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Whiteboard is hiring a web/graphic designer

Whiteboard-IT is currently seeking a web/graphic designer with education and experience in all related fields. Candidate must be well versed in html/css and have a strong understanding of UX and information architecture best practices. Candidate must be proficient in Adobe Creative Suite applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator and and have a strong understanding of image manipulation and creating efficient web graphics. We are looking for a creative and motivated individual who can produce high-quality work and can meet deadlines.

Requirements:

  • Minimum 2 years experience (employment or curriculum) in a related field
  • Expertise in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator
  • Working knowledge of HTML5 and CSS3
  • Logo design experience
  • User experience, user interaction, and information architecture best practices
  • Study of current web design trends and creative ability to execute compositions of such
  • Practice in current CMS platforms including WordPress and Sharepoint
  • Good communication skills with team work and client interaction

Strongly suggested:

  • College degree
  • 5 years experience in a related field
  • Knowledge in jQuery and jQueryUI
  • Knowledge in Adobe Flash
  • Wireframing
  • Familiar with both Linux and Windows operating systems

Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience. To apply, please complete the application form and email it AND a resume to jobs@whiteboard-it.com. All out of town applicants must be willing to relocate at their own expense.

Posted in Employment Opportunities |

Posted on April 11, 2012 by janecky

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CSS3

Now that CSS3 is up and running, designers are taking advantage of its new features. CSS3 is already being used to style websites, although it is not yet fully standardized. CSS3 has been in the works for years, but was officially released in November of last year.

CSS1 was first released in 1996 after 2 years of tweaking. Back then it was referred to as CHSS (Cascading HTML Style Sheet). Creators, Hakon Wium Lie and Bert Bos, dropped the ‘H’ before it’s release since CSS can be used to style other different markup languages. Just two short years later, CSS2 was released in 1998. CSS2 was the standard for years until CSS2.1 was released in 2004, six years later. Right after its release it was immediately in revision stages from 2005-2007. After CSS2.1 needed to be pulled and reworked, creators of CSS3 took the time to perfect their work.

Now that CSS3 is debugged and being used all over the worldwide web, work has already started on CSS4, the first drafts of which began in 2009. CSS3 has significantly simplified and quickened the process of designing websites. We used to rely on images for buttons and navigational bars, but now they can be written in plain text. This progression is not only easier to implement, but the markup is better seen by search engines, thus giving your site a higher rank when someone searches for you.

Some of the new features include: rounded corners (border-radius), drop shadows (box-shadow), and my personal favorite, gradient and transparent fills. Instead of RGB colors, CSS3 now has RGBA colors. Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha, meaning alpha-opacity. This now gives your element a true opacity without the use of an image.

CSS3 also has some great, new text effects. A designer is able to create and style their own fonts for the web. This is such a huge leap for the design of a site. You can now upload your own non-standard font and add a text-shadow or an emboss in no time!

The greatness of CSS3 continues to expand with its ability to position and resize in a more attractive way. CSS3 handles the styling of a web layout whether you are viewing a site on a large computer screen, a laptop, and even a mobile device without breaking. Awesome, right?

I am also a huge fan of the easy use of multiple backgrounds, border-images, and, of course, transitions and transformations. A designer can now can simply and effectively animate an element without JavaScript. Amazing.

So, with all of these new and wonderful features… what’s the catch? Three words: cross browser compatibility. This is impossible when using the new properties of CSS3. Which browsers function with CSS3, you ask?
Firefox? Check.
Chrome? All good.
Safari? Locked and loaded.
Opera? Good to go.
IE? Wonk wonk…
The new styles in CSS3 will break in IE6/IE7. But that’s no excuse to disregard these amazing new features! So, have no fear! There is a solution: conditional comments. Just make sure you strategize and have alternative styles on elements that break in other browsers and your styles will be a success.

All in all, I am very excited to have the use of CSS3’s styles, and I am sure I am not alone when I say that I am already eagerly anticipating the arrival of new features in CSS4!

Super Cool Example
Posted in Design |

Posted on March 21, 2012 by paige

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Trending Designs 2012

With a new year there comes new trends. Recently, I have come to find that designers are replacing the hard, and somewhat sterile appearance of some websites with color, graphics, and big personalities. “Designing for delight”. Whether it’s using hand-drawn elements, a reference to retro design, or aging your images, text, and logos with texture.

First thing’s first: cut the text and amp up the graphics. Studies have shown that viewers navigate away from sites with text consuming pages, decreasing you pool of clients. Instead of long pages of copy, summarize what you are trying to convey with a graphic chart. When it come to text: less is more.

