for three hours! and he wasn’t even that close to the door. So, I decided not to wait and went to grab dinner with my friend at Stir Crazy. I waited a week instead at my own leisure for the darn thing. I was going to purchase one for my wife anyways, because she needed to update her five year old motorola. I went to the Woodfield store again on July 19th and still, iPhone 3Gs were out of stock. The Apple Store employee told me that the Deer Park store just had a shipment in. Deer Park was only 20 minutes away so, I hopped on my car and went. Waited for an hour to get two iPhone 3Gs. Decided to get one for myself and see what all the hype is about.

I ended up activating the phones at home, because I did not feel like taking up the other people’s time. Once activated, I did not feel the warmth that the first iPhone gave me. With the first iPhone, I felt like I was one of the elite. The first to get into the modern age of phone technology. The proud few who, two months later overpaid for the iPhone nonetheless, loved the phone. The metal casing was nice; it felt expensive and well worth what I paid for. The iPhone 3G on the other hand, had a plastic casing, felt light, and hate to say this but “cheap” even though, it was 300 dollars. The commodity was not there. Everyone was getting one which is excellent! but, now the elitist feeling is gone and I no longer feel special. LOL

Three days later, I took the phone on a trip with me to San Diego, for a friend’s wedding. I was going to test this sucker out to the max. I used it just as much as the first iPhone and was very disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, the new technology is great; 3G speed and GPS. But, they are such battery hogs. We found ourselves many times without a phone and had to do an emergency recharge at restaurants or where ever we can get an outlet. I highly recommend getting a phone charger for the car if you will be traveling a lot with the phone. Other than those two technology enhancement, I don’t see anything else improved. The software is the same on both the first and 3G. So at this point, I don’t see any real reason for me to upgrade to the iPhone 3G so, I will be returning this bad boy to Apple tomorrow.

iPhone 2.0 Beta 8 is out now

Jun 26, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Late Thursday, Apple released beta 8 (build 9m2199) of its iPhone/iPod touch software developer kit while beta certificates issued before June 9th also expired. The beta, a 1.25 gigabyte download, includes iPhone firmware version 5a345 and according to sources, improves stability as well as mentions a developer-only version of iTunes 7.7, which developers can use to “install iPhone OS Beta 8 on your Apple devices.”—from www.tuaw.com

iTunes 7.7 makes my iPhone more “remote”. I can’t go into much more detail than that as I do not want to lose my privilege as a developer. For those waiting for iPHone 2.0 release, i’ll be one of the first to say that it will be quite worth it. Who else is ditching their old iPhone for the iPhone 3G on July 11th?

ChordC.com (Chord Connection) is now live

Jun 14, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 1 Comments

ChordC - Connecting People With Chords, formerly a Flash Desktop Application, Chord Conquering, is now a live interactive website. This initial release brings with it a slew of exciting features not found on the CD. For one, members can interact with other members and share songs or tips on guitar playing. If you have a band and looking for members, this would be a great place to start. Or if you are the greatest guitar player and want to join a band, sign up for a free ChordC profile. This site is definitely not for people who know absolutely nothing about a guitar.  The basic knowledge of chords and tabs are required.

Future release of the site will include all of the features found on the CD. The people who’ve bought the CD will find that this free web based upgrade is a wonderful addition to their guitar playing reference library. There will be sound attached to each chord, so that you will know what the chords sound like when you’re strumming along with it. Another nice feature of ChordC is the ability to find chords that you don’t know the name of. For instance, lets say you are strumming freely and found a sound that you like; you can go to the site and put in the fingering and find the matching chord. Widgets run the web, that is why we are working on a few of our own. Expect to see an iPhone version as well as a facebook application for ChordC.

If you would like to find out more about the site, come on in, we’re now open. Sign up for a free profile and rock on. So what are you waiting for… go conquer those chords!

PEAK6 Solutions LLC is launching a new website

May 14, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 2 Comments

For the past few months, I have been a part of a fast-paced web application team working to deploy an Options News website for PEAK6 Solutions LLC. I’m not allowed to disclosed any information about it until the site goes live. Technically, the site is in beta and anyone can look at it at the moment. So, please feel free to take a peek and give us some feedback on any improvement we can make on the site. http://www.optionsnews.com/optionsnews/HomePage (a new version of this site is also in the works and should be up next week). The site is now live, please have a look and tell your friends about it. The new site is now http://www.onn.tv .

You can also catch me doing a cameo at another PEAK6 Solutions owned website also in beta: http://www.weseed.com.

