First steps

Today is the end of our first months trading and we would like to say a HUGE thank you to all of the people who have helped us get off the ground. It's been tough but now we feel as if we have done the hardest part - we've taken the first step.

We've achieved a lot this month, our first 100% designed and developed website went live. Thank you to Beautylistics for choosing us to get them online, this is their first steps into cyberspace and they've told us that they are delighted with the results. Anyone in Birmingham and in need of some serious stress relief should pop down to Beautylistics at LA Fitness, right in the heart of Birmingham City Centre and ask for Jacqueline. You can choose from a whole range of therapeutic services to help ease away life's stresses and strains. After the month that we've had I think we could do with some time on her treatment table.

We have also completed our second development for Bar Sport, a Cannock based sports themed bar that shows ALL the live sport you can think of... it's in beta testing at the moment but initial feedback is good and we hope to post live links to that soon.

Not to be outdone, the creative side of the studio has designed and produced a 16 page charity newsletter for Promise Dreams. We were honoured to get the opportunity to work with such a worthwhile cause and we hope that we can do more for them in the future to help them help seriously ill children fulfil their dreams. As soon as we get final sign off we'll post the PDFs online as another example of our work.

Also well underway are developments for Ireland based Elbow Room, thanks to Sarah for the leg up and for being our first overseas client. A website is in the pipeline for Midlands based DIY estate agents Debra Ball Homes - this is such a new concept that we are really pushing new ground with our development skills but, we love a challenge. Keep checking back on this one as we think that Debra has a great idea and as the housing market begins to rise again I am sure more and more people will start looking to sell their homes themselves and save £1,000s. We hope that this is all LIVE early next month and when it is we'll be shouting from the roof tops.

What's next, well, an iPhone App, a new commerce website and some SEO work for existing clients. Also, our own website. We have genuinely been so busy we have neglected to build our own development, but not too worry, we'll be online again very soon and we hope that we'll have even more good news.

Thanks again to ALL that have helped and contacted us with messages of support... there's still a lot for us to do. We believe that GeekyCreative has a lot to offer business in and around the West Midlands and beyond. We hope that our experience and expertise, coupled with our enthusiasm and work ethic will prove a success.

If you need help starting your own business or boosting your existing company profile then please get in touch with us at sales@geekycreative.com.

The Devils in the detail!

If there's one thing our designers and developers disagree on it's planning.

We all agree that every project needs some form of planning, even if it's simply scoping out costs so that you can ensure you make a profit. At the very least you should also make sure you have a good idea of what your client wants; to avoid any disagreements later when you do the big reveal. I mean you don't want your TAH-DAH moment to go all ERR-UHM do you?

If our developers had their way they would plan everything down to the last XHTML div and it's CSS style attribute. If our designers had their way they would grab the brief and and fire up Photoshop.

So who is right? Here at GeekyCreative we appreciate both approaches and therefore we try and feel our way through a project with our designers, developers and clients all involved. Some clients understand the technical side of a web development and some are more interested in the brand and style, for the latter; making it work is often the development teams responsibility and therefore they don't care 'how' you do it. Just that you do it!

To bridge the gap and make sure our designers and developers can work together, we do one bit of planning as soon as we receive an order. We make a very simple wire frame, or rather, we make two wire frames. Our designers will sketch out a wire frame layout, deciding roughly on the sizing and positioning of the branding, the number of columns and placement of navigation etc. They will work closely with a developer who will then take the sketch and produce a working wire frame from the brief, to do this we use MS Sketchflow. Once our developer is happy the wire frame goes back to the design desk and a full blown Photoshop visual is produced ready for the client.

We then sit down with the client and show them the visual and the wire frames at the same time. Clients can then see colours, sizing, positions and scale alongside a click able wire frame that demonstrates user journey and functionality.

This early planning allows our designers to 'place' their ideas inside an agreed framework, freeing them up to concentrate on smaller details, the things that make a visual difference. It also allows our developers to build a site quicker, there's no open ended functionality or going back to the client for clarification on what links go where. This allows our developers to concentrate on the intricies of their code and ensuring that the UI is the best that it can be.

Thus proving that for both developers and designers a little planning can go a long way. The Devil really is in the detail and a web development project can be a devil to get right if you don't have your creative designer and your geeky developer working towards the same goal.

Here at GeekyCreative we've been building websites this way for over 10 years... and we think we're not bad at it.

For more information please contact sales@geekycreative.com

Is Apple rotten?

The web has fizzed with debate on Apples new clause for iPhone SDK developers. Apple want to limit App developers to a select few programming languages, mainly C, C++ and Objective-C. With the iPad about to be released and new multi-App functionality on the iPhone is Apple spoiling the party?

Here at GeekyCreative we initially wondered what all the fuss was about, our first iPhone App development project is well under way and we've adopted the native Objective-C language to write it in. We were pondering - What is every ones problem?

