Alison Foxall, Media Designer

Open source HTML5 code for embedding iPad video player

Alison Foxall — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 05:56:05 +0000

Recently I had the opportunity to build an HTML5 video player for the iPad. I wanted to share the code and markup with you all, since I never got to use it. Just to make sure you all know, this is just specifically for the iPad since a presentation was supposed to be given on it. Nothing fancy. I just wanted it to play a video:

My Video

So let’s take a look at this.

New HTML5 Doctype

is the new HTML5 doctype which is reverse compatible, so you can start using it now if you’d like. I think the rest of the mark-up is pretty self-explanatory.

Apple iPad meta tags for controlling the viewport / iPad in full screen mode

The apple meta tag controls whether or not to put mobile Safari into full screen mode- or removing the address bars from Safari. Also note the link in the head to the apple icon. This is just incase the user bookmarks the page on their iPad home page, they’ll have a custom icon to look at.

Native Video Player for HTML5

The video tag enables you to play a video right in the browser without any third-party plugins like Flash, etc. This tag is also reverse compatible too. If the browser does not support HTML5, then you can place an object like Flash into the video tags just in case. And just like Flash, you can place alternate content in those tags just in case the use doesn’t have Flash! In this particular example, I have no done this since this was just specifically for the iPad. Please note the video file format as well. This video format will only play with Safari. For firefox you’ll need to use a convertor to convert to and .ogg file.

Also as a side note, don’t forget about compression. Some compression methods are acceptable, while others are not. You should be safe with just regular MPEG compression.

So have fun, learn something, and have at it. For more resources on building web apps for mobile safari, visit The Safari Reference Library. Great resources there!

I’m sure by the time you read this there are a million free HTML5 video resources out there. When I did this, I had a hard time finding information on putting the iPad in full screen mode. I didn’t know that it was called the “viewport.” If you haven’t already, I’d also register on Apple as a developer and download the SDK so you can use the iPad/iPhone simulator.

Cheers!

Recent Malware attack on AlisonFoxall.com

Alison Foxall — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:25:47 +0000

Some of you visited my site in the past month and received a notification from either your browser, or your virus protection saying that my site was hosting malware. I thank you all for notifying me immediately of what you all were seeing on my site.

After thinking it was a rougue plug-in and trying to find off-site links in my site, I couldn’t find anything. I contacted my host about it, and they told me that my site may have been compromised, but it sounded like the issue was coming from your end.

After ignoring my site for almost a month, Google decided to black-list my site until I investigated in further detail, removed the malware, and prevent future attacks.

At this point, I was upset.

Tearing through my website, I discovered that there was an admin user other than myself on my install! But it didn’t stop there, no. My entire grid was infected. Every WordPress install I had on my server, was infected with this attack by “johnnyA.” Naturally, I Googled it. I found this article explaining what happened, how to fix it, and what was going on about it.

To my surprise, this attack was only a Media Temple related WordPress attack. They gave me good information on how to fix attacks by johnnyA.

My theme files were mostly infected. It would be some random file like single.php or archive.php with injected JavaScript. Also, in each case, the footer.php file was also injected. In some cases, my jQuery files were compromised. And lastly, even my non-WordPress hosted client, a flash site, was also compromised, with injected files into their directory. They were deleted. The attack happened at approximately July 11, 2010 at 10:34 am; system wide.

None of my database tables were infected, to my surprise, only theme files, and jQuery files. Naturally, after safe removal of everything, I changed all passwords, etc for basically everything.

So. The point of this post is simple: If you’re hosted by Media Temple, and have a WordPress blog, you need to make sure that you were not attacked. Just check your admin users and make sure you’re the only one there.

Thank you all for your continued support of AlisonFoxall.com!

What motivates us?

Alison Foxall — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:28:01 +0000

The other day I saw this YouTube explaining what motivates us and why some of us work better than others. I know what you’re thinking: money! duh! Yes and no. What I got out of this video was a single thought:

What motivates us? Purpose.

If we don’t have a purpose and we’re not contributing to the greater human good- we don’t perform as well as others. I’ll let you watch the video.

I’m going to tell you a rather interesting story while I worked at FedEx Ground. Or you can just skip this part since you’ve already seen the video. I dealt with our inbound operation- for about 4 years. I know, what in the world is Alison Foxall, a designer, doing in a place like that? It started out as just a job for college, but quickly grew into MUCH more- so much more that even though I’ve been gone from the place for quite some time now- it remains an active part of my life.