April 9th is CSS Naked Day

Apr 08, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Sorry for the late notice. I have been quite busy the last few weeks. Please check out Dustin Diaz’s site for more details. http://naked.dustindiaz.com/

Changing the Title Maxlength in Expression Engine

Mar 06, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 2 Comments

Are you writing articles that involve non-roman characters in the title and find that it does not fit the max 100 character length? For example, one of my client wanted to write an article in Lao, but it turns out that they needed more than 100 characters for their title. Because of the accent marks and other characters that make up a word, it was difficult to fit in into the title textfield. Well, I have found a workaround, but it is not pretty. Here we go...

1. Modify your MySQL table

   • Use a database management software (I use phpMyAdmin) to get to your EE data. most web hosting services will have this installed already.
   • Select the database table that you name for your EE installation. (*_EE)
   • Look for *_weblog_titles on the left side panel and click on it. (* just means whatever you set the database table to when you installed EE. Mine was called EE_weblog_titles)
   • Edit the "title" field type. I used LONGTEXT with a length of 500. Add more if you need more.

2. Modify your EE php files

   • Go into your file system where your EE was installed. yoursite.com/system/cp/
   • Look for and edit the cp.publish.php file.
   • Do a search for "publishTitleCluster" within the cp.publish.php file.
   • Look for the line 2569 "$DSP->input_text('title', $title, '20', '100', 'input', ..." and change the 100 to the length you desire. In my case 500.
   • Save it and you're done.

That's it! If you have any questions, please email me. Thank you for reading.

ChordC Inc. Has Been Established as the Joint Venture of nawDsign and Sun Web Creations

Feb 15, 2008 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Chord Conquering is now known as Chord Connection. nawDsign and Sun Web Creations has merged to become ChordC Inc. In our first venture together, we are currently revamping the ChordC brand and website. Our main goal is to provide guitarists a way to get connected with chords. There are so many guitar chords (2,820) on our site, and we have made it quite easy to find them. Every time I pick up the guitar now, I must have ChordC up on my screen. It has helped me tremendously to pick up and learn those difficult chords.

The other main component to the ChordC website is to connect people as well. We have set up a profiling sytem for our users to save the chords that they use often to their profiles. They will also be able to save their favorite songs and add the chords to that song. This is very exciting. A lot of times when I’m looking for tabs for a song that I wanted to play, the sites that have them will have very small chord charts or none at all. For a beginning guitarist like me, that becomes very frustrating. Well, if you are a guitarist, please join us in our new venture to connect people with chords. 

Chord Conquering is getting a makeover

Nov 30, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Chord Conquering (ChordC), the most comprehensive guitar chord reference program available anywhere, is getting a makeover. ChordC was founded by a great friend of mine, Judd Younce, to be the tool that you can use when you are at a lost for a guitar chord. Easily look up a chord in an instant with this program.

We are currently going through the design and architecture phase at the moment. The first wave release will be just the chords. There are 2,820 chords that we have to input into the database, so that will take some time. I’ve been working on the look and feel for the site and getting inspirations from other social networking and guitar chords sites and making ChordC the best available for finding chords and connecting with friends to share the chords. I can’t go into too much details as most of the developmental phases have not yet been ironed out. We are planning to release the chords by Christmas this year. Look out for ChordC.com’s refresh.

Internet services should be treated like street performers

Oct 12, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Have you ever walked down the streets of a big city that has performers doing acts or making something? And, if you are like me, you would give them some money for their performance or just watch and walk on by. Well, this same concept is how I think about webapps and internet services.

Why do I feel that way? Well, think of it this way: people do not want to pay for crappy products or services — they want free stuff. Most people, though, I believe will pay or donate money to the service providers if they think their product is of use to them. So, if you are planning to start an online service or build a web application, remember, people want free stuff! And they like to share what they found. So, make the service free for the users and you will end up with some big rewards (get paid by advertisers when you have millions of visitors at your site or use your products).

This is also true for Open Source Development.

Legacies of War, Boston Exhibit 2007

Oct 01, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Rarely, do I get a chance to work with such a team of passionate and highly motivated group. The Legacies of War organization is fast becoming a force to be reckon with in the advocacy world. You can find out more about them at their website: Legacies of War: History | Healing | Hope

More pictures are coming soon.

I will be updating this section as I find more time in the coming week.

A Fresh New Look at nawDsign.com

Sep 23, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

“Again, with the squeaky shoes.” A line from Kung Pow! a very funny and bizarre movie. That quote always seem to make me giggle. What does that line have to do with my redesign? Nothing. Just as random as that line in the movie, so was this redesign.

