Tutorials | The Stairwell

Archive for the ‘Tutorials’ Category

YouTube Channels are Launching Business and Boosting Online Profiles

Posted by in browsers, Code, Digital Advertising, Findings, Inspiration, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Tutorials on April 30th, 2012

Last week I wrote briefly about Chris Hardwick and his Nerdist Company. In the week since I got the chance to speak briefly with the man about his YouTube Channel and how he’s preparing for the time when YouTube and Hulu become rivals to Comcast Cable and Dish Network, “Three to Four years is a good estimate,” Hardwick said when asked about a time table for that. If his YouTube Channel is any indication he’s pretty ready. Along with a few others he’s building a huge following that could pay off big in the next few years. Hardwick, along with

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Frontend Optimization, pt. 5

Posted by steve in Code, Inspiration, Tutorials on June 12th, 2010

In the fifth and final part of our multi-part Frontend Optimization series, I’ll cover my notes from Steve Souder’s “High Performance Websites” and “Even Faster Websites” books that can help optimize your images and javascript code.

Optimize Javascript Code

Minimize DOM Access. Manipulating the DOM is very resource intensive for browsers.
Smart Event Handlers. Use Event Delegation. You can put on event handler on a container div and then figure out which button inside that div was actually clicked in the function to be executed.
Reduce size of private functions (those called only within the js itself, not those called

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Frontend Optimization, pt. 4

Posted by steve in browsers, Code, Findings, Tutorials on June 11th, 2010

In the fourth part of our multipart Frontend Optimization series I’ll cover my notes from Steve Souder’s “High Performance Websites” and “Even Faster Websites” books that can help reduce your file sizes and configure your Apache settings to squeeze out more speed.

Reduce File Sizes

See optimizing images for reducing image sizes.
Minify CSS and JS files. Use Google’s Closure Compiler for JS and ICEY for CSS.
Minify HTML files with HTML Tidy.
Reduce file size with using relative links including //subdomain.example.com instead of http://subdomain.example.com

Configure Apache and .htaccess

Disable ETags
Add future expires headers
Enable GZip Compression
Since

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Working with an Agency: Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself.

Posted by in Business, Findings, Inspiration, Tutorials on December 2nd, 2009

One of the most challenging aspects of working in an advertising or interactive agency is managing sensitive agency-client relations. Taking clients down the path to creating a successful marketing message or making a recommendation that they may not agree with can be fun and exciting or it can be an emotional, difficult and even scary process. It seems like it should be easy. Clients hire us for our expertise in creativity, strategic direction and user experience. You are paying for our service, so why not use us to our full potential?

There is definitely something to be said for letting

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Being a More Efficient Web Designer

Posted by steve in Code, Findings, Tutorials on October 18th, 2009

1. Using Pre-made Form Elements
Often when designing a web comp we need to incorporate items that are part of the browser GUI. These elements, like it or not, are part of the overall design. So its often many designer’s habit to fire up their browser, find a checkbox, radio button, text input, etc. and grab a screen shot. However, there is a better way. The Designer’s Toolbox has done all this for us and organized every browser’s unique elements into an easy to use layered PSD file. Just keep them nearby and whenever you need a browser GUI element

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Creating Fluid AS3 Flash Layouts: Extending The Basics.

Posted by Ryan Nasipak in Code, Inspiration, Tutorials on May 18th, 2009

Welcome back!

This is part two of (how many I’m not quite sure) a tutorial series in working with AS3 fluid flash layouts. If you missed part one (Creating Fluid AS3 Flash Layouts: The Basics.), I’d highly recommend giving it a look here (especially if you have some lingering questions on how all of this is working). It goes much more in depth as to the how and why of what we’re doing to create some of these CSS like effects in actionscript.

Another reason I would recommend starting from that first tutorial is that we’ll be extending

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Flash & HTML Website Integration – Best Practices

Posted by steve in Code, Tutorials, Usability on May 1st, 2009

Recently at Billups Design we built a fully functional HTML replica of a client’s flash site and were puzzled as to the latest and best practices for integrating that HTML site with the existing Flash site to ensure the greatest usability and SEO results. We had a few options that came to mind first.

A splash page to allow the user to choose the HTML Site or the Flash Site.
A separate directory for the HTML Site to live that only Google would see.
A flash detection that would redirect the user to the HTML site if it didn’t have

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Planning and producing web apps – don’t be your own worst enemy

Posted by charles in Business, Tutorials on April 2nd, 2009

We published this as a whitepaper a while back, but feel it still has the power to benefit any organization involved with planning and producing a web development initiative.

Perhaps the most costly and painful experience for any company initiating a new web project are the planning and launching phases. In the case of planning, different departments within the company (too many in some cases) are invited to early conceptual and business objective meetings. Each person has a different perspective. Each person has a different level of expertise. Personal and professional agendas get in the way, too. Draft after draft,

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Creating Fluid AS3 Flash Layouts: The Basics.

Posted by Ryan Nasipak in Code, Inspiration, Tutorials, Usability on March 20th, 2009

When I first started developing in flash, there were inevitably things that just made me want to pull my hair out. Basic physics, Actionscript vs. timeline animation and embedding assets vs. creating them at run-time were just a few of the areas I really wrestled with early on. Part of the problem stemmed from a desire to go from 0-60 in 2 seconds (and that might be on the high side). I was like Nike, just do it. *** As a side, that reaches my corny joke quota for this blog….so please, read on.

When I jump in to a

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