December 06, 2007: Website design and web development
Brainfire is a freelance web design and web development company based in Berkhamsted, Herfordshire, near Hemel Hempstead. Run by Mat Harden, a passionate and experienced web designer, Brainfire specialise in standards compliant accessible websites. Services include web development, website help and updates, web standard and semantic coding of existing designs, HTML email marketing, bespoke website application development, PHP development, ASP development and web consultation.
For all enquiries, email info@brainfire.co.uk.
December 05, 2007: Garden glove specialists
My friends, the Garden Glove Specialists have recently added an on-line payment facility to their website to allow card payments for their Second Skin & Ultra gardening gloves.
They sell three types of gloves:
Ultra Glove - these latex rubber gardening gloves provide thorn resistance and are great for pruning roses and pulling brambles.
Second Skin - their most popular glove, nitrile rubber thorn resistant gardening gloves, which are flexible great for potting, tying up plants and any jobs where you want to feel what you're doing. And they're thorn resistant!
Easy Fit - the latest gardening gloves are very light weight and great for every day use. will be available to buy soon available to buy now!
Each gardening glove has a cotton back and elasticated cuff keep all dirt and bugs out! Everyone who uses them thinks they're fantastic!
May 31, 2007: I am not Brainfire Group
Occasionally I get requests from misguided companies (and lawyers) asking me to sell or hand-over domain names they believe have been registered by Brainfire. I'm am not a cyber-squatter. I do not register domain names in the hope that large corporations will pay huge sums to recover. Unfortunately for me a company called Brainfire Group does. Brainfire Limited and Brainfire Group are two entirely separate entities.
All I know about Brainfire Group is the following:
- They register domain names to the their address in Calgary, Canada
- They are involved in a number of domain name disputes with Nominet
- They have been involved in one of the few legal cases that have used Wikipedia as a court source
If you want to discover who has registered a domain name, use a WHOIS lookup such as the Geektools Whois tool.
April 15, 2006: Worst website menu ever?
I've been browsing round the world of the web tonight and I came across the site of record label 4AD. I thought, "ok, great, I'd like to read about the Cocteau Twins please". So I found myself clicking this stupid wheel type thing until I found a bit on it that says 'help'. This isn't general website or accessibility help, but how to use the diabolical navigation method they had lumbered their poor unsuspecting users.
Click on tiny arrow near the letters, select a letter, drag the artist name into the light area, click the... no hold on, I don't give a damn anymore I've lost interest. Why make it so hard for potential customers to find your products? Correct me if I'm incorrect, but if you need to provide help on how to use a website menu, then it's probably not the best menu, now is it?
It's a very well put together piece of Flash. Once you've 'learnt' how to use it, it's not so bad and I guess it could be nice to browse an artist by year, but really, come on, it's too complicated.
Anyone else seen a bad menu lately?
January 27, 2006: Little bit of a problem
If anyone’s been here lately, you may have noticed some funny things going on and pages not working. Well, I've moved server and it caused an untold amount of problems. I’ve got a new re-seller account at WebFusion and wanted to host brainfire.co.uk on that. But as I already had an existing brainfire account, WebFusion could not create a new one. Which means I was facing un-avoidable downtime. I’ve had to back-up the whole site - wait - and then upload to the new server. What a load of rubbish! It would have gone smoother if I moved to a new host.
This will also explain the lack of posts recently.
December 09, 2005: Upgrade to Movable Type 3.2
Not that anyone will be interested, but I've upgraded my publishing software for this site to version 3.2. I had a few teething problems as I publish my pages in PHP and as the default file permissions in 3.2 are set to non-executable, these did not run… as I learnt the hard way.
All working now though, and I must say - I really like Movable Type 3.2. It's a great piece of software with some clever little functions and now has a colourful interface.
June 16, 2005: Venues finding service
Last month saw the release of our new project: Venues.org.uk. A free venues finding service. I was responsible for designing a clear and simple user interface with emphasis on the search facility.
I'm happy with the results - all pages validate as transitional XHTML, use logical semantics and contain accessiblilty features. I also believe it's easy to use. Plus as our reports show, many people are finding it a useful tool too! [I'll add some stats soon]
November 09, 2004: Come on Firefox!
The day everyone uses Firefox will be the day all web designers rejoice. For now though, with M$ holding over 90% of the webs users with the inferior Internet Explorer, we'll have to make do with front page BBC news.
Now come on everybody, make your own life easier, download Mozilla Firefox.
