In early May of 2008 I released this website to showcase some of my work, start blogging and just be my little space on the web. Since it’s release, I’ve received a bunch of feedback from my visitors on the design, with most of it being positive. Everything from “Cool website design” to “Very inspirational, love your work” to “Great site, when shall we team up and dominate the web?!?” (that comment was great by the way, muwahahaha). So I’d just like to say a big THANK YOU to my visitors, for all the love, wherever you are from. Keep the feedback coming, I love hearing from you guys. And sorry if I don’t respond to all the feedback you guys are sending my way, you guys sure are keeping me on my toes.

This website has also recently been recognized on different design communities, showcases and CSS galleries across the web. A couple notable commendations include being featured on Wed Designer Wall’s 2008 Design Trends and Smashing Magazine’s Hand-Drawing Style In Modern Web Design - Volume 2. Some other showcases I’ve recently been featured on:

• Best Web Gallery
• Website Design Awards
• The Best Designs
• Web Creme
• CSS Elite
• CSS Mania
• Design Shack

For a more complete but not entirely up to date list of websites I’ve been mentioned on, visit my About page. So I also want to give a shout out and thank you to all of these websites for the love they have given me. I truly feel honoured to be amongst some of the best designed websites on the web.

www.webstrategija.com

My initial reaction was “Whoa!” Everything from the images to the source code was lifted right from the original mesh Conference website. They even left id=meshu in the source code. I have not contacted them directly but I have been told that they have been notified.

The real sad part is that the website is for a web conference in Croatia which focuses on web strategy, online marketing and how to be successful in todays web market. And it looks like the company and those who are responsible for the website are also the conference organizers. If these guys are trying to provide some sort value to the Croatian web community then I do hope they decide to change their ways soon.

Well they say that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and I do have to say I was quite flattered when I first saw this website. But I think imitation to this extent is just plain lazy.

Bomb Diggity

$(document).ready(function() {
  if($('#logo')[0].offsetWidth == 288) {
    $('h2.img').each(function() {
      string = $(this).text();
      filename = string.toLowerCase().replace(/ /g, '-').replace(/([^0-9a-z-])/g,'');
      $(this).html('<img src="/images/' + filename + '.gif" alt="' + string + '" />');
    });
  }
});

The code uses jQuery to match all <h2> elements on the page that have the class “img”. Then for each matched element, it puts its text contents into a string, formats the string (I’ll explain why in a bit), then replaces the text with an image. The string is then used as the file name for the image that’s inserted. Sorry if that’s confusing but here is what’s going on:

<h2>Bomb Diggity</h2>

The above code is being replaced with this:

<h2><img src="/images/bomb-diggity.gif" alt="Bomb Diggity" /></h2>

I format the string to something that works with the file naming convention of my website by converting the string to lower case, replacing spaces with dashes and only allowing alphanumeric characters. You can tailor this to the file naming convention of your website.

The last step is to only run the image replacement if images are enabled. I did this by wrapping the image replacement code in an if statement that checks the offsetWidth of an existing image on that page, in this case my logo. If the value of offsetWidth does not equal the width of the image on the page, it assumes that images are turned off. The image replacement does not happen and the html header shows as normal.

Please note that this technique was made for my website and works perfectly for how I needed image replacement to work for my website. It may not be suitable for your website or you may prefer another image replacement technique. But if this method works for you, great!

I was able to attend meshU yesterday, which is a one day event held in Toronto, Canada, that runs best practice and how-to workshops for designers, developers, project managers or anyone in the web technology industry.

During my day at meshU I was able to catch great presentations by Kevin Hale of Wufoo, Daniel Burka of Digg, Jon Lax of Teehan+Lax and John Resig of jQuery. I was intrigued by what each had to say during their workshop and I was able to take back something from each one. Especially Daniel Burka’s workshop on “Iterative Design Strategies” which hit on some design practices that I think every designer should try to adhere to, some of which I follow already. You can view the slides Daniel used in his presentation here. You can also download the slides used in Kevin Hale’s workshop, “How to Design for Love” here.

All in all, I had a great time at meshU. Met some really cool people and also got a free t-shirt with my logo on the front.

Sooooo, welcome and thanks for visiting. JeffSarmiento.com will be my new home on the web where you can find out what I’m up to, see examples of some of my work and once and a while you’ll find a blog post on design and other things that interest me.

Have a nice day.