Author Archive
Exposed to the Elements – Grand Haven Event Recap
The Exposed to the Elements snowboard and ski competition at the Ski Bowl at Mulligan’s Hollow in Grand Haven on Sunday provided the opportunity for several children to showcase their winter sports skills on the slopes. The event, sponosored by Buffalo Bob’s and Element Design, was a part of Grand Haven’s Winterfest. Exposed to the [...]
How to Fix Timthumb using a Virtual Directory (URL contains tildes (~))
The timthumb tilde issue has been discussed for almost a year now on the official timthumb site, and the developers have yet to do anything to provide a fix for users in development environments. The issue is that when developers are developing sites using a URL structure such as: http://127.0.0.1/~mysite/images/dog.jpg, timthumb does not correctly parse [...]
Re-enable Vertical Tabs (Side Tabs) on Google Chrome 16
My previous post “Using Side Tabs on Chrome and Firefox” outlined steps to switch website tabs from stretching horizontally across the top of your browser to a vertical stack on the side. The post outlines the many benefits of using this layout of tabs, however recently the Chrome team decided to take this feature off [...]
The Best Web-Based Online Image Cropper
Element Design has recently released a brand new version of it’s online image cropping service, Croply. Using the latest HTML5 specifications, Croply is the fastest and most accurate image cropping service available online. Other web-based image cropping services have you upload an image to their server before you can begin working on it. One major disadvantage [...]
How to Add Horizontal Padding to a Website for Mobile Devices
I recently completed a client’s website when an issue was brought to my attention. When viewing the full site on a mobile device (Android, iPhone, or iPad) the site extended to the corners of the screen. There was no padding on the left or right of the site which looked awkward with parts of the [...]
Contact Form 7: Get Parameter from URL into Form Plugin
There are times when using the Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin where I need to pass a parameter from the URL and into a hidden field into the form. This is great for passing things such as order numbers, selected packages, or even security information. Download GetParam Here Installation Copy the getparam.php file into: /wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/modules/ [...]
Grand Haven Social Media Workshop – Session on Blogging
(Grand Haven, Michigan) Starting its third year, Social Media Workshop will begin on Friday, October 7th with a session on blogging presented by Chad Huntley of Element Design. Formally known as 2E Network, Social Media Workshop is a monthly gathering to educate the business community on this constantly growing and changing form of communication, public image, [...]
Convert your Business Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page
Within the past several weeks many local businesses have had their Facebook profile pages deleted, losing thousands of followers. This is because they have their business setup on Facebook as a “profile”, instead of a “page”. They have this distinction because only individuals should have profile pages with their personal information, and send “friend requests” [...]
Firefox and CSS Attribute Selectors for “style”
While creating a script to hook into the template of an existing website, I decided to use the attribute selector feature of CSS. This powerful feature allows you to select specific elements of the page, based on certain attributes (i.e. style, title, id, class, etc.). The attribute selector worked as expected in Chrome, however I [...]
Using Side Tabs on Chrome and Firefox
When it comes to website development I find myself constantly multi-tasking. It does not take long for the top of my browser to fill up with 15+ tabs, showing only the website’s favicon with no description. This makes it difficult to find the tabs I’m looking for. Some may argue it makes sense to open [...]
