http://www.brianpeppler.com Web strategy and development by Brian Peppler. Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:30:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yahoo's Design Pattern Library has become my go-to source for UI solutions. The site presents common problems within a specific context and suggests optimal solutions with a pattern. They also provide much of the scripting to run each pattern with the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library, which is a set ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/11/17/yahoo-ui-library/ Thanks to CopyPasteCharacter.com, I'll never again need to look up the keyboard shortcuts for ©, ™, or ®. http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/10/30/copy-and-paste-special-characters-from-the-web/ It's nice to see that Google is now throwing its weight behind OpenID, a free and open standard that allows web users to log on to different web sites using a single digital identity and eliminate the need for a different user name and password for each site. Google joins ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/10/30/google-signs-up-for-openid/ After a few weeks of unpacking, I'm finally settled in Seattle. The road trip across the country was a lot of fun and I'm really excited to explore my new city. http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/10/29/seattle/ I'm refreshing my site's design and spent some time today making minor tweaks. When I make the switch the site will still utilize Wordpress, but it will continue to be crippled by a theme I hastily cobbled together a few months ago. My next priority with the design is to make ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/08/01/website-refresh/ Don't invest your resources in unproven ideas. Prototype the idea first, make it live, and make adjustments as necessary based on user feedback. This idea was reinforced on a recent project that I directed. The scope of the project was to redesign an online donation application with a goal of ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/08/01/rapid-prototyping/ Dear Adobe: I'm sorry I said those nasty things about search engines not loving Flash. It looks like you and Google are getting along. Now textual content—menus, buttons, banners, and website copy—are freely searchable, and I'm happy for you. I hope some day soon Google will work out those remaining issues ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/07/16/google-now-indexing-flash/ I'm super excited to announce that Peace Corps and Threespot Media have received a Webby Award in the government category for the Peace Corps {teens} website. This is the second nomination and first win for our collaboration with Threespot. Peace Corps {teens} was launched in July 2007 to attract a new ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/05/07/we-won-a-webby/ If you deal with a website that has any sizable amount of content, you understand that asset management can quickly get out of hand. I'm guilty of this, and I'm here to come clean: I have a junk drawer, and it's name is the "images" folder. A quick look at ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/04/14/managing-sprite-graphics/ Flash has always been a great vehicle for delivering multimedia content on the web. I'm always wowed by its unlimited bounds, but I'm simultaneously disappointed by its poor handling of SEO and accessibility. While the rest of the web has evolved into a rich and standards-based medium, Flash and its ... http://www.brianpeppler.com/2008/03/24/making-flash-seo-friendly/