The arrival of a new contract never fails to create a buzz around the Scotchegg office and throwing ourselves whole heartedly into any task big or small is just what we do, but every so often a new job comes along that pushes our capabilities both creatively and technically to a whole new level. Our biggest job to date for JobsVitae.co.uk, provided such a case study for our ever growing portfolio.

The latest job board site looking to take on the gargantuan online presence of ‘Monster’ and the like, might sound like a development brief of epic proportions but the in house team at Scotchegg were more than  prepared to rise to the challenge. JobsVitae, required a custom-built management system that was more complex than anything that could have been accessed ‘off the shelf,’ quite simply, we were required to build the site from the grass roots up. As with any job site board we needed to come up with features that were not only at the cutting edge of technical innovation but also user friendly for both candidate and recruiter whilst remaining consistently sharp in design.

Basic features such as account creation for users were matched with private dashboards that enabled candidates to supervise their own applications, track the progress and status of them, edit their CV’s, and manage their interviews. Likewise for recruiters, the private dashboard provided the function to re order a candidate’s CV to suit their own uniform standards as well as harvest through the CV database singling out prospective candidates based upon designated ‘key words’ that matched the set criteria of the job. A pioneering CV and cover letter wizard added another element to the overall specification of the site, the technology behind which could be applied to any tool that requires the input of information.

We can adapt such dynamic data driven elements to suit any management system all of which can be tailored to respond to the needs of the client, which is just another reason why Scotchegg should be top of anyone’s list looking for Web Design and Development.

Scotchegg IPhone Joystick concept

Conceptual IPhone Joystick Design!

There is no doubt this will be a big year for Apple with and the IPhone, with more network carriers now pushing the IPhone its going to be in more hands than ever before. With this will come more applications and of course more games. However the biggest issue with applications and more so with games at the moment are the restrictions in controls due to the lack of real push buttons. There are a few rumours of a new joystick coming, and even other concept designs out there that introduce ideas for a keypad to the IPhone.However they all seem to add considerable size to the case its self.

So I introduce my idea, simply encase the phone in a nice rubber shell with a DPAD and 2 (maybe more) buttons in the case.  This touch sensitive dpad case operates like standard console control pads and feeds the info straight into the IPhone via the docking bay.

With this concept there is no added size, nothing is obscured from the viewable area of an the screen and the phone can be held horizontally to control the DPad and the 2 buttons. Whooa La!

Love it or hate it, Twitter could have an important part to play in networking your business.

Despite being firmly in the glare of the media spotlight for the past 12 months it is easy to overlook the potential opportunity for networking and lead generation via Twitter, and as more and more of our client base at Scotch Egg ask us how to benefit their business through capitalising on its success we’ve decided to share our top 10 quick tips to help get you started…

1) Background Image

Personalising your background image is the most important visual element in getting you noticed. Using the default image looks lazy and lacks the strength of setting your own corporate identity. Twitter can be a great tool in bringing your business into the new decade and helping you stand out from the crowd so use it accordingly. Some people choose to add contact details to their background image; however I would prefer people to get this from the website I link to

2) Profile Picture and Bio

Picture

Get a good picture and you automatically stand out in a crowd of tweets. My personal preference is for characters or real photos as they offer an approachable edge to the most up to date and informal way of networking. If you are using a host of sexy marketing girls in your profile picture beware, to some this makes you look like a spam account on Twitter whereas the guy with the big nose or funny hair suits the Twitter vibe and more importantly looks real! Finally from a personal point of view try to avoid wearing sunglasses in your picture, it looks like you’re trying a little too hard to be “cool”.

Bio

The bio is really important; it is your time to shine by showing prospective clients exactly what you want them to see and ultimately, determines whether or not they will become your followers. Include what your business is about but try shaping it with a little character. It sets you apart from the competition and matches the casual tone of tweeting. It is important to contain the key words and the elements of your business that you would look for if you wanted to get a snapshot of another page yourself.

3) Follow, follow, follow!

This is the big one so you have to get it right! Follow the people in the field that you would like to respond to you. Other twitterers will be interested to see who recently followed them, so they will check you out. If your page and bio is right you will more than likely get a follow back! Google can help you find lists of people in many business markets and even towns. Google terms like “top 50 web designers on Twitter” and “Birmingham Twitter list” then view their page. If they are indeed interesting and not wearing sunglasses…follow them!

4) Where do you find people of interest?

If you work in web development yourself have you tried searching Google for ‘top web developers on Twitter’? Any search like this will more than likely return various blog sites with top lists of people to follow on Twitter. Check the comments section for other people requesting Twitter followers and while you’re there leave the name and link to your own Twitter page!

5) Search

Twitter has its very own search box which you can use to look for keywords mentioned in various tweets. If you’re looking for people in Birmingham for example, search “Birmingham”, if you are looking for people who go snowboarding search “snowboarding”! It sounds simple and it is. You can look back over days and weeks of results to follow people of interest.

6) Talk to people

Once you have your own loyal following waiting to hear from you, it’s time to get tweeting! Answer any questions they might have, share ideas and offer your own opinion on what they are talking about. If someone says something interesting then ‘re-tweet’ their message and give them credit using ‘RT @their name their message’. It’s an easy way of building rapport and strengthening relations in the market place.

