Thoughts on Design and Fly Fishing

July 31, 2009 - Jesse Korzan

Lately I've been spending more time in the rivers near my house. As I endeavour to get my line out, trying not to hook myself, there have been moments when I feel like I am finally "getting it".

Announcing BC Children’s Hospital Foundation's New Interactive Fundraising Campaign

July 23, 2009 - Jordan Willms

We at Work at Play and Social Signal are thrilled to announce BC Children’s Hospital Foundation's new interactive fund raising campaign. Work at Play and Social Signal partnered to create the Facebook application as well as a personalized video landing page: http://superhero.bcchf.ca/. Go check it out now, install it on Facebook and Donate!!!

Unity 3D TGIF & Workshop July 24th, 2009

July 21, 2009 - Jordan Willms

Work at Play is excited to be sponsoring and attending this upcoming not-to-be-missed event for Unity developers, those wanting to learn about Unity, and those looking to network and socialize with like-minded gaming folks. To celebrate the launch of the Vancouver Chapter of Unity Users Group, dimeRocker.com in partnership with Unity Technologies invites all local game, web, and iPhone developers to a premiere industry Unity Networking TGIF followed the next day by a Unity Skills Workshop.

WorkAtPlay.com How It Was Made: The Slide Effect

July 17, 2009 - James Andres

The second installment in our "how it was made" series for WorkAtPlay.com. In the first part we covered flip and scale effect used on the home page. This post will dive into the slide effect used to navigate between site sections. Before we jump into the code, I was asked a few times why we didn't just use the jQuery ScrollTo to make the sliding effect.

How The Drupal Services Module Should Be Used

July 15, 2009 - James Andres

I'm embarrassed to say I haven't fully understood the services module, until now. I just found this great example of how the services module SHOULD be used. http://gregbosen.org/blog/drupal-services-php-xml-rpc-example and http://drupal.org/node/394364 Here's a summary in my own words:

• Web services should ALWAYS be accessed with a logged in user
• Create a special Drupal account just for web services, eg: a "services" or "amfphp" user.
• Create a special Drupal role called "Services" that your "services" user is a part of.
• Assign as little permissions as you can get away with to the Services role. This account should not be a "super-user" in case it becomes compromised.
• Now, for the fun part .... here's the CORRECT way to connect to your web services. It is a 2 step process:
  • Call the system.connect service. This services exists ONLY to give you a session token. It will return a "sessid" parameter.
  • Call the user.login service. Pass the "sessid" parameter you received from system.connect, in addition to the user name and password of your "services" user. user.login will return the UID of your "services" user, if successful.
• Finally, you are logged into Drupal as the services user! Call whatever services you want, don't forget to pass the "sessid" parameter each time.

Nonce's, and keys still apply. Learn more about those here: http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/services

Konigi : Tools and content curator for UX designers

July 09, 2009 - Jesse Korzan

Konigi is a great website for UX professionals and those involved in the design of websites.

We love the Konigi OmniGraffle tools at our office; they are an indispensable tool in my bag of tricks.

Not your ordinary design gallery

I am a big fan of the showcase and blog. They find unique and compelling aspects that deal with all sorts of design problems. It's fast become a daily stop and a resource I'll flag for almost any new project.

Since we use Drupal a lot (like this blog), we noticed it's a fine Drupal install. I appreciate the subtle details, especially enjoying how the tagging is done, nice big images in the postings, and the home page design.

And it's very encouraging to see our own work in the showcase.

Help! SPAM Filters Won't Let Me Credit My Client Money!!!

July 09, 2009 - Jordan Willms

So get this: Our accountant did half-year reporting and found that one of our clients overpaid us by a few thousand dollars on one of their invoices. Naturally, I sent them an email offering them a few options for how to proceed:

• A cheque for the balance, or
• Some work that I knew they needed done, which would be slightly higher than what they overpaid (call it interest owed on our parts), or
• A credit that they could use for any of our services, be it strategy, user experience, web design, or web development.

And wouldn't you know it, I've tried 6 different versions of the email and I keep getting the dreaded "Undeliverable Mail" from their postmaster. Here is the message I keep getting:

The mail server for XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com does not accept E-mail that fails the WEIGHT17 spam test.

I cannot find any Google search results for "WEIGHT17 spam test". I am assuming I must have received 17 "points" off for a bunch of "shady" elements in my emails. I tried removing URLs, dollar signs ($$$) and the word "offer" but to no avail -- it keeps getting bounced. If anyone knows what the WEIGHT17 spam test is I'd love to hear it. I will keep at it. I am determined to beat this SPAM filter. Man - the hoops a guy has to jump through to give his client some $$$. I'm not selling Viagra after all. So to all the SPAM filter makers out there, please take note, sometimes offers of free money ($$$) over email really do exist. P.S. I am not afraid to pick up the phone, I am just being stubborn on this one :)

Our website is being "flattered": Should we open source it?

June 30, 2009 - Jordan Willms

Lately, the Work at Play website has been getting plenty of kudos and "inspiring" plenty of interesting imitation, including a couple of sites from India and Turkey. We believe imitation is the purest form of flattery, so actually everyone in the office is quite flattered.

A Healthy Online Community is Like an Art Opening

June 25, 2009 - David Gratton

A healthy online community is like an art opening. For the last year or two we've been using this analogy inside Work at Play when consulting with clients and especially when designing products like DEQQ. A vibrant community is like an art opening. One goes to the art opening and it has a particular style and theme. It has its own culture based on what the staring artist is like and the art she creates. Maybe it's black tie, champagne and caviar or maybe it's blue jeans, Jim Bean and BBQ wings. Either way we understand the culture from the moment we enter.

What You Should Know About Drupal Contrib Modules

June 19, 2009 - Ronn Abueg

You should know....

Views, Panels, and CCK are the foundation of all modern Drupal sites -- They do all most of the work for you

• tip: Reality check -- build as much of a site as you can using JUST contrib and core. Make sure your first question is "How can I implement this with existing modules like views, CCK and panels? Then, and only then, once you establish a gap, produce custom code. Custom code should only be used if you can prove that you were not able to use Views and CCK to create the equivalent functionality.
• tip: Learn how views export module works. It's bundled with views and allows you to literally turn your views into "versionable code".
• tip: Panels and blocks are a powerful combination. Learn it.
• see: Listing of "Essential Drupal Modules"
• see: Panels Video Tutorial from Oregon state Univ.
• see: Views + CCK Tutorial

Static nodes can be exported using the node_export module

• see: Install Profile API for importing node exports

CCK types can be exported and imported with content_copy module, ships with CCK

• tip: Again, the Install Profile API module makes importing CCK types easy.

i18n + views is the easiest way to build a multilingual site

• tip: Use the views language filters to build language aware views

Image module is one of the longest running, and best supported modules ever

• tip: If you're not using image module to handle your uploaded images, think again.

imagecache module is the long-run simplest way to handle multiple image sizes

• tip: Sure, there's a little configuration pain up front but your site will be extremely flexible

That pathauto is almost always the easiest SEO win

• see: Pathauto tutorial, a fairly good one

logintoboggan module solves 80% of the registration related requests from the client

• see: LoginToboggan Project on Drupal.org

admin_menu module makes administering and building Drupal sites easier and faster It is more attractive that simplemenu (and more logical and Acquia supported!)

• see: Admin Menu on Drupal.org