Review of LittleSnapper (as a designer)

By Dave Roach on April 27, 2009 at 6:00 am in Design, Mac, Reviews

Recently I purchased LittleSnapper through Macheist, a super amazing bundle of mac applications (plus the proceeds go to charity). Sorry PC users, this application is for Macs only =( Anyways, LittleSnapper basically takes screenshots of entire webpages…no matter how tall the page is and puts it in a library of screenshots:

LittleSnapper Gallery

This is very handy for many applications. If you have a need to display a screenshot an entire webpage for a portfolio or gallery, LittleSnapper makes this easy. Furthermore, if you are a designer, you can bookmark screenshots of a tutorial and go back to it later, and even make a colleciton of tutorials to view whenever you need them.

Another cool feature about LittleSnapper is that it allows you to snap specific elements within a site. This makes things much more accurate than trying to make a screenshot yourself:

Element screenshot

Screenshots can be taken straight from your browser  and are automatically imported into LittleSnapper, or you can use LittleSnapper’s built in browser, which is especially handy when taking images of specific elements.

What makes LittleSnapper so cool though is what you can do with your screenshots after they have been taken. You can easily annotate your screenshots and upload them to share with others! Check out my website dnroach.com in edit mode:

Annotating

As a designer, LittleSnapper is a handy little tool that I have used daily since I got it. It makes things much easier and streamlined on my part, and it’s a simple application that doesn’t get in the way either. Check out http://www.realmacsoftware.com/littlesnapper/ to read about more features and check it out for yourself.

LittleSnapper is on Twitter!

99 reasons to buy a $99/month website from T&S

By Emily Spirek on April 23, 2009 at 12:17 pm in General

Here at T&S, we’re in the process of launching our new, low-cost websites that run just $99/month. You can read all the details here.

We came up with 99 reasons you should buy this new, affordable website option from T&S, and thought we’d share those reasons with  you.

1. inexpensive
2. easy
3. effective
4. domain name included
5. hosting included
6. unlimited # of pages
7. T&S takes care of initial setup
8. no setup costs
9. T&S fills in initial pages
10. no special software on your computer
11. Easy updates
12. 1 hour training included
13. up to 60 email addresses
14. unlimited email support
15. only 1 year commitment
16. hundreds of designs to choose from
17. no hidden fees
18. T&S speaks english, not techno-babble
19. save money compared to other advertising
20. increase professionalism
21. compete online
22. don’t pay thousands of dollars
23. content management system is expandable
24. customizable with your logo
25. content and template checked for compatibility
26. one central location online
27. more room than a business card
28. more space than the phone book
29. did we mention unlimited pages?
30. establish online presence
31. supplement traditional advertising
32. no technical knowledge needed
33. create a hub for your social network marketing
34. blog is included 35. quick gallery updates
36. upload any file type
37. more room than a magazine ad
38. no more newspaper ads
39. add features without changing monthly cost
40. easily advertise specials
41. provide better customer service
42. it’s your answer to everything
43. be accessible 24/7
44. update site anywhere, anytime
45. replace traditional advertising
46. get customer/client feedback
47. look better than competition
48. widen customer base
49. compete internationally
50. expand your business
51. save money
52. give favorable impression
53. generate leads
54. more room than a brochure
55. get customers’ business
56. strengthen brand identification
57. simplify your marketing
58. make info available about services
59.  no more phone book ads
60. yearly payments available
61. appeal to target market online
62. user friendly
63. very low risk
64. quick setup
65. make your small business look better
66. receive setup assistance
67. blogs increase traffic
68. blogging helps you learn
69.  advertise your business
70. it will help grow your business
71. receive flexible service
72. communicate better with clients
73. no html knowledge needed
74. ecommerce capabilities
75. control your updates
76. keeps prices competitive
77. establish customer trust
78. if you don’t exist in search engines, you don’t exist
79. establish word-of-mouth
80. try unique marketing ideas risk-free
81. easy to fix snafus
82. use an award-winning content management system
83. no print costs
84. no color matching with print items
85. update content quickly
86. expand your target market
87. templates are professionally designed
88. no more mail-outs
89. increase your credibility
90.  more room than a flyer
91.  make product info available
92. inexpensive redesigns
93. easy to add new pages
94. your customers expect you to have one
95. professional installation & setup
96. it’s green
97. you can’t afford not to
98. allows for easy payment
99. if you don’t exist online, you don’t exist

Thanks for reading, and contact us if you would like to meet to see if our $99 per month website would work for you.

Our new website design has launched!

By Tim Priebe on April 4, 2009 at 3:21 pm in Business Identity, Design

Well, in the very, very early hours of this morning, we launched our new website’s design. It had been a traditional “shoemaker’s children” type problem, where our quality of websites and design in generally has continuously improved over the past year, but our site stayed the same because we were busy work on other people’s websites and print design.

