Masuga Design, LLC

I just added a new section to the site called "The Lab" where my feeble attemps at PHP scripting and Wordpress plugins will be found. Right now the main (read: only) thing there is an updated Star Rating script. It's much improved over the original. You'll love it. Here are some of the new features in v1.1: Uses unobtrusive Javascript, so ratings will still work if the user has Javascript off (the script has been tested in IE 6, Safari, and FF). keeps Javascript out of the HTML, resulting in cleaner markup There are now some checks in place to discourage …More »

I recently completed a series of Flash ads for Great Lakes Scrip Center.

I’ve added a new section to my portfolio called “Other Work” that contains some information about sites I’ve had a hand in creating in the past. This section is a collection of small summaries describing how I contributed to each project. There are some decent sites in there including work for PRStore and Nature’s Earth. You can view my “Other Work” section here.

A short while ago John Mills (of CSS Remix) asked if I’d answer a few questions about web design and related things. I was more than happy to do so (not to mention flattered). I think the CSS Remix interview category is about 3 designers old right now, and I’m the third one – right behind Veerle Pieters and James Mathias for crying out loud. I think it’s safe to say I’m the first relative “unknown” on the list, as far as web design goes. Thanks for giving me some exposure, John! With that, head over there this minute and …More »

I’m working on a project and I thought I found a great way to do a shipping estimate form without using the default pop-up window by using the SubModal window script found at gabrito.com. This particular window works by loading the content into an iframe – which, in this case was the solution I was looking for. I’m not a big fan of iFrames, but hey, sometimes you do what you gotta do. I was working along with it and everything was going fine until I tried using it with Safari. Safari refuses to load the content of the iFrame. …More »

You might think I’m crazy, as a relatively new freelancer, to be turning down work, but I’m REALLY not into poker. I don’t mind playing the occasional friendly poker game, but spending my working hours steeped in lousy gif animations, affiliate codes, and terminology that means as much to me as an ancient text written in Aramaic (which is to say nothing) is just not my idea of fun. Poker sites just don’t turn my crank. I don’t want to do poker sites, so I’m passing on offers and requests to work on them. Even if I did do some …More »

I just bought a MacBook Pro to take the place of both my G5 tower and my G4 iBook, and immediately had a problem installing PHP using the Universal Binary package from entropy.ch. I had transferred all of the files off of my G5 to the new MacBook using Apple’s very handy Migration Assistant, but that assistant will only go so far. The PHP installation I had got borked, so I had to head back to Marc Liyanage’s site to get the newest-Intel based package for install. The problem is, when you use a tool like the Migration Assistant, if …More »

Masuga Design has been listed in a recent design set entitled Super Clean – Part 2 over at Design Melt Down. Referring to this set of sites, they write: “This set of sites is not for the faint hearted, clicking through my result in vast discouragement as you realize some people really bring some serious game to the table. This set does nothing but inspire me to focus and work harder.”

Many thanks to the teams at CSSRemix and CSSMania for calling attention to my new Masuga Design site! You can see the archived pages for Masuga Design at: CSSRemix and CSSMania. Thanks so much for posting my site. My Mint stats are going ballistic, and it’s nice to see that my design and layout is getting some decent votes on both sites. UPDATE: Looks like this site is making the rounds of the CSS-inspiration sites. I was just looking at my Mint stats and noticed that the unique count for today was into four digits. All the latest hits are …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 »