CSS Awards feature the Alice-themed jQuery website

7 May 2013 – 2:57 pm

Remember jQuery 2013?? – a great event for education, training and a bit of fun too!!  Well, our work on the jQuery website has been selected and now featured on CSS Awards website.

CSS Awards select the best websites developed with CSS from around the world.  The awards are given to only the best designers, agencies and bloggers … that say’s it all really doesn’t it!    We’re really proud of being featured and it would be great to be one of the favorites – so here are the links before I go into the outline of the site.

The site is themed Alice in Wonderland.  It is beautifully illustrated by Sophie Klevenow and uses CSS animations on every page to promote the jQuery UK 2013 conference, workshops and hack day.  I particularly enjoyed the fish jumping out of the river.

And finally…. continuation of the theme, with white rabbit footprints scampering through Oxford, produced some final fun coverage from The Oxford Times.  But can I find the link!*!

Must go.  I’m late, I’m late I’m late!

By admin | Posted in Conferences, Design | Comments (0)

Lambeth Library Challenge shortlisted for Nominet Awards

7 May 2013 – 12:23 pm

Good News!  Lambeth Council have been shortlisted for the Nominet Internet Awards 2013 with their Lambeth Library Challenge .  These are annual awards aiming to raise the awareness of organisations that are making a difference on, or through, the internet.

We’re very proud of getting so far.  It would be great to win – so I thought I’d lead with the links and voting information and then outline why the Lambeth Library Challenge is worthy of the trophy.

Lambeth Council wanted to create a tool that would help to build a more equal relationship with their residents and give them genuine influence on how library budgets were spent.  The tool needed to appeal to all ages and had to educate residents about the choices to be made around the library budgets.  It needed to work on desktops, tablets and, in particular, mobiles.

We created an online budget tracker that would allow users to decide how much they wanted to spend.  We decided on a pop-up book theme for the app.  For each area of budget we commissioned fantastic animated illustrations so that as users choose more spend for an area more items pop up in the open book.  It’s a real joy to play with.

Simply put, the tool has changed how the council engages with residents and the results are very strong, with average time on the tool of over 7 minutes, with 50% of all visitors completing!  The tool has helped to show Lambeth as a modern council who is honest and open about the challenges faced.

Read full case study

By admin | Posted in Business, Cool stuff, Design, User experience | Comments (0)

The best bits from BrightonSEO

18 April 2013 – 10:53 am

Brighton SEO is a bi-annual conference on SEO. I attended the conference for the first time last year and was pleasantly surprised to find a diverse group of attendees and talks encompassing everything from content marketing, PR & advertising as well as traditional SEO “tech” talks. This year was no different, here are my key takeaways from the top 5 talks I attended

Hannah Smith ‘Go big or go home’

Small content = small risk = small wins. Hannah provided a personal take on how taking a shift towards a “big content” strategy can really pay, yes it can be scary, yes the agency normally has to take a risk and absorb some of the initial costs upfront but in her experience big content reaps big rewards. Companies tend to be wary of going “big” because it’s expensive, it takes research and normally requires additional resource in terms of design and development which small content doesn’t. However big content e.g. infographics, video content consistently perform better than small content. Hannah provides some advice for producing big content:

  1. Use evergreen content (e.g. not time specific)
  2. Use your best ideas first
  3. Set benchmarks for success before launch


Geoff White ‘How to pitch journalists’

Geoff basically dashed any remaining hope of PR / journalists getting their story on C4 news; the benchmark is set extremely high! However he did provide some useful key insights for what constitues a good pitch:

  1. Think in pictures – technology is a difficult topic for TV as it doesn’t normally have pictures, think how this story is going to be played out on screen. Would you understand the story if the TV was on mute?
  2. Think about where your story hit the real world? Does it tie into a bigger issue, i.e. technology is a micro topic that normally sits within a bigger issue, if it does, make use of that to tell the story e.g. health or science.
  3. Where possible use case studies of people using the technology – focus on the user and how the technology improves their life rather than focusing entirely on the product, people are interested in people!