After putting it off for much too long, we all pitched in and worked really hard these last couple of weeks to get our site done. And it’s really paid off.



Take a look above at our old site on the right compared to our new site on the left, and you’ll see what I mean about our drastic increase in skill over the last several months. Although the website we designed for ourselves at the beginning of last year was solid, it was no longer reflective of our collective capabilities.

Major kudos goes to Dave, who spent hours and hours working on the site, getting it done  phenomonally fast while still doing an outstanding job. And to Eric, who still plans to redo much of the coding his boss threw together to get the site online quicker. Eric, please don’t cry when you start looking at my code.

Please, take a look around. We would love any feedback on the new design.

Business Card Special

By Tim Priebe on March 23, 2009 at 8:14 pm in Design, General

We’re running a great business card special this week. Although normally $250, this week only, you can get business card design from T&S for just $200.

Just contact us for more details!

For fun, vote on your favorite business card we’ve designed from the options listed below. Not that whichever of our designers loses will be teased mercilessly.



Which of the above business cards do you like the best?

View Results

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Three New Websites Launched this Week

By Hanna Roach on February 26, 2009 at 12:06 pm in Client Plug, Design, General

This week was a very exciting one for us here at T&S Web Design! We’ve launched three new websites this week. Check them out and let us know what you think.

Avanti Skin Care Center of Norman

AvantiNorman.com

Associate Medical Professionals

AssociateMedical.com

Cohlmia & Austin

MidtownLawCenter.com

The Fireworks Advantage

By Dave Roach on January 22, 2009 at 4:14 pm in Design, Development, Reviews

Adobe Fireworks CS4 BoxFireworks is often overlooked. Many (most) web designers today use Photoshop to design their websites, and a lot of them have never considered or (*gasp) even heard of Fireworks. Adobe Fireworks is made for creating websites. That is what it was built for, and it does it well. Fireworks enables you to rapidly prototype and design for the web. With it you can create a clickable PDF that will act as a prototype. Also, you can quickly create export and optimize slices (Fireworks is better at optimizing images than Photoshop).

Now don’t get me wrong, Photoshop is an extremely powerful tool and is amazing; it has way more features than Fireworks, but if all you are doing is designing websites, then you should use software that was specifically made for doing just that. Another excellent feature to note about Fireworks is that it is compatible with Photoshop. For the most part, you can open a psd in Fireworks, and it will recognize all of your layers and styles, and with CS4, compatability between Adobe’s programs have been further improved.

If you are a web designer and have not looked into using Fireworks, you should at least try it out and see for yourself how efficient it really is. There are hundreds of other excellent features Fireworks has to offer, read more about them at Adobe’s site.

Rounded Corners vs. Rounded Corners in Fireworks

By Dave Roach on January 13, 2009 at 6:26 pm in Design, Development, How-To

When designing a site in Fireworks, I have found that working with rounded corners can be a bit tricky if you don’t know some specifics. First off, there are two main ways to make rounded corners, the rectangle tool, and the rounded rectangle tool.

tools

When using the rectangle tool, you can round the corners by using the ‘rectangle roundness’ slider on the properties panel. Yes, this creates pretty rounded corners, but a couple problems can arise when using this method.

slider

First off, the rectangle roundness is relative to the size of the rectangle. If you have two rectangles of different sizes, both at 50 rectangle roundness, they will not appear the same.

roundness-50

Someone using this method to try and match corners will end up being off by a couple pixels, which can be crucial when it comes to coding.

So this is where the rounded rectangle tool comes in handy. When you create a rounded rectangle, you can just use the yellow handles to resize the entire rectangle and to adjust the roundness, even specific corners. Even better, resizing the rectangle via the yellow handle will not affect the roundness (unless you make it super tiny).

handles

Sounds easy enough, right? Well yes, but there are unseen issues here. When designing a site, pixels matter. For this reason, I like to type in the width and height of my rounded rectangle in the properties panel. The problem with this is that if you type values for a rounded rectangle it stretches it. It does not matter which method you use, the rectangle will stretch, and your corners will stretch as well. Luckily, there is an excellent solution to this problem!

numeric

What you need to do is to convert your rectangle into a symbol. You can make as many states of a symbol as you want, and then all you need to do is change one symbol and they all will change accordingly. Let me walk you through it.

First off, make a rounded rectangle with the rounded rectangle tool. Doesn’t matter the size or color.

