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Sean-Paul Fenton Exposed

Meet Sean-Paul, our Web and Flash developer who drums to a different beat

Skills? – I work with PHP, XHTML, Javascript and JQuery, but my main babies are Flash and ActionScript. I’m also handy with graphics programs as well. I can wield the pen tool with the best of ‘em. Along with building websites, I can also inundate you with blues rock riffs and drum solos channeled straight from ‘71.

Project Most Proud of? – I would have to say the soccer Air app. It was my biggest project to date, and my first video game. Once it was built, I was able to chalk up all past video game playing as ‘research’. I’m in the process of reprogramming it with additional players, namely the I-SITE staff.

Tools of the Trade? – In addition to all of the code I write, a good open source code library is the way to go. My favorites are CASAlib by Aaron Clinger and Tweener by Zeh Fernando. I couldn’t live without Tweener. It’s the secret to making things zip around and look super awesome.

Favorite Kit? – I’m not a gear head by any stretch of the imagination. Cracked gnarly kits are the way to go. If you can keep it sounding good while looking like it was strapped to the back of a dune buggy from Beyond Thunderdome, you’ve got it. Currently I’m playing a Tama Swingstar and a Premier XPK.

Dream project? – I’m a fan of any good Flash project. The more creative freedom, and the more experimental the design, the happier I am. I love experimental navigation. NxtUp was a great project for that. I paced around the room getting my head wrapped around the algorithm for the calendar. If Jimmy Page walked into the office and said he’s chosen us to do a 200k Flash project that spaces folks out more than a backwards Jimi Hendrix solo, that’s one dream answered.

Future Technologies? – Everything’s moving towards the next tier of Web development. This includes HTML 5 and CSS 3. I can’t wait for these languages to become the standard. Though there’s been a huge debate about Flash vs. HTML 5 and the canvas tag, I don’t believe you need to choose between one or the other. I’m all about picking the right tool for the job, and each one of these technologies have advantages and disadvantages.

I-SITE United vs Old City Athletic Club? – I’m making two wishes this year. That the temperature stays above 50°, and that my old muscles don’t give out on me like last year. Oh. Wait. One more. That I pull off a miraculous bicycle kick to score the winning goal. That’s it.

I-SITE supports neighborhood with redesign of Old City website

If you’ve spent time in I-SITE’s office then you’ll know how fabulous Philadelphia’s Old City neighborhood is. If you’ve yet to stop by you can now get a taste of what the area has to offer by visiting our newly redesigned Old City District [OCD] website.

Re-launched in April the site’s main goal is to attract visitors, residents and businesses to one of America’s most desirable neighborhoods.  Come on… who else has the Liberty Bell and National Constitution Center in their backyard! Open File Explorer, right-click on the folder that contained how to recover unsaved file from reason 12 mac the deleted file, and select “Restore previous version.

Features of the site include:

  • Up-to-date calendar of events
  • Latest OCD tweets
  • Searchable database of stores, restaurants, attractions
  • Google maps API
  • Plethora of information for businesses and residents

The site will continue to expand with features such as real estate listings, visitor submitted photos and videos.

Check out the new OCD website

I-SITE PRESENTS MUSIC MIX VOL.8 – BLUEGRASS STOMP

Now that the weather is getting warmer, it’s time to go out on the front porch and enjoy some good ole foot-stompin’, banjo-pickin’, moonshine-drinkin’ Bluegrass! Bluegrass music tells the story of America’s history in a way unlike any other genre. Long before iTunes, families would grab whatever string instruments they had available and play songs about love, heartbreak, life and drinking, with equal parts humor and sorrow. Below is a selection of live, studio, and field recordings made starting from the 1930s through this past decade. This is because any further writing or saving of data how to recover shortcut files in hard drive using cmd on the drive can overwrite the deleted files and make them unrecoverable.

JE Mainer's Mountaineers

LAUNCH I-SITE RADIO

Bluegrass is about history, but it isn’t stuck in the past. For example:

“I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail” was recorded by a young Jerry Garcia (a huge fan of bluegrass) in the kitchen of Frank Wakefield. At one point you can hear Frank’s baby crying in the background.

“Memphis, Tennessee” is actually a Bluegrass cover of a Chuck Berry song, who Jim and Jesse both recognized as a huge influence on the development of American music.

“Jesse James” tells the story of this near mythical figure from American history long before Brad Pitt brought his story to the big screen.

“Coal Miner Blues” tells of the hardship and tragedy of working in the mines, a tale of woe that’s sadly still all too real in today’s modern age.

“In The Pines” is a version of an old Ledbelly song that should sound familiar to any fans of Nirvana’s Unplugged album.

“Man of Constant Sorrow” was a Bluegrass standard long before George Clooney’s Soggy Bottom Boys made it a hit in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

“Insult to Injury” and “I Made Her Laugh” are two of the most recent offerings, demonstrating that the Bluegrass tradition is still alive and well with a modern twist.

Our Business Cards Rule

We were recently featured in an article on TwinCities.com. The website for St. Paul Minnesota’s news paper. It’s an article about business cards and there are some really great designs out there but I gotta say the one that you can put your beer on is by far the coolest. Oh wait, that’s our card right there featuring Monica. Check out the others as well and we hope it gives you inspiration to create something unique for yourself. View Here

I-SITE Card

Judgement Day

Interact8vsmLately I’ve had a few opportunities to get to know the next round of talented designers exiting school and entering into (drum roll please…) the working world. From portfolio reviews, to potential intern interviews, I have been immersed in the works of our future designers.

