Being a web designer is all well and good, but moving to a Mac for development has just taught me a lesson.  I develop in Firefox and test in Safari as well while I am at it.  I run Parallels and Bootcamp for Windows so I can in theory test in Internet Explorer 6 & 7. But being on the Mac makes me lazy.  Sites just work how they are supposed to in Firefox and Safari as they are well behaved browsers.

I rolled out a Textpattern version of FCS Websites and it all looked great. On the Mac.  It turns out that the front page layout was completely cocked in Internet Explorer 6 & 7, and so was the portfolio page.  I am looking for a smiley that can express how embarassed I am right now, but there isn’t one.

Lesson for today, kids:  “If you are a web designer, at least make sure your own site works on the dominant web browser.”

Korzybski’s Science and Sanity has got me thinking about the semantics of daily life.  Some say it doesn’t matter, but I feel it does.  I don’t want to be bombarded by meaningless communications.  Today’s pointless words are as follows:

• “Fully” - Often used when it is not actually true, or cannot even be true. Example - Putting “fully modified” in  a car advert.  What is “fully” modified? There is no standard to measure this against. Nonsense.
• “Affordable” - Again, there is no fixed point to measure this against. Who can afford it? Millionnaires? Tramps?
• “Budget” - Often used to denote the cheapest version of something.  A budget can be large or small. Over use of this word turns its use into nonsense.
• “Relationship” - When used only to denote a romantic relationship.  Any two people that exist have a relationship. People need to be more specific.  Even when actually talking about what is commonly called a romantic relationship, nobody seems to know what that means to them aside from the cultural norm of dating, fucking, then living together as pseudofriends that try and control each other (but I digress, that is a separate issue).

Closely related to meaningless conversation are advertising slogans.  Now I don’t have a problem with advertising or slogans in principle, just when it has no actual meaning.  Take a mythical but realistic example:

• Chris Smith Builders - Doing it right every time (usually in some curly bullshit script font, possibly WordArt)

Ok Chris Smith, you are telling me nothing by this apart from that you have no imagination and don’t value your business enough to employ a designer to sort out your only public facing communication.  People judge you on first impressions.  Get a name, and a considered tagline.  Get your design laid out by a designer, not your mate Dave.  It will only cost you a couple of hundred pounds, probably a day’s profit for you.

As far as the tagline goes, doing WHAT? How is the QUALITY of that action measured? Are you really doing it right EVERY time? That is unlikely.  Taglines make me weep.  A good one will convey the whole philosophy of the business in one snappy sentence.  A bad one is just a waste of letters.

Vauxmoore , the Nottingham Vauxhall specialists, have just had a new site from FCS Websites . The new site uses some jQuery trickery for the internal tab navigation, and Jamie’s awesome FormLord jQuery plugin for the contact form

Click the image to visit their new website.

Awesome set of Kingston DataTraveler Icons by my homeboy Mr Rick Nunn. He is in the zone at the moment, making websites, widgets, icons and all kinds of other stuff!

Kingston DataTraveler Icons (For OS X) | RickNunn.

FCS websites have been working on www.wilsonfieldmarketing.co.uk recently, for a company that help people reclaim their Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) premiums on loans etc if they were mis-sold the policy.

It is a budget site, but still has an attractive graphic design and a spam protected contact form. Good coding practices mean that it is already ready for search engine optimisation and works on all major web browsers. We also took care of creating print ready artwork for a PPI refund flier and turned the whole thing around in a short time frame to fit in with the shop opening deadline