Over the last few months OM4 has deployed a number of WordPress websites that make use of jQuery Masonry . Masonry lets you implement tiles that reshuffle when the available space changes.

Here are some websites that integrate Masonry:

• The Scene Team
• oZAPP Awards
• Biznaga Travel
• 361 Degrees Stakeholder Engagement

All of these sites respond to resizing the browser window. 361 Degrees also has some ‘expander tiles’ – click them to expand the tile, and the other tiles reshuffle to fit.

The Scene Team and Biznaga Travel both implement a new Masonry style of image gallery:

• Biznaga Gallery
• The Scene Team: Events Portfolio

The Masonry project got a major boost in populartity when Pinterest launched.

The first site we developed in this fashion was the oZAPP Awards site, inspired by Blenderbox.com and Yr.com. The new site was conceptualised by OM4 and 32 Degrees South Group (32dsg.com) and designed by Lindal Mackie (lmd.net.au).

For each of the other projects we have collaborated with a different graphic designer – they have prepared the design and we have built it: Brendan Hibbert for The Scene Team, Cally Browning of Bare Creative for Biznaga Travel, and Iannello Design for 361 Degrees.

Working with Masonry style sites creates an interesting new way of interacting with sites. Pinterest has shown that people are capable of scanning a page quickly, and scrolling to follow their interest.

WordPress Websites using Masonry and jQuery

The wines from Chapman Grove bristle with medals and awards, with many of them rating in the high 90s in the James Halliday Wine Companion. Clearly ongoing ‘research’ will be required to fully understand the nuances of the brand – something to look forward to.

OM4 takes a break now, returning to work fresh and bright on Jan 7th. I’ll be holidaying in the Margaret River region, and fully intend to sample some Chapman Grove and a few other of my favourites from that corner of the continent.

Chapman Grove Wines

If you use a Mac, you have a wide range of excellent tools at your disposal, including the excellent ImageWell.

But if you use Windows, it ain’t that easy.

Ribbet

It is web based (and free), you simply go to the website, upload your image and you can quickly and easily crop and resize your images.

There are a few other tricks you can pull as well, but for a website owner, cropping and resizing are the main features you need.

So if you use Windows and run a website, try it out.

Ribbet – Simple Image Editing for Windows

The Media Manager gets a makeover, simplifying the process of adding images and galleries to your website. Embedding Instagram, Slideshare and Soundcloud media becomes a matter of copying and pasting a URL, just as you can currently do for YouTube and Vimeo media. And Retina support is rolled out to the WordPress dashboard.

View the video to get the highlights.

James has contributed to this release, as he has for many other WordPress releases.

Read more on the 3.5 update.

Preparing for WordPress 3.5

Google dropped IE7 support in June 2011 (and announced timing for dropping support for IE8 just recently), and Facebook also announced in 2011 that it was phasing out support for IE7. And importantly, our friends at WooThemes do not support IE7 either.

OM4 developed websites will still operate when visited with IE7. But we won’t be checking their presentation or how they work as part of our standard service. If clients specifically request IE7 presentation, we will offer it as a paid option.

Why are we doing this? Well, IE7 has a declining market share, having dropped to somewhere around 2-4%, depending on your source of statistics – see below for a StatCounter summary. IE8 is also dropping fast, approximately halving in market share to around 12% over the last 12 months.

So while IE7 continues to have some market share, why would we stop paying attention to it?

Put simply, to meet the needs of our clients, we need to put more of our attention into modern browsers, increasingly being used on mobile phones and tablets. The iPhone and iPad are driving enormous changes in the way people interact with the web, and that in turn is making web development a lot more complex. Websites and newsletters are now regularly read on large screen desktops, high resolution tablets and tiny mobile phones.

With so much more attention needing to going to the new, less goes to the old.

So goodbye IE7, it has been nice knowing you.

Source: StatCounter.com

Website Browser Statistics from StatCounter – 2011 Nov to 2012 Nov – click to enlarge

Time to move on from IE7

For the socially minded, you can now use your HootSuite dashboard to post to your WordPress blog, as well as your Facebook & Twitter accounts and other social media.

The integration is quick and easy, just find the HootSuite Apps panel, tick the box to install the WordPress.org app, and then add your WordPress website URL and user/password.

The editor is basic, and doesn’t work anything like the WordPress post editor. But it will let you compose and publish short posts directly to your website from the HootSuite dashboard.

HootSuite extends WordPress support

Image courtesy of Joe Shlabotnik

Real estate on the web is very similar to real estate in the real world.  

When you have areas of congestion you want to make the most of the space you have.

Being able to collapse and expand sections of your web pages can be very useful.

The Accordion technique helps organise your website in a way that looks professional, can save you some precious webpage real estate and reduce clutter.

Like to see how it works? View these examples of collapsible content using the accordion technique:

• Steadyrack Stockists
• Questus Ltd Shareholder Information
• Lumitex Product Retailers

Collapsible Web Content using an Accordion

Browsing on the run using a mobile phone or tablet is very different to the large screen browsing experience at home or in the office.

It is possible and sensible to optimise certain pages of your website, making them easy to read on the small screen of a mobile phone.

Your website detects mobile phones automatically.  If you have optimised your website for mobile phones, your visitor will see a mobile-specific version of your web pages.

A major mobile modification is making headings and text readable without zooming being necessary.

Other modifications are customising the menu to offer a cut down set of pages, making more use of icons and omitting the sidebar.

Your website still uses WordPress and allows you edit pages and content in the usual way. And it all works on your primary domain, meaning your mobile pages build on your existing search engine authority.

While a mobile optimised website gives your visitors a more comfortable mobile browsing experience, your OM4 website is already enabled for mobile devices. You don’t need to take any action for your visitors to be able to view your website on a phone or tablet and see it just as it appears on a desktop computer.

These visitors will simply use functions like pinch to zoom to enlarge sections of your web pages as needed.

To compare the ease of use of  mobile optimisation website versus a mobile enabled website, we recommend you view Pepperilly Wines and Adventure Bay Charters.

Mobile Friendly Websites

As true as that statement is, most of us find putting words on a page challenging. WordPress now offers a feature that removes at least one of the possible distractions when you want to get creative at your keyboard.

Take a look at the Distraction Free Writing icon in your Post and Page toolbar (it’s towards the right end, in the first row).

This button toggles between the full editing screen and the distraction free screen.  When you first toggle to distraction free, you will see a minimal toolbar at the top of the page.  The first option in this mini toolbar is the toggling back to the  full editing screen.

Once you’ve started writing the mini toolbar disappears too, returning anytime you hover your mouse over the top of the page.

Read on to learn more about distraction free writing with WordPress.

Distraction Free Writing with WordPress

Her website gives provides a simple way for her customers to order and pay for their citrus.

ABC Rural Radio featured Helen in a story last week: Mail Order Citrus Proves Popular

Radio has proved an excellent means of spreading the word about her service. In the age of social media, it is definitely worth considering whether you have a story that a radio station would be interested in.

Cutting Out Expenses