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	<title>The Thinking Cap</title>
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	<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net</link>
	<description>think big &#124; think loud &#124; think often</description>
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		<title>Publishing ClickOnce apps on Linux server</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2010/12/publishing-clickonce-apps-on-linux-server/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2010/12/publishing-clickonce-apps-on-linux-server/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 05 Dec 2010 13:49:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dev deployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/?p=225</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Was trying to work out how to publish .Net ClickOnce apps on a Linux server running Apache tonight, turns out its pretty straight forward. All you have to do is add the right MIME types, so in your .htaccess file &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2010/12/publishing-clickonce-apps-on-linux-server/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Was trying to work out how to publish .Net ClickOnce apps on a Linux server running Apache tonight, turns out its pretty straight forward.</p>
<p>All you have to do is add the right MIME types, so in your .htaccess file just add these few lines</p>
<div class="csharpcode">
<pre><span class="lnum">   1:  </span>AddType application/x-ms-application application</pre>
<pre><span class="lnum">   2:  </span>AddType application/x-ms-manifest manifest</pre>
<pre><span class="lnum">   3:  </span>AddType application/octet-stream deploy</pre>
<pre><span class="lnum">   4:  </span>AddType application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument xps</pre>
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		<title>Scrolling with a Magic Mouse in Windows 7</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/11/scrolling-with-a-magic-mouse-in-windows-7/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/11/scrolling-with-a-magic-mouse-in-windows-7/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:44:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bootcamp]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[magic mouse]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/11/scrolling-with-a-magic-mouse-in-windows-7/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[UPDATE: These drivers are now included with the Bootcamp download and fully supported. Just returned from the Apple store opening at Chermside and got myself a few bits including the new Magic Mouse. The first thing I noticed is that &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/11/scrolling-with-a-magic-mouse-in-windows-7/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong>UPDATE: These drivers are now included with the Bootcamp download and fully supported.</strong></p>
<p>Just returned from the Apple store opening at Chermside and got myself a few bits including the new Magic Mouse. The first thing I noticed is that scrolling doesn&#8217;t work with my Bootcamped Windows 7 – searching around on the Apple support site I came across a Bluetooth update for Windows.</p>
<p>Download the “Bluetooth Update 1.0 for Windows” from here<br />
<a title="http://support.apple.com/kb/DL952" href="http://support.apple.com/kb/DL952">http://support.apple.com/kb/DL952</a></p>
<p>When you run this you will get the error below, luckily this check is only done by the bootstrapper so we need to extract the msi installer files as this is a self executing archive.</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/image.png"><img style="display: inline; border-width: 0px;" title="image" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/image_thumb.png" alt="image" width="440" height="158" border="0" /></a></p>
<p>I’m a WinRar fan although 7Zip should also work, just extract all the files in the download “AppleBcUpdate.exe” and you should see 5 files.</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/image1.png"><img style="display: inline; border-width: 0px;" title="image" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/image_thumb1.png" alt="image" width="644" height="189" border="0" /></a></p>
<p>You can see here both x86 and x64 catered for, I installed “AppleWirelessMouse64.exe” first then “AppleBluetoothBroadcomInstaller64.exe” as I’m on Windows 7 x64, choose the alternative versions if your on a 32bit version of Windows 7.</p>
<p>After installing these drivers the Mouse went completely dead, I had to reboot, delete the mouse from Devices and Printers and then re-add it – Bingo scrolling now works.</p>
<p>I tried Explorer, Firefox and IE &#8211; All scrolled fine, both vertically and horizontal.</p>
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		<title>Syntax error in manifest or policy file</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/syntax-error-in-manifest-or-policy-file/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/syntax-error-in-manifest-or-policy-file/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:01:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dev]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[updates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visual studio]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/syntax-error-in-manifest-or-policy-file/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today I got all sorts of &#8220;SideBySide&#8221; errors &#8220;Generate Activation Context failed for C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET NOD32 Antivirus\MFC80U.DL&#8221; etc and &#8220;The manifest file contains one or more syntax errors.&#8221; This seems to be due to a Windows update that was pushed &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/syntax-error-in-manifest-or-policy-file/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Today I got all sorts of &#8220;SideBySide&#8221; errors<br />
&#8220;Generate Activation Context failed for C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET NOD32 Antivirus\MFC80U.DL&#8221; etc and<br />
&#8220;The manifest file contains one or more syntax errors.&#8221;</p>
