Category: News

BootstrASP – Our first open source project

Trippnology logoWe are very excited to announce our first open source project that we’re calling BootstrASP. It’s a simple framework for building websites with ASP and twitter’s Bootstrap with some added CSS3 candy thrown in for good measure!

You’ll find all the info on the project’s github page. If you spot something wrong, you have an idea for a new feature or you have a better way of doing something, please submit a pull request and we’ll review your code. It’s an ever evolving project and new features are being regularly added.

BootstrASP is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 which means you are free to copy, distribute, hack, slice, make derivatives and even to make commercial use of it provided that you both credit Trippnology and release your work under an identical license. We’re big fans of open source software (and hardware for that matter) so we’re really pleased to be giving a tiny something back to the community.

Let us know what you think in the comments here or on twitter and remember to share this post with your networks.

The rolling Facebook gathers no moss

FacebookWith all the competition from Google+, Facebook is having to up it’s game. There have been some fairly drastic changes recently and more are on the cards.

They are set to make an announcement later today (5:30pm to be exact) which you can watch below. Facebook’s goal is to become the social layer that supports, powers and connects every single piece of the web, no matter who or what it is or where it lives.

Let us know what you think in the comments here or on Facebook and remember to share this post with your networks.

(via Sean Clark’s blog)

[RELATED]: Google+ Vs Facebook: The gloves are off

Our first HTML5 site – Glass Splashback Colour

Glass Splashback Colour screenshotWe’ve just put the finishing touches to our first HTML5 website: Glass Splashback Colour. GSC is an offshoot of Glassact UK, a specialist glass company from Norwich supplying glass splashbacks, glass worktops, image glass and bespoke architectural glass. They already had a website but it was built using a free online site builder which meant it wasn’t properly optimised for the search engines, it was poorly laid out and took an age to load.

We’ve redesigned the site from the ground up to be search engine friendly, cross browser compatible, fast to display and responsive (meaning the layout adjusts depending on your screen size). Try it for yourself: visit Glass Splashback Colour, resize your browser and you will see fonts and images change size, content moves around the page and some items are hidden and others appear.

With the massive worldwide increase in visitors using mobile devices, we now design all of our websites to be responsive. We believe the visitor should have a great experience no matter what kind of device is being used to view a site. There’s nothing that annoys visitors more than having to scroll sideways as it interrupts the flow of reading.

You may notice that although the HTML validates, the CSS does not. This is mainly due to vendor prefixes which are currently required to get CSS3 features working in older browsers. As time goes on and people upgrade their browsers, this kind of code will become more and more redundant but for now, it’s a necessary evil. While I’ve got my web designer hat on, it’s probably a good time to remind you to ditch Internet Explorer for a better internet experience.

When we’re designing a site, validation isn’t top of our list. Our view looks something like this:

  1. User experience
  2. Search engine optimisation
  3. Load time
  4. Accessibility
  5. Valid code

We’re not alone in this view, some of the most popular websites of today do not validate: Apple, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo, Number 10, Digg, The Times, Microsoft and ebay all have pages that don’t validate. That’s not to say you shouldn’t bother trying, just don’t put it above all else. After all, valid code doesn’t mean good code just as invalid code doesn’t mean bad code.

If your website could do with a makeover, be it in look and feel, to make it responsive or just for SEO, contact us today for a no obligation quote.

Firefox 5 Final available for download

FirefoxThe latest version of Firefox is available to download from the Mozilla servers, before the official release date. Readers might remember that the same thing happened with version 4 just a few months ago.

The official launch day is Tuesday 21st June and as usual, Mozilla are planning some fun stuff for the day. This is all part of the move to a rapid release schedule, getting the latest features and enhancements out to users as soon as possible.

So what’s new?
It’s certainly a much less dramatic improvement over version 4.0, which was released on March 22 after a development time of more than 13 months. In
fact, at first look, you will not be able to tell a difference between 4 and 5. The layout is identical and the overall look and feel will not reveal any differences at all. There is a list of improvements, many of which most users may not care about. It’s not an impressive list for a completely new browser version, but a closer look shows that Mozilla has fixed almost 1000 bugs in total and there are actually more new features than Mozilla says there are.

The major points include improved support for HTML5 and related technologies, a slight speed gain in JavaScript as well as idle connection tuning integration, which should speed up the page load performance of Firefox considerably. There are 38 new “features“, my favorite being CSS3 animations, keeping Firefox inline with the Webkit browsers when it comes to web standards.

Firefox 5 Direct Download Links:

If you’d rather wait for the official release, it will be available here.

Let us know what you think in the comments here or on Facebook.

Top notch broadband from AAISP

We’ve just recieved our dealer code from Andrews and Arnold. This means we can now supply broadband via AAISP and help customers with order and fault tracking.

We chose them from the massive list of available ISPs (Internet Service Providers) because basically, they wipe the floor with everybody else! Have a look at this comparison to see what we mean. Even when business grade ISPs like Zen are included, the results speak for themselves.

They also test all their resellers for competency. We had to answer some pretty tricky networking questions before we were granted dealer status – it wasn’t just signing up on their website!

More reasons to choose AAISP:

  • Real, unfiltered internet access (no traffic shaping).
  • They’ll fix a fault on your line even if you are with another ISP.
  • Constant quality monitoring.
  • Usage based tariff – pay for what you use.
  • IPv6 enabled.
  • Call centres based in England.
  • Free .uk domain with your broadband.
  • Easily bond 2 or more lines together for increased speed and resiliency.
  • No minimum contract.
  • Pay by BACS – Direct Debit optional (other companies should take note of this one).

As you read through their website, it becomes clear that these guys really know what they are doing and go the extra mile to make sure you get a good service. This fits perfectly with our own philosophy which is why we have no doubts about recommending them.

Contact us today to upgrade your broadband.

For the more technical readers:

Tracing route to bbc.co.uk [212.58.254.252]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms     1 ms    <1 ms  www.routerlogin.com [192.168.0.1] 
  2    15 ms    15 ms    14 ms  b.gormless.thn.aaisp.net.uk [90.155.53.12] 
  3    14 ms    15 ms    14 ms  a.armless.thn.aaisp.net.uk [90.155.53.6] 
  4    15 ms    14 ms    15 ms  rt-lonap-a.thdo.bbc.co.uk [193.203.5.90] 
  5    15 ms    14 ms    14 ms  212.58.238.153 
  6    14 ms    14 ms    14 ms  rdirslb0.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.136] 
  7    16 ms    16 ms    17 ms  virtual3.rbsov.bbc.co.uk [212.58.254.252] 

Trace complete.

You gotta love being 3 hops from the BBC!

Let us know what you think in the comments here or on Facebook.