Author Archives: Anthony

Anthony Calzadilla

Anthony is ultimately responsible for the design and conversion performance of all client websites, landing pages and related content. He keeps Optimum7 at the cutting edge of design technology and methodology as well as content management implementation and integration. Anthony is an expert at designing and developing websites in CSS, Javascript/AJAX (jQuery, YUI), X/HTML(4/5), XML, Photoshop, Fireworks, Apache, MySQL, PHP, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and the occasional crumpled napkin.

Client Request Tennis in Web Design

Sometimes a client will subconsciously avoid moving forward on a project. They might feel a bit of apprehension at releasing their new site to the world. They might want to take a closer look at it. They start noticing tiny details that only end up delaying the process. It’s at a time like this that you have to play what I call “Client Request Tennis”!

Game On!!!

After requesting final approval for a project to go live you receive another list of corrections from the client. It is now time to start “Client Request Tennis”

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Making Internet Marketing Fun with Wufoo and CSS3 Animation

We believe that over-saturation is causing ‘snow-blindness’ to lead generation forms. By stepping outside the bounds of a typical lead generation form we are able to tap into a different part of the users psyche. Will it work? That remains to be seen. We assume nothing. This is just a first of many tests. You can see the actual animation here.

The only solid/concrete fact we do have is that this is a completely different approach. Its unprecedented … taking an unproven / untested and decidedly “edgy” lead generation form and implementing it on the home page of an already successful website.

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CSS Sprites; Making Them Easy

When designing a website there are often graphic elements that are essential to the look and layout of your site. Often these designs can become very “image-heavy” requiring a huge time investment from the designer having to slice/cut/export all those graphics. It also requires the server to retrieve dozens of images which in turn puts a heavy load on the server. This is why it has become standard to use CSS sprites.

What are CSS Sprites?

Here is a good explanation by Chris Coyier on exactly what CSS sprites are:

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How to Resolve Web Design Issues with Clients

Designing and developing a website can be a huge undertaking. There are often hundreds of emails exchanged between web developers and their clients. Despite all the email communications, there comes a time when the project stagnates because the client has not provided crucial information.

Fortunately there is a solution. You have to “box” your client into a corner and force them to communicate effectively! The easiest way of achieving this is by writing the client an email with the following points;

•   Description of the current phase of the project and whether it’s behind schedule

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Conversion Optimization Issues with Clients

So you have a client that is asking you to make many changes to his/her website based on conversion optimizations. What is conversion optimization you ask? Well according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_optimization) “conversion optimization or conversion rate optimization is the method of creating an experience for a website or landing page visitor with the goal of increasing the percentage of visitors that convert into customers.”

The only problem is that your client is making changes based on her opinions.  Changes that she thinks will work better… but they often don’t. To make matters worse, you hardly have any data you can analyze. The client isn’t allowing the tests enough time to run.

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Google Font Directory – Enhancing Design and SEO

Google has released a bunch of cool technologies today at I/O. One which interest me is the Google fonts directory. This allows you to easily embed really cool open source fonts on your website for free! You don’t need to do any programming; all you have to do is add a special stylesheet link to your HTML document, then refer to the font in a CSS style and Voila! More importantly its being hosted on the google. As the Google Font API becomes widely used, visitors will likely already have the font you’re using in their browser cache when they visit your page. All CSS3 effects are available. Text-Shadow, rotation, etc.

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Pure CSS3 Spiderman Cartoon w/ jQuery and HTML5 – Look Ma, No Flash!

Update: 10/11/2011 New Animation; Making Internet Marketing Fun with Wufoo and CSS3

Dont have CSS3 animation capable browsers? Watch a video of the animation.

Inspiration

Searching YouTube for inspiration I stumbled on to the intro of the classic 1967 spider-man cartoon series. While watching I realized that the animation was very basic. It was the paper doll sort of animation that lends itself perfectly to css3. Hmmm… “I could something like that with a little css3″, I thought.

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