Let’s skip over some personal stories involving FedEx Ground and move into when I was a manager at a smaller facility about 40 miles south of Tampa. At the time I loved FedEx- I lived and breathed it, had a blast working, hitting out goals, and competing with others to be the “best.” FXG is very competitive in that way- especially in the Florida region. Not only were we competitive inside the facility, we competed with other facilities in the region, and the region as a whole competed with regions around the nation. All to do one very simple thing: to provide an outstanding FedEx experience as outlined in the Purple Promise.

Being competitive sure did drive me. Until I was the best. I took a new building, with co-worker Jared Hall, and we turned it into a pretty damn good building with what we had, in as little as a few months with a full staff that was quite untrained. Money was not motivating. I was making a lot more freelancing on the side than I was at FXG. So when I had no competition, especially within in the building- what was motivating me? I had a purpose. I made a goal for myself: Package Handler retention.

FedEx Ground has one of the worst turn-over rates. I’ve seen people quit in an hour. Others have quit right at orientation. Most popular is they won’t come back the next day. Some manage to stay one week, then quit. Why do people quit jobs in the beginning? Usually it’s one or two things: Management or the job really does suck that bad.

Before I became a manager I observed the problem: management. You can’t exactly train a person in a job if you’re not a good teacher- no matter how good you are at the job- if you suck at teaching, you’re going to suck at training. So the problem was that these new people were not being engaged- they didn’t know what to do.

Now let’s get to the other problem: the job sucks. This is a matter of opinion. I loved the job personally. I didn’t have to talk to hundreds of customers going in and out of the door- or deal with snobby customers, or homeless people (when I worked at 7-11). Plus I was getting a work out (loading) while getting paid.

But back to the main deal- I’m getting side tracked. So the job some-what sucks, and management was not engaging. I had my purpose and motivation for working there again. I wanted to retain package handlers. I wanted to make them like working there, and I didn’t want any new hire quitting on the first day or week. I’m happy to report that this never happened to me. Although that may have been due to the different location I was in, and the current state of the market (not a lot of jobs).

I engaged them, made friends, all while making sure we were hitting our goals. One of the basis was building a team. They all had to gel together – like a football team. I remember watching the Tampa Bay Bucs with practically all new players and only a few vets, it was very difficult to not only win games, but to just play together in general. And it showed. The only way I was going to build my team was to have retention, train constantly, and follow up constantly with them. People aren’t going to work as well if they hate their boss- I know because I’ve been there. So back to the job sucking- that was a constant reminder having to wake up around 3am everyday. I made sure all my people knew about all the programs available to them through FedEx to save money- a major incentive to working there, which goes back to the monetary value talked about in the video. Problem for FedEx is working at 10 bucks an hour starting pay was not that great for doing this type of work. It was okay, but not nearly enough to provide motivation for people.

When I was a package handler, in the beginning it was money- but then it got really boring, and there were no challenges to the job. I found motivation through my old manager Ateeq Zahir. I worked for him and I was motivated to make sure he “approved.” We’ll leave that story alone.

So what’s the story in all this? I found my purpose, my motivation at FedEx later on when money was not why I worked there anymore. I wanted to help. I wasn’t interested in helping shippers or customers receiving packages (I had to do that, it was required), but I was interested in helping my employees. I wanted to help our contractors. I wanted to make sure they had all they needed to succeed and that I could teach them all I knew about the company, all the little tricks and tips and whatnot. I wanted to help make the job suck less. And I did. And then I left. I fulfilled my purpose, and I reached my single goal that I wrote down in my review: Reduce package handler turn-over. I’m proud to say that 60% of the package handlers that started in day 1 when this particular facility opened, were still there when I left. The others left for FT jobs and had nothing to do with the job sucking.

My purpose and motivation remains the same for what I do now. I want to help my clients achieve their goals. I want to contribute to people’s happiness and overall success. Helping.

What is your motivation?

See what I see. Daily.

Alison Foxall — Mon, 24 May 2010 21:59:24 +0000

Today I came across Posterous. A blogging platform that seems to be similar to Tumblr. I decided to create the blog to post daily photos of what I see. A different perspective to life will be seen. I’m not sure if I’ll import the photos into this blog or not- probably not. But it’s worth thinking about. This will be a fun experiment not only to produce, but to see how people interact with it as well.

Come see what I see.

Rally in Tally ’10

Alison Foxall — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:26:28 +0000

As some of you know, I’m a member of Ad 2 Tampa Bay, which is directly affiliated with the AAF (American Advertising Federation). This year, I had the opportunity to go to the annual Rally in Tally for the 4th District. Four of us from our local Ad 2 chapter car-pooled up to Tallahassee to talk to our state senators and representatives about the advertising industry and how important it is to Florida’s economy. We set various appointments; which, surprisingly didn’t take very long to meet with each person.