<p>This seems to be due to a Windows update that was pushed out back in July, this was for the VS2005 CRT and modified developers environments without telling them.<br />
You can read more about it here:<br />
<a title="http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/08/05/active-template-library-atl-security-updates.aspx" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/08/05/active-template-library-atl-security-updates.aspx" target="_blank">http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/08/05/active-template-library-atl-security-updates.aspx</a></p>
<p>I had to manually apply this update to resolve it.<br />
<a title="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2&amp;displaylang=en" href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2&amp;displaylang=en" target="_blank">http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=766a6af7-ec73-40ff-b072-9112bab119c2&amp;displaylang=en</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>What&#8217;s in a name?</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/whats-in-a-name/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/whats-in-a-name/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:30:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>aarontj</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Design Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[File Under Other]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/?p=174</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s something to be said about securing a good domain name, especially in terms of the value it can add to a product or service. I was recently informed from a company I had dealings with about the purchase of &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/whats-in-a-name/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>There&#8217;s something to be said about securing a good domain name, especially in terms of the value it can add to a product or service.</p>
<p>I was recently informed from a company I had dealings with about the purchase of a domain in the six figure range, something I found incredible to believe at the time. I admit it jolted me with the hope that those dozen or so URL&#8217;s I was squatting would one day meet such an offer. I won&#8217;t tell you the company, or the domain or what they spent exactly, but let&#8217;s just say it was more than I spent on my first house.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-187 alignright" title="Green hat growing" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/green_hat11.png" alt="Green hat growing" width="264" height="399" />Of course all of this was dwarfed  last week by the announcement that Insure.com was purchased for $16 Million. A staggering increase on investment one would have to admit considering the same domain was snapped up for $160,000 back in 2001. An amount I&#8217;m sure was seen as obscene at the time.</p>
<p>Of course it&#8217;s not uncommon for domains to sell at such high prices. Other domains that sold this year for nice returns include Candy.com which went for $3 million, ToysRus acquired Toys.com for $5.1 million and TravelZoo grabbed Fly.com for $1.8 million.</p>
<p>As a reseller of domains that&#8217;s an amazing ROI when you can gobble up a domain for as little as $10.</p>
<p>Note to those looking for a business domain. The odds of you being able to snatch up a short, single word these days that&#8217;s relevent to your business are incredibly small. There&#8217;s no reason however, why you can&#8217;t find something that&#8217;s going to help rather than hinder people finding and recalling your site. An often overlooked aspect of business, at least when people start out, is the building of worth. Your domain name is your business name online. Pretty important stuff huh?</p>
<p>Here are six tips if you&#8217;re in the market for a name. There&#8217;s bound to be more, but it&#8217;s time for coffee. So &#8230;</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Buy .com and .net<br />
</strong>There are more extensions now than ever before and to be honest I think there are too many. A .tv extension is fine for a TV show or online video service but that&#8217;s about it. I suppose a .biz can show that you&#8217;re a business, but I can&#8217;t see the benefit really. Obviously the snappy one-worders that sold for squazillions above are mostly all gone so grabbing a more obscure extension might be a way to get lucky, but I&#8217;d count that as slim.  So, which ones should you buy? Well .com and .net at the very least. These are still the most widely used domain extensions by far.  It&#8217;s a good idea, when you secure the one you want, to forward them to your main website or a custom coming soon page. Don&#8217;t have them point to a “Server not found” or “404″ error.</li>
<li><strong>Buy Product or Service domain names</strong><br />
In addition to your business name try and get a domain that reflects what you do as well and point the domain to your main business site. People search the web in different ways, they even use search engines like google differently. Some use words, some use phrases, and for some bizarre reason some people type web addresses directly into the goolge search fields. Your aim is to build relevance and association with who you are and what you do. If you&#8217;re in the business of building products, grab a domain for each one. Use it as a landing page from your core site. As I mentioned above you want to add worth to your business. By having a separate site for each product the entire thing can be snapped off and sold as a separate asset in the future or increase your overall value if and when you come to sell for the same reason.</li>
<li><strong>Have a few backups and get creative<br />
</strong>The better the name the more chances it&#8217;s already gone. It&#8217;s always an idea to have a couple of fall-back names just in case. You can use hyphens in domain names and numerals so get clever. e.g. taxreturns4you.com. You can also leverage off common mispellings or typos. I wouldn&#8217;t want to gamble with that last suggestion as your one and only domain name though.</li>
<li><strong>Try to keep it short if possible</strong><br />
