BorkWeb » layout

World of Warcraft MySpace Layouts

Matt — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 15:56:51 +0000

Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom has blessed MySpace with its presence! Over the past few months I’ve received a number of requests for World of Warcraft MySpace layouts and I’m happy to say that Blizzard has created a number of those layouts for anyone to use!

They’ve got one for each WoW race. To get them, simply head over to the World of Warcraft MySpace account and scroll down to the Skin your MySpace section and click on the races…or grab them directly from these links:

Site Redesign

Matt — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 01:02:03 +0000

It was high time I re-design BorkWeb. I’ve been screwing around with this design for a few weeks now and I’ve finally got it working for go-live today :D I began construction on the site using LifeAfterCoffee’s Caffeine Theme. Jon did a great job in structuring the templates and a fairly solid CSS stylesheet.

However, I took it and butchered it beyond recognition. I did a lot of restructuring of the templates, location of elements, and I ripped apart the CSS stylesheet and pasted its parts back together with a some additions. I’ll adjust this theme some more, add a header graphic, zip it up and make it available for download soon.

UPDATE: I already think this needs more work….hrm. I’ll have to brainstorm on what to do to it.

Slashdot Redesign

Matt — Tue, 30 May 2006 18:43:45 +0000

Last month Slashdot held a very open-ended competition for a redesign of the long overdue layout. I had initially thought I’d enter but laziness took the best of me and I never completed my design. The winner was Alex Bendicken who created a pretty clean and snazzy design. CmdrTaco estimates that the new design will go live in a couple of days…say goodbye to the eyesore that was the circa 1990′s layout.

The winner of the contest will be receiving a sweet laptop (valued at up to $4000) plus the bragging rights of redesigning one of the world’s most popular tech/geek blogs. Good times. Over the course of the contest I had been hoping Peter Lada’s design would win out, but Alex’s is just as snazzy (with fewer frills) so I’m happy.

MasterWish – Practicing What I Preach

Matt — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 03:53:31 +0000

MasterWish, my labor of love (created with my friends Zach Tirrell and Jon Emmons) is my playground for Ajax and Web 2.0 experiments.

If you haven’t been acquainted with the site, its a wishlist site with a schlew of features. The high point is the ability to secure down lists and grant access to specific buddy groups. I’m pleased to say that we have gained a decent member base in the past 8 months and I am also happy to say that things are going to change around shortly!

MasterWish was built using SAJAX as the tool of choice for Ajax communication but as I’ve mentioned in the past, I am a Prototype convert. My knowledge of Ajax, JSON, and general application structure has been morphing so much in recent weeks that I have held off in completely revamping the wish list site.

Things are changing. I have begun the work to implement the following:

Creation of more “hackable” Web Service APIs using SOAP and REST
Representation of data using both XML and JSON
Ajax powered by Prototype
Sweet DOM manipulation powered by Script.aculo.us
Separation of Layout and Logic with event:Selectors
and of course, we’re already doing: Server-Side Templating for greater separation of Layout and Logic.

Sign up. Stay tuned. Get gifts.

Slashdot Getting a Face Lift

Matt — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 04:26:31 +0000

Finally! I have been frequenting Slashdot for quite a few years now and the current layout…well…sucks. I have often remarked to my friends that the geek news site really needed a new look. You see, I wouldn’t consider myself a super graphic designer or artsy person but I know what I like. I’m somewhat critical with sites and their layouts, especially with ones that are extremely high profile like Slashdot. There is a LOT of great news articles that come from them but I can never fully get past the icky layout. Well, I have been praying to the binary gods of THE internet and they have seen fit to answer. Slashdot – after 8 years – will be moving to a CSS layout with a more up-to-date look’n'feel. Read the article!