Little Plum, an online shop for a handmade children’s gift business has just gone live. Design and build both by Toasted Digital, Photography is by Richard Homer. The site uses Modx Evo as its CMS, and FoxyCart as its basket system.
For a few years now I’ve been helping musician Simon Jaymes with the online side of his campaign to get going independently, and finally his album is ready to be released. Last week saw the launch of the single “Sail Boat”, I went to the launch gig with my girlfriend and housemate at the Embassy in London and it was a great evening. The reception was warm and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.The support for him has been really good, although I’ve seen just how difficult it is for a new artist to self fund themselves into the limelight.
So now comes the album launch. You can buy the CD from simonjaymes.com directly right now, and the download version will available from the 5th of July on iTunes, Amazon, 7Digital etc..
I’m looking forward to seeing how he does, and I wish him all the best. The album really is great and deserves to be heard. Check it out on last.fm.
One of the big decisions I’ve had to make over the past few months with regards the new Toasted Digital website is Flash or no Flash. A large part of the work I do is Flash based, therefore it seems appropriate to display my portfolio in that format. However the internet is changing, and Flash while a big part of the work I do is generally not my favorite thing to use for full websites anyway. The downsides of its SEO capabilities and incompatibility with apple products can be frustrating. So I’ve decided to run a few experiments and tests using jquery to animate divs. I’ve seen a few examples around the net but can jquery alone give me the level of animation I need to make my website? I’ve not yet seen an example of sophisticated animation using jquery as an alternative to Flash, but the animation required for my website is simple and slick, therefore it may work.
Results
http://www.toasteddigital.com/ex/
In this example we have a city growing out of the ground, with smooth easing and timing, a couple of simple sprites going across the page and a button to move the content into the zone we want it. The jquery seems good enough. The stylesheet is a little off in IE7+ and I haven’t yet tested in IE6, but in FF, Chrome and Safari the results are great. I’ve also tested the example on safari on a borrowed iPad with good results, something I’d have no chance with using Flash. It’s all in basic form, but it seems great alternative to Flash when using simple animation. As we get to use more and more HTML5 as well, there are more complex features that can be included.
The full BBC Breathing Places UK ladybird & Parasite Survey designs I have done are now online. As with the spotter mentioned in the last blog post, the wireframe for the design was created by Pixel Thread, with the visual design was done by me.
Leigh Jackson has put together a 3 part survey on a new project based on creating and sharing film online. If you’re an aspiring film maker or interested in online development in general then check it out, as the results could benefit you in the future.
Update – survey now in one easily managable chunk!