Well not all agencies and developers are as flexible as us, maybe they have other development strands that use inherited code from 'other' languages. Legacy code can be costly and tricky to turn into a new language or platform. Maybe there are other developers simply not willing to learn a new language. More likely there are a lot of people with Apps already developed that are now wondering what will happen to their non-compliant Apps when the time comes to release upgrades, sell on, re-launch etc.

Apple already limits iPhone App development to Mac Osx 10.5.6 and above - meaning that you need Snow Leopard and a Mac with Pentium chips in it. This meant we had to upgrade our hardware and our Osx before we could even get the SDK installed. Now, two weeks later, the terms and conditions have changed... Apples not endeared themselves to us over the last few weeks we can tell you.

However, one look at the shiny shiny iPhone tells us all we need to know. People are fascinated by Apples user interface and the iPhone is here to stay. Our clients want Apps and we, well, we want to build them. The iPhone is a geeks, geekiest dream.

But, and there is a but, there are other companies out there whose technology is as cool as Apples and yet more open... APIs from Twitter, Google, Flikr, Yahoo and Facebook regularly make it into our developments. The jQuery library and Yahoo.UI have saved us from many a late night of coding... and they are all platform and language independent. As developers we love 'openness', mainly because it gives us a chance to take, add, amend and delete to our hearts content. We can explore some very powerful functionality through APIs and libraries.

However, the iPhone is not an API or a library, it is something like an operating system + API + library and we don't really blame Apple for locking down developers to languages that they are comfortable letting them use in their (Apples) environment. And what an environment it is... as developers we are happy enough to explore what IS on offer from Apple at the moment... the chance to build something for a product that is truly amazing. To do that we're prepared to learn a thing or two along the way. The books on Objective-C are already well thumbed and the coffee already nearly all gone.

We're sure that the debate will rage on and the purists maybe right, we don't know. All we can say is that we have never shied away from learning new skills and we plan on releasing our first iPhone App soon... with launch expected early May it will mean we have developed and written projects in VbScript, C#, ActionScript, PHP, ColdFusion, HTML, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, SQL, CSS and so on. Proving, we're more interested in the solution than the path we have to take to get there.

After all, the iPhone is Apples product, and if you want to build an App for it - buy a book and a lot of coffee; and, like us, prepare to learn.

Perfect 10!

We're not perfect! Yes, that's right... a web development studio that is happy to admit that they don't know it all. How can we know it all? The web is millions of pages wide by millions of pages high by millions of pages deep - and it is ever expanding and changing. To cope with the demand, technologies behind the Internet are also constantly changing.

So if we're not perfect why should you use us? Well, that's easy. You should use is because we want to be perfect. Our studio is constantly updating and evolving it's work processes, new languages are adopted, innovative processes implemented; on what seems like a weekly basis.

We work hard to find out what our clients want and then find a solution to fit. This often means that as clients demand more from their websites we give more. From humble HTML beginnings we can now produce bespoke website solutions using VbScript, C#, AJAX, JavaScript, PHP, XML, XLST, SQL, ActionScript and XHTML among others. We lever functionality from powerful online applications such as Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger and Facebook. We take a web development wish list and we bend over backwards to make it happen.

So if you want your Tweets on your homepage, or your own YouTube channel in your website then we'll get stuck into the relevant API and make it happen. Maybe you want interactive Google Maps on your contact us page? Or you want to blend your Blog into your homepage? Well contact us at emediates - we don't know it all; but the first step to improving your knowledge is admitting you have something to learn.

Browser? I just click the Internet...

Did you know that there is more than one way to view the internet?

The uninitiated will think that browser choice begins and ends with Microsoft™ Internet Explorer - is that big blue 'e' on your desktop the only way for you to see the net?

There is more choice than you think. In fact there are numerous browsers now available with each laying claim to be the best. Comparisons and evaluations of different web browsers is a rather big theme on the Internet and we will not go into it in detail here. Needless to say that there are more options appearing almost daily.

This choice is now even more obvious as Microsoft™ have been forced to offer users alternatives to their browser Internet Explorer. New version of Windows™ will not have IE installed as default but will allow users to pick from a list of browsers when the first configure their PC.

We believe that it is your own experience and feel of the browser that matters the most. Each person is unique and able to decide which web browser fits his or her needs the best. We think that most people would appreciate a faster, safer and more versatile web tool which can handle the ever increasing complexity and demands of Internet communication.

Of the big five browsers, Microsoft™ Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox™, Safari™, Opera™ and Google Chrome™... Chrome appears to be the fastest browser for Windows. Firefox is much faster than Internet Explorer and Firefox could be a better choice when it comes to standards, support, features and safety. But, Firefox is still not as speedy as Chrome or Opera, which both offer top-notch standards support and features. Chrome and Opera, like Firefox, can claim to be the safest web browsers.

Greater choice for users means a harder time for developers like us. Each of the browsers behave slightly differently. At GeekyCreative we take this issue very seriously and aim to have our clients websites looking right for over 80% of web users. So, whether your favourite is Firefox or Chrome, Opera or Safari, or Internet Explorer, chances are your clients might be using something different.

If you want your clients to see your website in it's best possible light - then contact us a free browser check today.