Masuga Design, LLC

I added an entry for MedDirect to the portfolio section. I was involved in doing the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (including a dash of AJAX for the sortable tables) for a medical billing application being built by MedDirect. Unfortunately, the pages I worked on are only being utilized on a back-end area (read: inacessible to the general public) at this time, and the bulk of their existing site has the same layout it had before, and has had for years: the unnecessary Flash intro, an inexplicable use of Flash for the navigation, bloated table-based layout, and confusing navigation. The client …More »

When I was thinking about the layout of this site, I looked at numerous similar sites to see how wide they were. The majority of sites I’ve worked on have been a static width, usually centered, but sometimes anchored to the side, and have almost always been no wider than 770 pixels, which is usually a pretty safe bet for the majority of the population. I thought that that width seemed a little thin for what I had in mind with this site. What I found through studying the layouts of my web mentors is that their sites are much, …More »

Back in January, I cobbled together a PHP script to put multiple AJAX star rating bars on a page (2177 downloads as of this writing), based on work found at Komodo Media and Climax Designs, with the goal of making a WordPress plugin to rival Votio. I still haven’t had the time to do that. But when I do, I’ll post it here in a section of this site that I haven’t yet made live. That forthcoming section will be specifically for scripts, plugins, and any other extra stuff that someone else might find useful. If you want to see …More »

If you’re a web designer that, like me, manages your sites using Subversion source control (and not necessarily with Rails, but just in general), you might want to read this article written at Hivelogic concerning “SVN Exposure”. I realized a few projects I had worked on were not protected, but with the help of a little .htaccess magic: RewriteRule ^(.*/)?.svn/ - [F,L] ErrorDocument 403 "Access Forbidden" I was able to fix the problem.

I’m glad to announce that I will be developing a website for Chrysalis Design Services, a Connecticut-based commercial floral design service. They are looking to develop a photo gallery and to better promote seasonal specials and other services through a fresh online presence.

Masuga Design is now live, warts and all! My hope is that this site will give you a better idea of what my skills are – moreso than the info I currently have on my personal blog (masuga.com), which has, up to now, doubled as my portfolio site. Of course, this site isn’t complete to me by any stretch of my imagination. There are more projects to add to the portfolio, copy to tighten up, and other little tweaks that I will probably be the only one to notice. But I had to remind myself that perfection is not an …More »