Fluid 7 Mutterings
where fluff meets grit
Developing a custom content system
Dec 20th
We’ve worked with Practical Action for many years developing their site and online presence, but back in 2010 they took the bold step to completely overhaul their site. This naturally involved considering both changes to the design and the system on which the site was built. After considering a few different systems the team decided on a bespoke path that led to the creation of a custom Content Management System that really establishes new foundations for the site to develop over the coming years.
Starting with the redesignThe design process was exiting, and working on such a large site was always going to be More >
Building Magento around Booksonix
Dec 19th
Practical Action Publishing approached FLUID7 to redesign their Development Bookshop. It was an exciting opportunity to move them off of an ageing OSCommerce site and into a shiny new Magento instal. To really spice things up we wanted to connect their shop with their book management software, Booksonix. Creating a slick solution that pulls new and updated titles from Booksonix into Magento automatically, cutting out the need for the team to manage titles in both applications independently.
You can check out the new bookshop here: http://developmentbookshop.com/
Redesigning the Bookshop
The new design pulled in core styles that had been created for the recent group site redesign for Practical Action. Presenting More >
FLUID7 have moved to Electric Wharf
Dec 15th
We’re delighted to announce that over the summer the FLUID7 team moved into the Cable Yard at Electric Wharf. Our new studio provides us with the creative space to develop and grow the company as we begin to see the fruit of the partnership between WebJetty and FLUID7 (back in October 2010).
Eco-Friendly Studio, overlooking the Canal
We love the eclectic estate that we’re part of. Electric Wharf is an attractive (award winning) canal side environment close to Coventry City Center. Previously an early Victorian power station, the new development of modern offices fuses the industrial brickwork and steel of old with More >
The Talent Business Redesign
Dec 15th
Designer Ben Merrington got us onboard to deliver his designs for the thetalentbusiness.com. This redesign for The Talent Business, provider of senior talent to communications agencies and creative businesses around the globe, needed to utilise the latest web-tech. The result is smooth HTML5 & CSS3 transitions, some pretty special Ajax content loading and all built on our in-house CMS.
On the outside
This really was an exciting contract to work on. Not only are the designs great, but the requirement to make the experience as slick as possible allowed us to get really geeky with the latest techniques. Take a look at More >
jQuery live(‘submit’) and form serialize() issues in IE
Jul 8th
OK It’s been busy in the F7 camp, making it very difficult to find time to blog, hence this being my first development blog entry since before christmas.. MAD.. Admittedly we are still as busy as house elves but I came across some IE voodoo with jquery and wanted to share it with you, or at least so I can refer back!
Using: jquery 1.6.2
Right – I was trying to catch the submit event on a form, the form is loaded with ajax so I use the jquery .live() method.
$("#myForm").live('submit', function() {
$.post($(this).attr('action'), $(this).serialize(), function(data) {
$('#dialog').html(data);
});
return false; More > Can open source web applications increase the ROI of your website?
Jan 4th
Open Source web applications can respond quickly to changes in web trends and technologies, allowing the software to be widely tested and regularly updated – and all for FREE!
For those not familiar with the term open source, it describes practices in production and development that provide open access to the end product’s source materials. (Video: Stephen Fry introducing open source software)
In choosing the right technologies for your website you may have already come across some of the leading open source content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal, WordPress and Joomla. The continuing growth and success of these products is greatly attributed More >
FLUID7 Relaunch!!
Dec 21st
We had a great time celebrating the relaunch of FLUID7 after bringing together Web Jetty and FLUID7 as one new stronger, better company!
We invited all our clients along to the stunning 1450 bar in Coventry, where we hired the top floor for our relaunch party. Serving canapes and drinks all evening, we wanted a chance to mingle with our clients, introduce them to the new team, thank them for their support and excite them about the opportunities ahead.
We didn’t want the evening to drag, so came up with the idea of extending a recent team photo shoot brief to our More >
Ninja tools … or debugging network problems
Dec 18th
Having just come through a harrowing ‘network issue’ ordeal, I thought I’d best document the steps back to sanity from out of my naivety. A rough description of the scenario follows.
We have a client using Sage Line 50 who wanted to perform queries on their web members database in conjunction with their in-house accounting information. This set me down the path of setting up an on demand connection and synch, database to database. The solution was a VPN connection between the client’s LAN and their web server.
Having never played seriously with VPNs before, we secured the help of a good More >
Cross browser HTML5 Audio and Video is a reality!
Oct 14th
Well OK.. kind of …
I’ve been searching high and low for HTML5 implementations on video and audio. I wanted all my audio and video widgets to look the same cross browser. Although I knew HTML5 is getting great support, I also knew that HTML5 video and audio wasn’t supported by IE6, 7 and 8 and only partially supported by Opera and Firefox.. So the way to acheiving my goal looked pretty grim..
But alas! There are many clever implementations out there that are usable.. one in particular impressed me.. (more…)
Drupal – Theming to keep your modules modular
Oct 13th
Drupal is a powerful CMS and allows us as developers to create very bespoke web sites and applications.
I tend to create a module for every website to handle its Page and Block declarations. But its messy and not to mention unconventional to include HTML in your modules. I want to share how to theme your page declarations and any other piece of HTML for that matter to keep your modules tidy. (more…)