Lexi Mills ‘7 Secret Weapons of successful content and outreach’

Lexi provided some top tips in finding good relevant content this included:

Followed by some top tips on ensuring that your content is then picked up on by PR:

  • Use a tweetable headline
  • Include sources to linkable offsite material e.g. interviews, bios, images, data sources
  • Make links look natural as possible and include no more than 3 in any press release
  • Make it personal e.g. finding the correct persons name before sending the press release, be aware of their deadlines
  • Target the top 20%. Apply the Pareto principle, you can achieve 80% of the results you seek in terms of influence by focusing your time and resources on 20% of influencers that are the most important. Do your research and then channel your efforts

Dave Coplin ‘Future forward’

Dave started his presentation with two pictures of a work station, one of a typewriter and one with modern windows 8 desktop, he boldly claims we’re largely using the same tools in the same ways. However, this isn’t because technology hasn’t progressed, it has massively, we’ve got more power in our pocket but we’re just not utilising it. Our phone knows who are friends are (contacts) where we are (maps), where we going (calender) and yet it doesn’t intelligently use any of this data.

We’ve all experienced frustrations with search not using the data we provide it to return meaningful results, he explained a recent experience of searching for some milk on ASDA and then being presented with magnesium and Jack Daniels in the “You may also like” sidebar! A great example of a big companies not making sense out of the data we put in, companies need to start thinking human, personalisation being the ultimate key to success.

Search needs to develop around the user and their wider social context. Ranking search results in terms of mentions on Twitter or ‘Likes’ on Facebook would mark a positive step in a movement towards search being a tool for “discovery” as well as “finding” information.

Marcus Taylor ‘Using CRO, viral mechanics & unconventional business practice to increase online conversions’

Marcus shared some effective conversion rate and viral mechanic tips which have improved online conversions on his latest project Venture Harbour:

  • Use urgency and social proof e.g. include social mentions and put a time limit on uptake of offers
  • Add post sale sharing e.g. tell your friends you’re going to this event
  • Ask why on sale pages, always answer the why question before you try and sell. Why does your target audience need this product? What are they looking for?
  • Make it beautiful use concept feedback.com to get constructive UX feedback on visual design
  • Watch: Simon Sinkey: How great leaders inspire action

Last but not least, I can strongly commend to you Neil Walker’s Brighton SEO Rap which ended yet another very good BrightonSEO!

By hdavis | Posted in Conferences, Content marketing, SEO | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Rising stars at jQuery UK 2013

18 March 2013 – 12:21 pm

At jQuery UK this year we are lucky to have access to an extra room and we’ve been wondering what to do with it.

Last week we had the idea of putting on a smaller second track for up and coming speakers. People who have done brief talks internally to a handful of people, local meetups and geek nights.

We are looking for talks on CSS, JavaScript, HTML5. They do not have to have a jQuery slant, your audience are frontend developers who are interested in all the frontend technologies.

We are doing a very quick call for papers, talks must be submitted by Sunday the 31st of March. I’ll be reviewing the talks on the 1st of April (no and this isn’t an April fool!)

The room is about a 100 capacity room, and the talks are 15 minutes each. They will be running over lunch and between lunch and the afternoon break. We’ll advertise these to the delegates on the day and on the website in the lead up to the conference.

Selected speakers will have free access to the conference & after party.

By John | Posted in Uncategorised | Comments (0)

The Apprentice

15 March 2013 – 11:12 am

Over the last few months, we’ve had Alistair working at White October. He’s part of a scheme with NITP and has spent most of his time here working with me on front-end development. Alistair has proven himself to be an enthusiastic, quick learner and talented individual. We catch up with him as he reflects on his time here so far at White October.

What have you enjoyed?

“There have been many things that I have enjoyed during my time at White October; although three main aspects have been:

  • Getting involved with hands-on, practical work, that requires thought and problem solving.
  • Meeting new people and seeing how everyone can excel both as individuals and in teams.
  • Understanding the overall environment; how the business operates as a whole.”

Any surprising outcomes?

“One major surprising outcome that I seem to find, time and time again through coding, is the aggravation of not being able to solve a problem for a while and finally gaining the joy and relief when successfully doing so.”

Any favourite piece of work?

“I very much enjoyed having the task of modifying e-mail newsletters into a responsive format, so that they would display nicely on mobile (and other low-resolution display) devices. I kept to a specification that outlined particular requirements and suggested what design changes I could make.”

Have you enjoyed learning from others here? What have you learnt?

“I have most definitely enjoyed learning from White October members. I have learnt a great deal from everyone as a whole, and from each person, who has their own area of expertise. It’s both useful and inspiring to learn a variety of different skills and technicalities from each individual.”