This week I was invited by Dermot Mac Cormack to participate as a judge in Interact 8 – the 8th Annual juried show of interactive design and animation at Tyler School of Art. What a visual treat! I got to review not only web designs by some of Tyler’s finest, but also a large collection of animations – mostly compiled in one of my favorite programs, After Effects. I was thoroughly impressed by not only the creative concepts I encountered, but also the meticulous detail that was well represented in each piece. Great job to each and all of you – keep up the good work and I hope to see some of you in the I-SITE office soon!

Happy Earth Day From the I-SITE Team

Earth Day is a great time to promote web standards, because leaner, cleaner, more efficient markup requires less server resources, which in turn saves energy!

If you’re not familiar with web standards, here are some great resources to get started:

Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman
http://www.zeldman.com/dwws/
This is the book that got me started with web standards. Zeldman is an expert in the field who makes a detailed and compelling case for caring about standards and accessibility, and then gets into some practical tips to clean up your markup. I especially appreciate the tips for using different attributes in the command prompt to locate specific types how to open recovered files in excel 2016 of files.

The World Wide Web Consortium
http://www.w3.org/standards/
This organization develops the technical specifications and guidelines that make up web standards.

A List Apart
http://www.alistapart.com/
This site is a great resource for any web designer or developer, and contains hundreds of articles that offer solid tips for building clean, accessible web sites.

If you’d like to talk more about web standards and why they are important to your next project, feel free to contact us.

bikes

And web standards aren’t the only way that we stay green here at I-SITE:

  • Many of us walk or ride our bicycles to work every day instead of driving.
  • When possible we work with our windows open instead of running the air conditioning.
  • We keep our lights at 60% brightness (because web people hate bright lights!)
  • And of course we recycle every bottle of beer that we drink!

If you want to see us REALLY get green, then be sure to check out our next soccer match coming in June. Stay tuned for more details.

Collaboration Just Got Better

We like to use Google Docs a lot here at I-SITE. We strive on collaboration and with our team size there is no other way to work. Using Google docs for brainstorming and real time updates is perfect for us and it allows the whole team to be a part of the project. We do use Basecamp for to-do’s, milestones and QA but it’s not something our team gravitated to for brainstorming. The other important job we do as a team here is site architecture. We have our own style for creating sitemaps, userflows and wireframes and Monica makes them look great but it’s knowing what goes where that we do as a team.

Things just got a little easier for us with the release of Google Insert Drawing. You can now create sitemaps, userflows and wireframes in Google Drawing and insert them into a collaborative document you and your team have been working on. Now, with us we would take these drawings and “pretty” them up a bit for clients but that’s not something you need to do as these drawings look fine. It also depends on what your client is expecting from you. So try it out if you get a chance as I know we will. Read more about Google Insert Drawing.

The True Value of Web Design (or Why Web Design Doesn’t Cost $50)

Earlier this week I read an interesting blog post by Irish designer Grace Smith called “Why Web Design Doesn’t Cost £40. Go ahead and check it out, it’s a good read.

In an industry like the Web where you aren’t dealing with tangible products, sometimes understanding the value of the end product can be difficult for someone who doesn’t understand the process. (Every time I try to explain to my tech-illiterate father, who is a mechanic, what my business does and what we charge for our services, he still looks puzzled). Grace does an excellent job of outlining the process from start to finish and illuminates many of the hidden costs that the end customer will often take for granted. Even though she writes from the perspective of a freelancer, the general process she describes fits just about any professional who works in the design field, and especially on the Web.

Reading the intro of her article about the lad who said they could build a site for $50 struck a chord in me because… I have to admit that I’m guilty of this. When I was a Freshman in college, I bid a 5 page website for $75. At the time I was desperate for the work and it was my first freelance client ever, so I had no idea how to assign value to my work. I got the job because I had underbid everyone else by at least $200. In the end, the guy got a website that looked like a college kid had spent about 5 hours on it, but he was satisfied and I had grocery money for the next few weeks.

Many clients and many years of experience later, I am the Senior Developer at I-SITE, and I’m here because I now understand the complete process of Web design and development. Here we follow a process called I-QUO® that ensures the best possible solution for each of our projects. On my $75 site, I designed directly in the browser, tossed things together, and then sent the “finished product” off to the client. I didn’t take his audience into account. We did no rounds of revisions. I don’t think I even did cross-browser testing.

Grace’s article makes me smile now because we still occasionally run into a potential client who has no understanding of value on the Web. We tell them the services we provide and what they cost, and they come back and say that they will just have their 15 year old nephew do it for $50. We always politely excuse ourselves from the conversation at that point, because that’s not someone we want to work with.

Clients, if you’re ever tempted to pay a price that sounds too good to be true for Web work, you’re hiring someone who probably isn’t very confident in their skills, doesn’t value their end product, and is probably desperate for the work. If this still sounds like a good deal to you, well, enjoy trying to use your new site!

Where We Design

I found a cool site the other day and decided to submit some photos of I-SITE’s work space. Check it out and vote for us! We have no idea if we win anything at all but we just want a higher rating then the others here.  Just like the rest of these places our work environment helps us create and makes us want to come into work. Break out of cubes and get in touch with your fellow worker.

Where We Design

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