People will retain a shorter domain much easier than a longer one. That&#8217;s why the ones above are worth what they are. Also consider that people might be trying to remember your link, so a scattered mind like mine might type in foodontherun.com when what I had meant to type in was foodonthego.com. If the site I accidently went too sells the same product or service then they&#8217;ll probably get my money. People also remember domains that they see written so short and sweet, or at least clear and simple, will go further.</li>
<li><strong>Mobile domains<br />
</strong>While you can grab a .mobi extention, the official mobile phone domain indicator, they&#8217;re not necessary to have a  mobile friendly site. Code is easily added to a web page that can detect whether the person is using a mobile phone (and what type) and can act accordingly. Most obvious thing to do would be to build tailored versions of the site for your mobile audience. More on that in a later post.</li>
<li><strong>Buy the domain for as long as you can</strong><br />
It&#8217;s a good idea to do this for a couple of reasons. Firstly it&#8217;s out of the way and something you don&#8217;t have to remember to do again for a while. You can even set up auto-renewals so you&#8217;ll never forget to do it. It&#8217;s also a way to lock in today&#8217;s prices. The second is that it can help you with your SEO. Domains that have a long term registration are less likely to be seen as fly-by-night spam domains. Word on the street is to register for at least 5 years at a time. Some sellers offer discounts for the more years you register.</li>
</ol>
<p>I hope that helps anyone in the market for a domain. I&#8217;ll try and follow this article with a short &#8220;How to Register&#8221; if possible. Feel free to contact us in the meantime and we&#8217;ll see if we can help.</p>
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		<title></title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/172/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/172/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:26:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>aarontj</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Photos]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/10/172/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_171" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 610px"><img class="size-full wp-image-171" title="The Letter A" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/the_letterA1.jpg" alt="begin your day with an A" width="600" height="800" /><p class="wp-caption-text">begin your day with an A</p></div>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>SQL 2005/2008 backup script</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/sql-20052008-backup-script/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/sql-20052008-backup-script/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:50:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[backup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scripts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sql]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/sql-20052008-backup-script/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the best maintenance scripts I&#8217;ve come across in quite a while, covers the following areas. Backup Integrity checking Optimizing indexes Executing and logging commands Utility functions If your using Maintenance Plans, stop now and implement this instead. Get &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/sql-20052008-backup-script/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One of the best maintenance scripts I&#8217;ve come across in quite a while, covers the following areas.</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: #35383d;">Backup</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #35383d;">Integrity checking</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #35383d;">Optimizing indexes</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #35383d;">Executing and logging commands</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #35383d;">Utility functions</span></li>
</ul>
<p>If your using Maintenance Plans, stop now and implement this instead.<br />
Get it here <a href="http://ola.hallengren.com" target="_blank">ola.hallengren.com</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Uninstalling Xcode</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/uninstalling-xcode/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/uninstalling-xcode/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:21:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dev]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[osx]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/?p=159</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Some Mac OSX packages come with uninstall scripts, some dont, others you just drag the app out the application folder and into the trash. Xcode most likely dumps a lot of stuff all over the file system, to do a &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/09/uninstalling-xcode/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Some Mac OSX packages come with uninstall scripts, some dont, others you just drag the app out the application folder and into the trash. Xcode most likely dumps a lot of stuff all over the file system, to do a clean uninstall just run this&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>sudo /Developer/Library/uninstall-devtools &#8211;mode=all</p></blockquote>
<p>Took about 6-7 minutes on my 2.4GHz iMac</p>