I have been working on this redesign for weeks and finally got done with the minor tweaks and fixes. It amazes me though that this refresh was in line with Apple‘s redesign of their website. There are some similarities between mine and Apple’s. I am a big fan of their product and design so, it’s no coincidence that the look is similar. Well, anyway, i hope you enjoy the new look and I will try my best to keep writing.

iPhone was worth the wait

Jul 02, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

Was it really worth the wait? I would have to say heck yea. I’ve been playing with it over the weekend and I can not put it down. I’m a web designer so I live on the internet. Anywhere I can get WiFi access, I’m giddy.

Friday June 29 3:30PM

I was waiting in line with my 2 year old daughter (sorry Amily for putting you through that). We waited at the AT&T store in Carpentersville for an hour and a half. Amily did not like that one bit. Finally, we were near the door and I was sure I’m going to get it that day. The store guy came out and said they were sold out, but we can order it and get it before the store. Bogus! I was so mad, but I signed up anyway, just in case they run out at the Apple store. After that, I took Amily home, so she can rest for a bit. I called the Apple store in Woodfield and they said they still have a couple left and there was no line. I packed Amily up, who was already set to go to bed. “Where are we going daddy? I want to go sleep!” she said. Sorry, sweetie, daddy have to get the iPhone today.

Friday June 29 7:30PM

We headed off to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, IL. Went to the Apple store and saw that it was still packed with people. We went through the path leading up to the iPhone at the genius bar and saw a wall full of iPhone. I was surprised and happy to see a ton of iPhone still left.

Friday June 29 9:30PM

We went back home to activate the iPhone. It was a simple process which took 10 minutes. Most of the time was itunes accessing the AT&T account and sending the information back to the iPhone. They made it very easy for people to get activated, which is typical of Apple. I’m glad I don’t have to call any AT&T person to activate my phone this time. I’m going to have to say, I’m really satisfied with the purchase.

Friday June 30 4:00AM

Still playing with the iPhone.

You can take a look at my iPhone gallery on my facebook (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4901&l=a2d36&id=500018071).

A Greener Meaner Apple

May 07, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

It has been awhile since my last post, but after learning the new policy at Apple, I just couldn’t help but write about it.

I have been supporting Apple and their products ever since I got into using computers. They make quality products and stand behind them. I don’t mind paying the premium price for their product and this new policy change makes me want to support them even more. You can read their full statement here.

The Way of the Web Designer Part 2

Feb 12, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 1 Comments

The Invisible Art of Coding

Why do I call it the invisible art? Well, mainly because it’s an art form that hides behind the facade of the web browser. What you see is not always what you get. When I write my codes, I think of it as writing a story. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. Let’s start at the beginning.

The Declaration

At the beginning of the HTML file we need to declare what type of document we are writing. We want to use the most current version possible. This is of course the web, and it is the most flexible form writing you will ever use. There are many different types of DOCTYPES to use. A List Apart does a great job of explaining what a doctype is. You can read their article here. “A doctype is short for ‘document type declaration’ which informs the validator which version of (X)HTML you’re using, and must appear at the very top of every web page. DOCTYPEs are a key component of compliant web pages: your markup and CSS won’t validate without them.”

The Head

The second thing will insert into the HTML document is the <html> tag. All the code on the page lives inside this tag. As we try to breathe life into our web sites, let’s not forget that all living thing must have a head. The head (encased in the <head> ... </head> tag) of an HTML file is where we put the brain of the document. The head holds the controls for the web site. The title for indicating which page we are viewing, the meta tags for search engines and such, the links to css for the look of the site, and javascript for more interactivity. Figure 1 shows the markup up to the head.

Figure 1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
 <title>My Awesome Web Site</title>
 <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
 <meta name="description" content="Describe what your website is about here." />
 <meta name="keywords" content="List all keywords that pertain to your site" />
 <!-- This style makes the page look nice on screen -->
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/style.css" media="screen" /> 
 <!-- This style makes the page look nice on paper -->
 <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/css/print.css" media="print" /> 
 <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/global.js"></script>
</head>

The Body

The body of the page is what the world sees. This is where we would put our content. Let’s say that we are going to layout the page as I have drawn up crudely in part one. We have a header, left navigation, content, and footer. All these core will be in the body of the document. Figure 2 shows how I would set up these boxes with DIVs and ID. Finally, close up your document with a closing </html> tag.