Next, select the rectangle, and hit F8. Name the symbol whatever you want, make the type a graphic, and check the box that says “Enable 9-slice scaling guides” and click OK. Congratulations, you have made a symbol.

symbol

Now you need to double click on your symbol to go inside of it and edit it. In the window that pops up, you can resize, recolor, change the roundness of your  rectangle, apply filters, whatever you want. Then what you need to do it set up the 9-slice scaling guides. These guides allow you to resize your rectangle (outside of the symbol editing window) without distorting the corners. Just align the guides so that the rounded edges are outside of the guides.

guides

Now you can exit the symbol editing window and resize your rounded rectangle with the transform tool or by typing in the values in the properties panel. The only thing you need to watch out for is making the rectangle too small. If you shrink it so the corners meet, then they will distort like before.

The great thing about using symbols for rounded rectangles is that you can duplicate them and then edit one symbol’s corners and all instances of that symbol will change, no matter what size they are. This is especially useful if you change your mind later in the design process. Using symbols is really easy once you get used to them, and can streamline the web development process.

symbol-sizes

Don’t take your own website photos

By Tim Priebe on January 9, 2009 at 6:30 am in Design, Development

CameraIf your business is like many other small businesses, you’re probably on a relatively tight budget, even when creating a website. You’ve signed a contract with a web design company, and they’re wanting your content for the website, including photographs. Money is tight, so you opt to take them yourself.

Big mistake.

Taking the photographs yourself will, 99% of the time, result in ruining the visual aspect of the website you’ve just paid big bucks for. It’s like paying for a commercial during the Superbowl, then trying to shoot it yourself with a $200 camcorder.

But I have a nice, expensive camera

“But Tim,” you might say, “I just paid big bucks for this fantastic camera. My photos are going to look great!”

While a fantastic camera along might work for family photos or vacation memories, it doesn’t mean your pictures are going to be good enough to pass muster for your website. After all, if better equipment was all that was needed, couldn’t anyone perform brain surgery?

Okay, okay, so that’s a pretty extreme example. Let’s look at something a little closer to home for the average small business. What about printing your own business cards with a nice new printer? After all, printers have come a long way from the old days. But let’s face facts. Business cards printed on your printer are still not going to look as good as a professional printer.

It’s the same exact thing with photography.

A picture’s just a picture

“You’re just making a mountain out of a mole hill,” you might respond. “My photos aren’t going to make that big of a difference.”

Really? Studies performed at the University of Aberdeen asked website visitors to rank the credibility of an article. The first group had a good photograph of a doctor, the second a poor photograph of a doctor, and the third had the article with no photograph at all. The highest ranked version in terms of credibility was the one with the good photograph, the second the one with no photograph, and coming in last place was the one with the poor photograph.

I’m under no illusions that this will convince all small business owners to pay a professional to take photographs for their website. But there are plenty of options better than doing it yourself. You can use stock photos, hire a student, or hire a hobbyist. There are plenty of inexpensive options available.

For all your listening needs…

By Dave Roach on January 5, 2009 at 1:22 pm in Hardware, Reviews

Sometimes I find the best way to concentrate on my work and get a lot done is to just put on some headphones and work in my own little world. This (hopefully) will decrease outside distractions and allow me to not only get work done, but get it done well. I find that music is is one of (if not the best) way to get some creative juices flowing. These are the main reasons I have decided to buy some new headphones!Sennheiser HD-280 Pro

All this being said, I first wanted to find some headphones that were comfy. If I’m going to be wearing them all day, I don’t want my ears to hurt. Also, I want them to be easily removable in case I need to take them off and put them back on a lot. For these reasons, I decided that over the ear headphones would be best. Currently, I have a pair of Sony MDR-V150 which are decent, but after a couple hours they kind of hurt because they are a tight fit. In looking for a new pair, I know Bose makes nice headphones, so that’s where I started. I actually listened to a pair of Bose around-ear headphones at Target, and they sounded awesome, but after some research, I found out that Sennheiser makes some of the best headphones out there.

After some more reasearch on Amazon.com and Headphone.com (which by the way has excellent reviews) I decided to go with a pair of Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones. I have to say that these are the best headphones I have ever used. They sound even better than the Bose around-ear headphones and are extremely comfortable. I got these $200 headphones off Amazon.com for about $75.

If you are in the market for some headphones of any type, I would recommend starting your search at Headphone.com, they know their stuff. I actually used this article that recommended the best headphones to use with an iPod, which is how I ultimately made my decision.

FREE! and 50 to choose from…

By Emily Spirek on December 23, 2008 at 6:30 am in Design

indigenaFree. Something everyone wants and something designers thrive on. Smashing Magazine is constantly giving away inspiration to designers, which we’ll always accept with open arms. Here is a link to some desktop calendars that will spark some design creativity, and you can alternate monthly! These were created by designers around the world, and Smashing Magazine is always looking for fresh designs. I am constantly amazed with the quality of their website; their information is insightful, they always have freebies, and they’re innovative. Check out the website with the calendars and download one for your desktop; don’t hesitate to browse the rest of the site!

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/31/desktop-wallpaper-calendar-november-2008/

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