Team Tampa:

Since there was no specific bill to talk about to our reps, we mostly went to say “Thank you!” We discussed how important advertising fuels Florida’s economy. it is estimated that advertising is responsible for 20 percent of our total economic activity in Florida, and about 15 percent of our Florida workforce depends on advertising. So we shared our thanks for not taxing advertising or making new regulations.

We also told them our thanks and gave support for the House Bill 697 which is a tax incentive for the film and entertainment industry here in Florida. And also House Bill 867 – New laws for new media! Which will re-write our current law on how politicians advertise, specifically for social media.

All in all, it was a great experience not only to meet with our local representatives and senators, but also to meet the great people in the 4th District of the AAF (the rest of the Ad 2 and AAF peeps in Florida). I also sat on the floor of the Senate, in one of their chairs, and went into the senate chamber – tour led by our very own, Victor Crist, past president of Ad 2 Tampa Bay!

I think it was an important thing for me to get involved in. After all, if we don’t speak up and let them know were here, they’ll run right over us! We need to make sure that advertising services remain tax free so we can fuel our economy and most important – so I can continue doing what I love!

To learn more about Ad 2, visit our website at http://ad2tampabay.org/ or become a fan of our Facebook Page and view more photos from the event!

Smallbizlaw.us completed with team Social Forces!

Alison Foxall — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:32:46 +0000

Small biz law was recently completed on my end of it a couple months back. The site is for a small business lawyer, Gil Sanchez of Tampa Bay. While I had fun designing the interface portion of it, I ran into some difficulties with the small details of the site. I would have liked to see a lot more design go into the blog portion of the site, and more SEO as well. But unfortunately time was up and I do hope that more work goes into the site. After all, it’s the best lawyer website on the planet right now! Unless someone can direct me to another site that looks as good as that one — for a lawyer.

One of my goals when designing an interface like this one is to keep the information presented clear and concise. For the most part, I think the design hits the nail on the head. With good direction from (The) Carl Vervisch, we all achieved a great functional site, and an ecstatic client. I wasn’t crazy about the color palette, but I think it works. I think I remember saying something like “This is the the most website looking website I have ever done.” Usually when I build interfaces, they don’t look like websites at all, they look like desks, or paper.. Or what have you!

Currently Smallbizlaw.us is being maintained by Social Forces on the social media aspect. I’m not sure who is doing the modifications on the back/front-end, but just to add more credit to the site– Jean-Baptiste of Cats Who Code did some custom WordPress applications, which I think he did a great job. I always love his development! I think the only issue we had with Jean was a few words in english that didn’t make any sense! :)

All in all it was a good project to work on and I’m glad to see the client happy. I just hope his marketing techniques are working. I look forward to more strategic websites like this one– but I do hope that I’m more involved in the planning stages. I’m very eager to help more small business owners out.

Check out the site at http://smallbizlaw.us/ and let me know what you think!

Alison is Appointed to Web Design Director for Ad 2 Tampa Bay!

Alison Foxall — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:08:35 +0000

I kind of stumbled upon Ad 2 during my schooling in Tampa at IADT. Every now and then there would be someone from Ad 2 that would come up and tell us to join and how it’s so great to be involved with the community, and to enter your pieces into the Addy’s, so on and so forth. I never really did any of those. I never came to Ad 2. Ad 2 came to me. It was the end of 2008, and I was asked to front-end develop One Here One There for Ad 2, pro bono. I agreed, thinking that it would be a good opportunity for me. The work itself was fine, no issues and it went pretty quick. But afterwards everyone seemed to know who I was and thought it was great that I helped out. The public service campaign One Here One there ended up winning 2nd place in the national contest. Ad 2 Tampa Bay was recognized as club of the year as well by the AAF in Washington, DC. What an honor!

Soon after I was interested in becoming a board member, more specifically to help out with the site. I then was appointed as Web Design Director for Ad 2 Tampa Bay. My job is more internally based, providing updates for press releases, and other things going on with Ad 2. However I do have one big plan that I envision: Re-vamping the Ad 2 website, and re-coding it for WordPress. I’m excited to get the ball rolling on this and a lot of people have been asking about it and wanting to get involved. Although I do not have exact details for you all on the plans of the site, I do know that the majority of the changes will be in the back-end and how the site flows together. The design will primarily stay the same.

For all that go onto the Ad 2 Website: http://ad2tampabay.org/ I invite you to suggest any features you’d like to see on the new website, from not only the user perspective, but also the administrative perspective. I want to make it easy to use for all. We know that a lot of the pages are going to go away since there is a lot that we don’t need anymore. But let us have it! I want to hear everyone’s thoughts on the site and how it runs; not so much on how it looks since the design will (for the most part) remain the same. Please note though, that participating memebers of the board have already re-structured the architecture of the site. So we will be deleting some pages and possibly adding new ones. But I’m really open to any suggestion on interface changes.