Figure 2

<body>
  <div id="header-wrap">
    <h1>My Awesome Web Site</h1>
    <ul id="main-nav">
      <li>Home</li>
      <li>About Us</li>
      <li>Contact Us</li>
    </ul>
  </div>
  <div id="body-wrap">
    <div id="sub-wrap">
      <ul id="sub-nav">
	<li>sub nav 1</li>
	<li>sub nav 2</li>
	<li>sub nav 3</li>
      </ul>
    </div>
    <div id="content-wrap">
      <h1>Hello World</h1>
	<p>
	    Welcome to my awesome site. 
            There is so much to learn blah blah blah.
	</p>
    </div>
   </div>
  <div id="footer-wrap">
    <p>© 2007 nawDsign, LLC. All rights reserved</p>
  </div>
</body>
</html>

The End

That’s it for the markup. Next time, we will style it with CSS.

The Way of the Web Designer Part 1

Feb 08, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

People have often ask me how I go about designing a web site. I’m going to try and walk through my process. This is by no means the way you should do it, but just want to show you my way of approaching it.

Get Inspired

First, when I get a job request from a client, I often write down what they want. I listen to their requests and come back to them with a concept or theme that ties into their brand identity if they have one.  Otherwise, I end up doing that as well; That will be a different topic. 

After I get my concepts and theme down, I surf for inspiration. My first stop is always CSSbeauty. It is a showcase site that features a lot of great web designers out there. Here is a page with all the resources you’ll ever need for web development, Web Developer’s Handbook.

Wireframe

Before I even start designing the web site, I would do some preliminary layouts with shapes just to get an idea of how the page will flow and also figure out placements. It does not have to be too detailed. This step is like sketching. You figure out the main components roughly. I like using Illustrator for this part.

Design

Open up any graphics software package you are most comfortable with. I like using Photoshop. In this step, I start to flesh out the wireframes and put color schemes and finalize placements of contents. This step is where you start to get the ”look and feel” of the site.

It is most often better to start designing the inner pages before you start designing the homepage. At work, we refer to these pages as the core browse pages. When you design the core browse pages first, you will get a better idea of the functionality of the site and also the main components of the site. The homepage or the landing page is where people tend to spend the least amount of time on. You want to get them in through the site to the important information first. For example, if you are designing a portfolio site, you would want the users to go directly to the portfolio by giving them clues on what is important in the homepage. Usually this layout will become your template for the entire site. I sometimes end up using this layout as the homepage itself if I’m doing small brochure sites like these: River East Chiropractic Health Center, Central Dupage Chiropractic, or Franklin Park Chiropractic.

Cameron Moll also suggests to not begin with the homepage design, but he is referring to web apps. He says it is ok to begin with the homepage if you are designing “brochureware” sites. I don’t disagree, but i think it will make life a lot easier to design the core browse first and then come back to the homepage.

Next time I will share my thoughts on converting the beautiful layout into the invisible art of coding.

iWant iPhone

Jan 09, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

This thing is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!  I want it now, but gotta wait til June. Gosh! This phone has been in the rumor mill for over 2 years. Now that it’s finally arrived I’m glad I didnt buy into the other “smart” phones that are hell to use.

Apple totally reinvents the phone here. I mean the technology that is packed into this little thing is mind blowing.

Check it out for yourself.

Atari 2600 Pac-Man and Axel F

Jan 05, 2007 by Nor Sanavongsay with 0 Comments

I was 9 years old when Beverly Hills Cops came out in the theaters and that same year my uncle bought me the Atari 2600 system. Pac-Man was was hot! Nothing close to the arcade version. Annoying sound effects and blocky characters. I could not be beat when I’m playing pac-man with the Axel F theme in the background.

My cousins and I use to stay up all night playing video games no matter if it’s the school season or summer vacation. We could not stop playing our Atari system. I remember one night we were up playing pac-man of course, either that or Pong, we were taking bets on who will have the highest score. The loser had to sleep in the basement for the night. Being the scardy cat that I was, I was determined not to lose. Each person gets one game play and the lowest score loses. Finally, my turn was up. I stepped up to the joystick with sweaty palms. A little heat flash through my body. I was set and focused on winning. 20,000 points to beat. I was missing one thing that could hype me up. Where was my Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack cassette tape (not CDs at the time, kids)! Who hid it? I was freaking out. Then I remembered I hid in my underwear drawer so no one would take it. I had Axel F theme pumping. My blood was circulating. No one can stop me now.

I was down to my last guy and 2,000 more points to go and the song was almost over. I can do it. The song was over. 1,000 more points to go. I got hit by the ghost. I’m dead. Did I make it? Urrrrghhhh I thought I lost. 25,000 on the screen! Alright!

That was a fun moment from my childhood. Of course, I will never achieve what this guy did.

Points are exaggerated from my blurry memory of the 80s.