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		<title>Dial via PSTN line on Linksys SPA3102</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/08/dial-via-pstn-line-on-linksys-spa3102/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/08/dial-via-pstn-line-on-linksys-spa3102/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2009 10:54:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[linksys]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mynetfone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[voip]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/08/dial-via-pstn-line-on-linksys-spa3102/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I have a Linksys SPA3102 hooked up to mynetfone and they recently introduced caller id over stamping to residential plans. All this means is that when you place an outgoing call, instead of your VOIP number being presented to the &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/08/dial-via-pstn-line-on-linksys-spa3102/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I have a Linksys SPA3102 hooked up to <a href="http://www.mynetfone.com.au" target="_blank">mynetfone</a> and they recently introduced caller id over stamping to residential plans. All this means is that when you place an outgoing call, instead of your VOIP number being presented to the person your calling, they get your standard Telstra/Optus number (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pstn" target="_blank">PSTN</a>) or even a mobile number if you so wish. In order to confirm my number and that I own it, mynetfone require you to call from the number you designated and go through some confirmation steps. The issue here was that the default setup and dial plan routes all calls via VOIP, only calls to emergency numbers automatically get routed via PSTN (this is so they can home in on your location).</p>
<p>So what I wanted was a way to hit the &#8216;#&#8217; key and get dial tone via my PSTN line, this is really easy to setup as its just an addition to your existing dial plan.</p>
<p>Log in to your SPA3102 as admin, click on &#8216;Voice&#8217; and &#8216;Advanced&#8217;.   <br />Next click on &#8216;Line 1&#8242; and scroll all the way to the bottom till you see &#8216;Dial Plan&#8217;.    <br />On the end of my existing dial plan I added the following:</p>
<p><strong>|&lt;#,:&gt;xx.&lt; :@gw0&gt;</strong></p>
<p>So my entire dial plan now looks like this:</p>
<p><strong>(*xx|[3469]11|0|00|[2-9]xxxxxx|1xxx[2-9]xxxxxxS0|xxxxxxxxxxxx.|&lt;#,:&gt;xx.&lt; :@gw0&gt;)</strong></p>
<p>So now whenever I want to dial out via the landline all I have to do is prefix the number with a &#8216;#&#8217; and I&#8217;m set.</p>
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		<title>Real time Web Analytics</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/real-time-web-analytics/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/real-time-web-analytics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:26:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>dave</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[open source]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visualization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/real-time-web-analytics/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If your interested in real time Web Analytics you should do yourself a favour and check out both of these. The first is open source and you can run yourself provided you have PHP and MySQL available. It&#8217;s JavaScript based &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/real-time-web-analytics/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>If your interested in real time Web Analytics you should do yourself a favour and check out both of these. </p>
<p>The first is open source and you can run yourself provided you have PHP and MySQL available. It&#8217;s JavaScript based tracking like Google Analytics but you have full control over your own data. You could potentially use their API to pull your own data into an AIR client or even Excel.</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/image2.png" target="_blank"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/image_thumb1.png" width="244" height="126" /></a>     <br />So check out <a href="http://piwik.org/" target="_blank">Piwik</a> by clicking <a href="http://piwik.org/" target="_blank">here</a>&#160;</p>
<p>The second is Clicky, a pay for service that looks very polished and even lets you analyse Twitter traffic. Although apparently written for bloggers, it excels at good old pure web statistics too. I really like the way it lets you filter data on just about anything as well as site navigation, it&#8217;s simple and straight forward.</p>
<p>&#160;<a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/image3.png" target="_blank"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/image_thumb2.png" width="244" height="140" /></a></p>
<p>I also tried out their Twitter support and sure enough my tweet appeared on their demo site immediately. Try yourself by including the #clicky tag in a tweet.</p>
<p><a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/image4.png" target="_blank"><img style="border-bottom: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px" title="image" border="0" alt="image" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/image_thumb3.png" width="244" height="133" /></a> </p>
<p> Check out Clicky <a href="http://getclicky.com/" target="_blank">here</a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve also noticed a lot of sites doing any kind of data visualization are turning to Open Flash Charts for their charting needs. You can learn all about it <a href="http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
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		<title>The 3 Components of Web Design</title>
		<link>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/the-3-components-of-web-design/</link>
		<comments>http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/the-3-components-of-web-design/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:40:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>aarontj</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Design Ramblings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Featured Articles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[designers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[elegance]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/?p=114</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I recently came across a killer article from the brains of the TUTS chain of websites (psdTUTS, flashTUTS etc). It&#8217;s a rather in depth look at the components of Web Design. For better or for worse some of these components &#8230; <a href="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/2009/07/the-3-components-of-web-design/">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">&#8594;</span></a>]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I recently came across a killer article from the brains of the TUTS chain of websites (psdTUTS, flashTUTS etc). It&#8217;s a rather in depth look at the components of Web Design. For better or for worse some of these components have been assigned to other roles such as Solutions Architects. The problem with doing this though, as I&#8217;ve alluded too in previous posts, is that you run the risk of looking at a site from the inside out.  We don&#8217;t build sites for the sake of it, and we don&#8217;t build them simply to exercise feats of technical problem solving. We build them for 2 people. The first being the end user, and the second the client (or if you&#8217;re that way inclined, you can be the second person in this scenario).</p>