What are the learning outcomes you’ve taken from your experience here so far?

“From my experience at White October, so far, I have taken away several learning outcomes:

  • I realise how knowledge, skill, focus and dedication all come together to form a ‘developer’ and how much of each I need to expand and improve on, in order to get to the same level as everyone else here. It’s something that will take time to improve on.
  • As a front-end web developer, my aims are to become as knowledgeable and proficient as possible in all the skills within the role.
  • It’s important to gain an in-depth understanding of how a business operates as a whole; this includes the recognition of time constraints and the level of detail involved in each task, so that I do not become secluded in a ‘developer’s world’.”
By Carl | Posted in Apprenticeship, Web development | Comments (0)

Want to come to jQuery UK for free?

6 March 2013 – 7:56 pm

We are looking for 6 amazing volunteers to help out at jQuery UK in Oxford on 19th April.

On the day of the conference, we will need you to be at the venue at 7.30am sharp to help with the setting up and marshalling delegates to the venue (yes, this does mean you could be outside in the April showers for about an hour). You’ll be on hand to help out all day and preferably into the evening for the afterparty as well.

You’ll be wearing a White October staff t-shirt and we will ask you to help out with moving stuff around and other general bits and bobs. We’ll expect you to be generally helpful throughout the day, but because we know you are really there to see the speakers, we will aim to let you see at least 7 of the talks.

We will also need you to come to a briefing for 1.5 hours on Thursday lunchtime (18th April), and if you are available, we may put you to work for a couple of hours in the afternoon! (We could arrange for you to join us via skype for the briefing if you can’t make it).

While you won’t get paid, you will get to see the talks, and we’ll feed and water you throughout the day, plus you might even get a beer or two at the afterparty!

If you are interested, please drop me an email at [email protected] by 20th March explaining why you’d like to come to the conference and what you think you would bring to the team!

By admin | Posted in Conferences | Comments (0)

Code Club, teaching kids programming

16 January 2013 – 8:19 pm

As a young child more than likely you would have found me reading Spectrum User and typing away code into my spectrum.

So when I first heard about Code Club it sounded brilliant, and something that I wanted to get involved with. So I visited their site to see if any school nearby was interested, and I found one right on my commute through a north Oxfordshire village, perfect.

I emailed the school, they put me in touch with a parent who is also interested and we got the ball rolling. After a distraction or two, I completed my training and got my CRB check and I was good to go.

This afternoon was my first class, I had 11 kids attend (7 Boys and 4 Girls), ranging from Year 4 to Year 6 in age. The goal for today was to make Felix the cat catch Herbert the mouse.

I was a bit worried about what to expect, would they be interested? Would I be able to explain myself clearly enough? In the end they all seemed to love it, some completed the game very quickly, others took pictures of themselves set them as the background and yelled “Felix has gone into my mouth”. All great fun!

What they didn’t realised that they had just learned all about decision logic, loops, variables and even events and listeners. Brilliant!

At the end of the day pretty much everyone of them wanted to take their worksheet home and asked how to install Scratch on their computers at home. Some decided they didn’t want to take stuff home, until they discovered next week if they are finished project one they get to whack witches…!

Roll on next week, watch out witches!

By John | Posted in Uncategorised | Comments (0)

Keeping track of Dom manipulation

7 December 2012 – 12:09 pm

When building websites using PHP/Ruby/Python, especially when using an ORM, it is always a good idea to keep an eye on how many database queries a page load produces. Tools exist in frameworks like Symfony and Django that have a visual count when in development mode to help the developer keep a handle on them.

When it comes to building a client side applications using HTML and JavaScript targeting mobiles you no longer have to worry about database queries slowing your application down. You need to start worrying about how many new DOM nodes you are dynamically creating and how many times you touch these nodes.

I’m currently optimising a Phonegap based application for a client and I really wanted to know how many DOM nodes I’m creating to display a page, I had my suspicions that it was high but no idea of the exact number.

Speaking to one of our developers Ben Foxall about this and he mentioned the DOMNodeInserted event in JavaScript and knocked together a quick example script that counts these events.

Ben shared this snipped on Twitter and London based developer Peter Chamberlin replied with a variation of the script that uses the MutationObserver Api

Which Ben then modified slightly to split out the types of modifications being done

Include this script in your project and have a look in your console, you might get a bit of a shock.

By John | Posted in Cool stuff, tech, Web development | Comments (0)