When Software Attacks!

@media 2008

After sadly missing last year due to workload, I am excited to be able to attend @media 2008 in London along with Tom and Lauren from Black Marble. If you know me and you want to meet up please get in touch!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

Balancing customer needs against forward motion: IE8

I’ve watched the debate with interest but not posted anything until now. The news of Internet Explorer 8 keeping it’s new rendering engine to itself unless you tell it otherwise caused a strong outpouring of opinion around the web. I must admit, my initial reaction mirrored that of many others - that it’s just plain wrong (although my good friend Nick’s posting took some concentration to ascertain his thoughts!). Why hold back on improved support for CSS; why hide the fact that the engine now passes ACID2?

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Sunday, February 10, 2008

In the Mix

Well, it’s just after 3pm on day one of Mix:UK 07. I’m taking a break with a coffee so I thought I’d post. It’s mixed bag down here (sorry - no pun intended). The technology is fantastic - the stuff that can be achieved with WPF and Silverlight is excellent. I’m still a little uncertain that usability has been sacrificed on the sacrificial alter of bling, however. To be fair, that’s more telling about the rapid-development nature of conference demos, where the wow-factor is more important, but I think it’s a very, very significant issue which should not be allowed to get lost in the excitement.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Web site development: University of Bradford Part 1

One of the last projects I was involved in before I left the University of Bradford to join Black Marble was a new design for the external web site of the institution. I’d pretty much finished the construction of the page layouts and styles before I left, but it’s only now that the site is about to go live. I’ve threatened a few people with a series of posts on how the site is constructed and although I’m not there any more it seems topical.

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Monday, August 27, 2007

Web development helpers: Redux

After posting yesterday about useful tools for development I stumbled across another little gem of a utility. IE7Pro is much more of a usability-enhancing tool but it has a wonderfully handy tool nestling within - Save Current Tab As Image. If you need to do grabs of pages for documentation or presentations and the page is more than a single screen in length this will transform your life - no more cropping and stitching!

Posted by Rik Hepworth on Thursday, July 26, 2007