<p>I&#8217;ll condense the general gist of the article for those who are time poor or prefer life broken in to bullet points. I highly recommend though for anyone with the time or thirst (and especially other designers) to follow the link at the end of this rant for the full article. You&#8217;ll find that this is actually part of a long running series on web design and I&#8217;ll do my best to bring these to your attention as well.</p>
<p>First, to illuminate the 3 components (and in no particular order), the author presents us with this diagram.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-115   aligncenter" title="The 3 Components of Good Web Design" src="http://blog.thinkingcapstudios.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/3_components_diagram1.jpg" alt="The 3 Components of Good Web Design" width="400" height="334" /></p>
<div class="mceTemp">Now let&#8217;s look at these components in some detail.</div>
<div class="mceTemp">
<h4>Aesthetic Design</h4>
<p>Aesthetic design is all about getting the look right. If you are good at this it means you will be able to design sites that not only look good but are <em>appropriately</em> designed. Different designs convey different messages to an end user, so it&#8217;s essential that a design matches the site&#8217;s message.</p>
<p>Out of the three components of web design, aesthetic design is surely the one that people most identify as <em>being</em> design. One thing I find interesting about aesthetic design is that it is deceptively difficult. I remember once designing a poster and showing it to a friend who commented <em>&#8220;oh it&#8217;s just a few lines and some text, you must have done this in about ten minutes&#8221;</em> &#8211; ah the joys of being a designer!</div>
<div class="mceTemp">
<h4>Information Design</h4>
<p>Information design is about preparing the information on a website in the best possible way, so that users can efficiently and effectively find and digest information. In larger sites, just finding information becomes challenging, but in sites both large and small, processing it is always a design problem.</p>
<p>A quick example of information design is in how you organise and format text on a page. Because people tend to skim through content on a screen, it&#8217;s much better to organise it with headings and subheadings, diagrams and visual hooks, and general variation for the eye. Techniques like these make the information on a page much easier to digest. But information design isn&#8217;t limited to what&#8217;s on a single page, it is also about what structures you use to house the site&#8217;s parts, how you lay out the menus and sub-menus and how you cross link different sections.</p>
<h4>Interface Design</h4>
<p>Interface design is the arrangement and makeup of how a user can interact with a site. The word interface means a point or surface where two things touch. So a web user interface is where a person and a website touch &#8211; so menus, components, forms, and all the other ways you can interact with a website.</p>
<p>Good interface design is about making the experience of using a website easy, effective and intuitive. It&#8217;s actually much easier to demonstrate bad interface design because that&#8217;s when you really notice it. A simple example of interface design is the use of icons. Have you ever looked at an icon and thought &#8220;what is that meant to represent?!&#8221; &#8211; well that would be bad interface design. Using icons to label and signify different types of content or actions is just one part of interface design.</p>
<h4><strong>Wrapping Up</strong></h4>
<p>Now for those of you <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">lucky</span> <span style="text-decoration: line-through;">unfortunate</span> challenged enough to know me I&#8217;m all for standing club in hand and side by side my fellow designer forever at war with the dark-side, otherwise referred to as development. Some of you though, those that really know me, know that what I&#8217;m really seeking is far from this. I imagine a world where both disciplines are given equal standing. I don&#8217;t feel that real progress can be made until this lies at the fundamentals of any great company or studio. It&#8217;s at the crossroads of these 3 components that we can all really come together. I&#8217;m a peace keeper at heart, a stinking hippy pacifist who just wants us all to get along. Did I mention I have a club.</p>
<p>As I said the actual article expands on the above in more detail however the author does finish with this important comment.</p>
<p>&#8220;Now you may be thinking, that&#8217;s all very well and good Collis but where does CSS fit into this? Or what about Flash? Well as I say, these are the three<em> non-</em>technical aspects of web design. On the flip side there are all those technologies and skills like HTML/CSS, Flash, Javascript and so on. But I tend to think they are more a part of web development than web design. In the same way that it&#8217;s important to separate HTML and CSS to keep information and presentation separate, you could argue that how you make a design come into reality is separate from the design itself. In simpler terms, is knowing a specific CSS hack anything to do with design?</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong, you need to know how to build things in order to design them appropriately. However when it comes to saying what makes up web design, my answer remains Interface Design, Information Design and Aesthetic Design.&#8221;</p>
<p><a title="PSDtuts article on the 3 components of web design" href="http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/the-3-components-of-good-web-design/" target="_blank">Read the full article here.</a></div>
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