It’s always been about aesthetics. What will catch the viewer’s eye and keep them on your site? The answer is a fresh design. Draw them with bold color, quirky icons, large images, and maybe even a detailed graphic footer with a large height. Look back to those old 50’s advertisements. Use those lines, fonts, and color, and sell your business like they sold that can of peaches.

Some more recent web designs have taken to using one long front page containing all of their information with a fixed horizontal navigation bar in the header, allowing the viewer to easily browse the site while having some fun while doing it.

There is also a needed element of personality. A viewer wants to feel like they are interacting with a human, not a computer. Make sure your branding shows your individuality. What makes your business stand out from the crowd? Give your site some life. Some wit. Some identity.

Maybe my biggest suggestion can be summed up with a few pretty useful cliches:
“Expand your horizons”
“The sky is the limit”
“You hold back, you stay back”

Just remember it all comes back to aesthetics. It has been scientifically proven that the human brain responds positively to a nice visual design. If your website is pleasing to the eye, then you’ve got your potential client’s attention! So, keep it light, organized, and fun – but beware of going overboard. No scrolling marquis, people.

Posted in Design |

Posted on February 6, 2012 by paige

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Node.js

Why Node.js
Node.js is an open source JavaScript framework that allows us to create scalable network applications capable of serving content to meet high peek demand. Building on the strengths of the Node.js platform, Whiteboard-IT structures your Node.js application to be responsive, creating a polished experience for your customers.

Leverage The Power Of Open Source
Since Node.js is open source, there are no licensing fees. Where other platforms generally require licenses to be purchased for everything from the operating system to the database, Node.js works best along side other open source software. This translates to a dramatically lower upfront investment than many competing platforms.

Doing More With Less
Have you ever used a program that forced you to wait for some period of time after performing some task – pausing for a moment before returning control? Generally, this behavior is due to the application performing some series of steps required to complete the task – one step at a time, one after another. With Node.js we are able to provide you with an application that is highly scalable, ridiculously responsive and stable beyond compare. In utilizing asynchronous nature of Node.js, your applications can be designed in a manner that leads to faster and more responsive applications. More requests are handled and more data processed with your valuable system resources.

Who are we?
Whiteboard-IT has been active in the CommonJS movement since 2009. We have contributed to and authored open source libraries for Node.js and CommonJS.

Bogart: a super-fast routing framework for Node.js. See Nathan’s article on http://howtonode.org.
Narwhal-Lib: the best parts of the Narwhal standard library for use on Node.js.
Traits.js: a framework for creating objects based upon composable traits.
Wu: functional programming for JavaScript.
Observable: Publish and subscribe to events in a generic, platform independent way. Used by FirePHP companion.

Posted in programming |

Posted on October 20, 2011 by martin

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Proactive Online Chat to increase your sales

Proactive chat is a great way to increase website conversions.   The majority of internet users have used chat clients, so a proactive chat client will feel familiar to these users. There is no excuse, start a conversation with your customers on your website today.

Are you wondering why you are hearing from such a low percentage your visitors?  It may be because of a poor conversion path. Are you using a contact form? Even with the best contact form, customers worry about being added to yet another mailing list. Internet users are wary of giving out their email addresses for good reason.

How likely would you be to interact with a sales clerk in a store if you had to provide him or her with your drivers license?

Your customers are one click away from your competitors. You must engage them while you have their attention! So how do we overcome the understandable reluctance of customers to give out their email addresses?

So what we needed was a solution which allowed us to communicate with customers without having to collect any personal data. Proactive chat solves this problem by offering the visitor a chance to interact with one of our employees. If the customer does not want to chat, he or she does not have to and can simply ignore the chat box.

On our site, after 20 seconds idle on a page, a chat box pops up. If the customer types in the chat box, one of four designated representatives receives the message and is able to personally assist the customer. The chat is configurable. It can be available on any or all pages. You have control.

There are also “passive” benefits to the chat. When planning a marketing strategy, information is priceless.  Who buys what? Where are they buying it? How often are they buying? Chat boxes like the one offered by SnapEngage live chat offer a multitude of analytic options. Reporting features that give you valuable statistics about visitors, as well as chat summaries and records will shape your marketing strategy. These features provide data that can be used to increase conversion.  A.B.C., Always Be Closing – the more information your sales reps have, the easier this becomes.  Integration with existing chat applications such as Skype and AIM make getting started easy.  Get your web designer to paste a simple script to your site and you are good go.

Contact us and we’ll be happy to help you get started.  In fact you could be chatting with us as you read right now…

 

Posted in Business |

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Justin

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