7) Be polite

If someone gives you a mention, give them one back! Not only is this a great way to engage in conversation with potential clients, but it shows your efficiency in responding to a message and adds a personal touch. It speaks volumes if use Twitter to be friendly, not just to spam your own website or business and if someone has taken the time to ask you a question or comment on your tweet it is always nice to take the time to reply

8 ) Vary your tweets

Find a balance when you tweet. As important as it is to show your expertise and knowledge in your own area of business, it also helps to make it original, inspiring and interesting! Mix in a few opinions and fun details that help to build rapport and a real understanding of the type of person you would be in a working relationship.  Character building and trust is an important element of networking in both the real world and virtual.

9) Man vs. Machine

Not so much a tip but just a little something to think about! You may come across automatic twitter posting solutions like ‘twitterfeed’. These can be a great tool in linking your dynamic forum content and posts to Twitter with automation to save you time, but if all of your Twitter activity is “bot” like are you really worth following? The growth and popularity of Twitter is due to friendly, personal news and updates, so make sure you mix your automatic posts (great for getting content and searchable results to twitter) with a mix of  ‘hands on’ personal tweets to really engage your audience.

10) Help others!

If someone else said something interesting then Re Tweet it for them! Why not? Your followers want to see your posts with interesting content. Whether you wrote the original news story or tweet is irrelevant. Place ‘RT @theirname’ at the start of your tweet and then paste in the comment. Not only will they will love you for it but will most defiantly RT your comments back as ultimately spreading the word is what Twitter’s all about

15th / 16th April : Fazeley Studios – Birmingham

This course is perfect for anyone new to web development who wants to learn and begin to understand what goes into making a website.

If your a business you will likely realise the commercial benefit and market offer to you through the internet, as a result you will likely want to begin to understand the concepts and workings required in setting up or editing a web page.

Our HTML Introduction workshop will teach you the fundamental requirements of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and (XHTML) and how to ader to web standard in producing web pages. You will receive a pre course starter pack with some background information and optional but beneficial simple exercises to help you get right into learning early in the course. During the 2 days you will be taught web development skills alongside developing a pre prepared website which you will construct yourself.The 2 days program is designed to allow time for this, but we appreciate some learn quicker than others , which is why we all also supply some additional material for quick learners and offer full support on all course material post course for all students.

This course does not teach you dreamweaver skills, Dreamweaver is simply an application that attempts to generate web code for you. This course is designed to teach you to produce web code yourself and not to depend on any external applications. This approach will help you to ader and better understand W3C web standards, so that you fully understand what goes into making or editing a web page the correct way.

Good things come to those that wait

After what seems like forever scotchegg’s new website has finally gone live! Our clients have and will always come first, so this has resulted in delays to getting our site ready for launch, but now phase one is ready! We still have a few creases to iron out, and a few additions to make but for now its up and running and hopefully gives you a better understanding of what the scotchegg web development concept is all about.

The new website as you may have noticed, is built on WordPress from the ground up with a bespoke scotchegg template/ design and functionality. We do still have a few further surprises in store in the near future, but for now we have introduced the additions of tutorials, blogs and news to the scotchegg audience.

So please make sure you pop by often and take a look over any posts the team make and be sure to get involved in making any comments and of course request anything else you would like to see in the future.

IE6 Users

We hate it, we want to stop developing for it, but the sad truth is we can not blame all IE6 users for using it as its not always their fault they are still on IE6.
Only last week I was round my mothers and had to put my IT support hat on, like all web developers have to at some point. Looking at her laptop I discovered to my horror her company laptop was on IE6 with JS disabled, until this point I had always thought of these people as distant people that I would never meet, little did I know they were actually as close to me as my own mother!

Testing Testing 1-2-3

So first thing to do is to to get hold of IE6 to test your website on, there are various methods from butchery installs through to emulators. Personally I have always found these go wrong somewhere, or at worse appear to work but the truth is they are not 100% correct in their rendering. The best and only full proof method is to download Microsoft’s Virtual Machine and the latest IE6 XP Service pack 3 image. They release a version every few months that will then provide you a genuine testing platform for IE6, at the moment you can get it off this link .. VPC Image

Its relative

So you install Virtual Machine, get it up and go to your local machine IP (192.168.1.101 or something) and you see a list of directories of sites, in you go and it looks wrong? If there are no images or the CSS file has not been loaded then chances are your links are absolute ( http://localhost/somesite/css/style.css) . The thing is your not on localhost now are you, your on your virtual machine.So localhost means nothing to help your browser find the images or files with it included in the link. To fix this simply take it out, making all your links relative to the index, for example (css/style.css).

WordPress

WordPress loves absolute links, and of course the added issue is the theme directory css file is not really relative to the index file, its in http://localhost/somesite/wp-content/themes/sometheme/css/style.css, so linking to css/style.css or /css/style.css will fail. But the solution is to use a function WordPress gives you called ..

bloginfo('template_directory');

Which will get you http://localhost/somesite/wp-content/themes, but you do not want localhost when connecting from another machine.

What you can do is create another function or edit this one temporarily during testing to return relative links.
In general-template.php you will see a case statement, in here edit the current template_directory case or add your own with a new function added..

case 'template_directory':
		case 'template_url':
			$output = wp_make_link_relative(get_template_directory_uri());
			break;

The result will be a relative link which will then work on your VM for testing!

No excuses now for not testing your site on IE6