Over the past couple of months, Frommers.com underwent a full redesign. The main goal of it was to give it an up-to-date look. Many infosites have made the jump to an XVGA resolution, so it was about time to do so with Frommer's. The new space would also provide opportunities for all of the feature that needed promotion and more standard ad units. One major change that users won't notice and actually, non-technical staff as well was the coding standard used. The code under the hood is now XHTML 1.0 Transitional instead of HTML 4.0 Loose. It's cleaner as it follows XML formatting and is much easier to use with CSS.
The color palette is roughly the same as before, so users will still feel that level of comfort. Some non-daily users may not even notice the difference. The improvements to the interface include...
1) a personalized CSS dropdown navigation with Pluck SiteLife login & Omniture Search.
2) JQuery slideshow to promote new features.
3) extremely prominent search boxes, since that's the primary means of navigation these days.
4) better integration of our world events, that were previously buried because of a bandaid approach applied to an acquired entity.
5) direct access API widgets everywhere that plugin to SiteLife blogs, forums and photo galleries.
July 1, 2009
Frommer's 2009
June 11, 2009
Enchantment on Frommer's
I just posted some of my vacation photos up on Frommers.com. We have many different levels of photos now and I have to think about where I want to upload them. For Key West and Cozumel, I placed them into the official Destination Guides. Since we don't have a photo feature for cruises, I upload the Enchantment of the Seas images to my Community account.
- Key West Slideshow
- Cozumel Slideshow
- Enchantment User Gallery
June 8, 2009
May 12, 2009
Web Design w/ Pencils
I reached a point in one of my projects today where I had to start sketching out web designs. That's right... sketching with pencil and paper! I'm probably the only person in the office with a pencil and electric sharpener. Edward Kinney, one of my computer art professors at SCAD always said that an artist should never be at the computer without a plan in mind. Working things out on paper seems to be more effective. In front of a computer, there's too much exposure to automatic tools and filters. This leads to a tendency to jump ahead and work on details rather than the basic idea. Back then, we were learning electronic painting and animation, but this applies to web design as well.
We already had a bunch of pages figured out, but I ran across a page that was somewhere between a main menu and content page. If I had jumped straight to Photoshop to do the design, I'd be wasting time with what each page section looked like. On paper, I needed to figure out which layout would make the best use of the space. The details could be filled in with my imagination. I made two sketches and then easily picked the one that worked out the solution best. Tomorrow, I'll be all set to jump into the XHTML & CSS... not even going to the Photoshop step!
April 11, 2009
NY International Auto Show
I made it a point to go to the NY International Auto Show this year because it's been a while since the last time. So despite the rain, my longer-than-expected doctor's visit and train delays, I made it there at 1pm. It was crowded, but not as packed as past events (probably due to weather & the holiday weekend). The cars that were fenced off were easy to shoot. Thefully exposed ones were a little harder to get pictures of, but all I had to do was wait a few minutes until they cleared up.
The theme this year seemed to be hybrid and electric cars, but I went to get a closer look at all of the muscle car remakes... Shelby GT 500, Camaro SS, Challenger, etc. Most interesting of all was the Camaro exhibit because of the life-size Bumblebee replica from Transformers.
Click here for photos and details about each of the cars I looked at.
These photos have also been uploaded to RCT Performance.
Related: NY Auto Show, Jacob Javits Center, Transformers Movie
March 24, 2009
Wheels and Tires
RCT Performance just got a couple of new machines to add to their wide variety of services. To promote it on the website, a detailed slideshow was added to the homepage in place of the large photo. A smaller version of the slideshow was duplicated for the Wheels and Tires detail page, where it was wrapped with a detailed description of the machines.
Click Here for Wheels and Tires
March 8, 2009
Résumé 2009
I finally updated my résumé with a bunch of new items. Over the past 2 years, I added a lot of new technologies, but many of them were not software titles. Instead, it seems like everything went towards web-based services like search engines and Online communities. One of the major goals was to get "SEO" in there. It seems like everything these days is about search engine optimization. I've been to many seminars, read books and applied a lot of that knowledge to all of my sites. I also cleaned up some of the older items like the 3-D animation packages.
Click here for my updated résumé
February 23, 2009
Exhibition List
Part of the redesign that was done last July involved removing the high-maintenance Exhibitions section. Instead, the news box on the homepage was used to promote upcoming events. There was still a need to archive past events though. So a listing page was just added to the About section. The new page lists all of Kim Eng Yeo's exhibitions back to the beginning. It's a dynamic page driven by an MS Access database for easy storage and entry of each exhibition.
February 1, 2009
Miniature Opera House
Click here for details