Let me know! I’m super stoked to get on this.

New Poster, Artwork, and Photography for April 09

Alison Foxall — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:04:59 +0000

New work by Alison Foxall. Check out the full versions on my Work page.

The poster design was inspired by a photo of my wonderful boyfriend who happened to be holding a book open. The page read: “Never miss an opportunity to tell someone you love them.” I thought it was very thoughtful of him and decided to make this poster, not only for him, but as my leave-behind/promotional item as well. I got good comments on it, and plan to make this poster part of a series.

The artwork was actually something I started doing for (again) my boyfriend on valentines. We’re both into music and he’s really into guitars; he must own seven of them. So I thought it would be a nice to treat to use some stock photography by Marcus Ranum and make a miniature montage. I think it turned out nice, and although a bit late, I think he’ll enjoy it.

The photograph is very emotive. It’s of my best friend, Jason and his new tattoo. I think it says a lot about him and his personality. I just happened to take the photo in a great place, while he’s facing a dark cave: our laundry room.

You can buy prints of all but the photo at Deviant Art.

Questions To Ask Your Clients For a Better Proposal and Design Brief

Alison Foxall — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 23:13:14 +0000

Often times we find ourselves trapped by a clients deadline that a certain project needs to be done yesterday. This might lead to skipping the most important questions to ask clients. Here I have compiled a list of questions to ask your clients for a better project proposal and a design brief. The more information you know about a project the better results you will produce and less time will be wasted, especially when building websites. Certain types of functionality you might have to contract out or spend more time on than other parts, whereas logo design pretty much has the same process repeatedly and is straight-forward. Here are some questions that I ask my clients and some other questions I found on the interweb that may be useful to you:

General Company Info

What is the name of you company?
What is your business?
How old is your company?
What is the size of your company?
Who are the main contacts and who has final approval of the project?
Are there specific dates the project needs to be completed?
Your budget dictates how much time can be spent on your project. What is the budget?
Describe your business in one sentence.
Describe your business in two words?
Describe your business in one word?
What doesn’t your business do, or do well?
What differentiates your business from competitors?
How did you start the company?
Is there a story that is unique to your company? Or perhaps a unique story to the company name?

General Image of Company

If you company/brand was a person who would it be? Why?
If your company/brand was an object what would it be? Why?
If your company/brand was an animal which one would it be? Why?
Is there an important object, building or person for your business?
What do you normally wear to work?
How do you want the public to perceive your image?
What do you want to be famous for?
What words should the general public associate your business with? Name at least 3.
What aspect of your image needs improvement? How do you want your image to be seen in 2 years? 10 years?

Competitors

Who are your competitors?
How are they better/worse than your product/service?
Who might you compete with in the future?

The Target Audience

Who is your customer? Describe in detail. What do they do? What do they watch?
Who is the ideal customer?
What customers do you want to attract that you aren’t getting yet?
If your customer was a cartoon character who would it be?
How do they find out about you?
What do they want from you?
What customers do you not want to attract?

Current identity

Do you have an identity?
What do you like about it and what do you not like about it?

Website Specifics

Why are you commissioning a new website?
List the business objectives of your website.
How will you know if it is a success?
What aspects of your current site work well and why are they successful?
What aspects of your current site are unsuccessful and why do you think that is?
If you update your current site using a content management system, please describe the system and its main features. Are you happy with the system?
Why will people use this kind of site?
Why will people choose your site over others?
What will people want to do on the site?
List websites of competitors in a related field; what works and what doesn’t?
List websites you like the aesthetics of and explain why.
Outline any ideas you may have for the site. How would these features support your business goals and the goals of your user?
If you need a content management system, please describe the features you would like.

Anything else?

Don’t forget to make sure to ask the client if there is anything that was left out that they would like to add to the brief. A lot of these questions can be condensed into single questions, and some are more useful than others. But remember one thing: The more information you have on the project and the client, the better experience it will be for both parties.

Alison Foxall Wins a Student Addy for 2008!

Alison Foxall — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:00:02 +0000

Alison Foxall, myself, won a student Addy for 2008! The Addy was awarded for the Artistik Envy Website that was entirely developed and designed by myself, Alison Foxall in Fall of 2008. Credits go appropriately to William Rossiter and Melissa Mckee for the initial identity development of Envy. And also to Klodiana Shehi for doing the video management of the site. You can view the site live at Artistik Envy