4. Uniwar

This is a great little turn based strategy game. You have a choice of 3 different races, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and can battle online with players around the world. Not too difficult to pick up like a lot of strategy games, but hard to master!

3. Tiny Wings

A funky little skill game whereby you have to guide a cutesy little bird down and up hills using a simple gravity effect when you press your finger on the screen. This is surprisingly addictive for such a simple concept and has loads of achievements such as ‘get to island four whilst holding your iPhone upside down’!

2. Zynga Poker

If you haven’t heard of Zynga then you’ve been living under a huge boulder for the last five years. This is the only game of theirs I play. The rules are the same as usual – connect through Facebook and play with real people for chips. They have this game nailed. I have spent TOO LONG playing this.

1. Whale Trail

Currently this is my absolute favorite app on my iPhone – I’ve played this an unhealthy amount of time. Similar in vein to Tiny Wings you use your finger to guide our friendly whale through a psychedelic sky, avoiding clouds and picking up stars. Sounds like it’s been done before? Well it probably has, but the game is so polished it’s a joy to play again and again (and again and again). Add to this the fact that the theme tune is sung by Gruff Rhys and you have yourself a winner. Think you can get over 1,000,000?

The site comprises of 6 categories of characters. The user can review each category, and then undertake a quiz which tests their knowledge. Only after getting 100% on category can they move on to the next one. If they score 100% the system saves the time so they can compete with other users.

The site is made in Drupal 7, which was the perfect tool for the job. There are loads more things I want to add to it, but the moment I just want to see if anyone starts using it and go from there. Let me know what you think!

www.yodellingmum.com

www.consumetea.com

1: Invoice Bubble

You may have heard of Project Bubble before – a very popular project managing tool with time tracking, invoicing and such. I believe they used to have a free option, but alas no more. This is a sister project, which includes only the invoicing part of project bubble, but boasts a completely free option where they put a link to their website on your invoices, and have a few adverts on the website itself. The great thing is that you can have unlimited clients, estimates, invoices, including your branding and can be paid through paypal. Most free services restrict these type of things so I am very pleased!

2: Invoice Machine

This is what I used to use until I discovered Invoice Bubble. It pretty much has the same features except that as a free user you are heavily restricted to only 3 estimates and 3 invoices a month. Also you cannot include your own branding on the invoice itself. What I like most about Invoice Machine though is that they have one of the most slick, user-friendly websites I have ever had the joy of using, and I cannot recommend them enough if you can live with their restrictions, or you want to pay for the service.

3: Yast

This is a free online time-tracking tool. It has a really funky, fresh design and seems to perform pretty well for the tasks that I want it to do. Users of more professional time-tracking tools might find it lacking in features, but for me it is a perfect way to keep track of what I’m working on in a simple non-cluttered way. You can also download reports of the time you have been working.

Because, in WordPress, the base url is stored in the database rather than a config file (one of the few things that irritate me about WordPress), you have to make some changes to the database every time you migrate to another domain (localhost to live for example). Fortunately it’s pretty eay with the following code. Just open up phpmyadmin and paste the following under SQL tab – replacing the old and new domains:

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com') WHERE option_name = 'home' OR option_name = 'siteurl';

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content, 'http://www.old-domain.com', 'http://www.new-domain.com');

And voila! There you have it.

As with most things, however, it’s never that simple. Although we like to imagine that the world is tech-savvy and using the latest version of Google Chrome or Firefox that cater for almost anything, we still have to consider how our much-loved archaic browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 will decide to display our new creations. Traditionally we spend extra hours hacking at the code until these browsers mimic the original design, but as this website suggests, there may be another option.

The concept is simple: websites don’t have to look the same in every browser. Instead of forcing each browser to output a pixel-perfect reproduction of a design, this approach suggests that we should let each browser display what they are capable of in the most semantic and ‘non-hacky’ way possible. This may create differences between browsers, but will ultimately result in speedier development, quicker loading times and a more natural user experience.

This doesn’t mean that we should only make things look pretty in the newest browsers and forget everything else. It is better to think of the newer browsers displaying some ‘enhanced features’ that older browsers don’t. People using these browsers do not see that anything is missing or broken, as they have not seen it any other way – so they are not disappointed.

The limitations of this attitude, of-course, is that critical design elements can’t simply be overlooked like this. We don’t want visitors to the site to be disappointed, or confused by what they see. For now we can use the principles of ‘graceful degradation‘  to apply these enhancements on non-critical parts of the design so users with an older browser can still receive a rich experience without the bells and whistles.

It is a judgment call between you and your client on how far you might take it, and is dependent on the project in question. The other factor to take into consideration is your target audience – if you think your users will be more likely to be using older browsers you should probably spend a bit more time wrangling with Internet Explorer!

I chose WordPress to build it as it seems to be the CMS of choice for web portfolio’s at the moment due to it’s ease of updating content, and the fact it has a central ‘feed’ to display new projects as I make them. I wanted to keep the design as minimal as possible to prevent clutter, but to also show off a bit with the functionality to create an impact.  I hope you like it – have a look around and get in contact if you want a chat!

You might also be interested in my lighthearted blog about life in Hong Kong – I hope to keep this updated as much as I can to let friends and family see what we are up to whilst we are here: www.yumyumdimsum.wordpress.com.