Bjørn Enki’s web design blog

Los Angeles to San Francisco - (temporary) move!

As a heads-up to existing clients as well as future seekers of website services in the SF/Bay-Area — I am moving from Los Angeles, CA to San Francisco. I will, of course, continue to offer custom web design & development services to clients in all areas of the counry, but there are always those who prefer to meet face-to-face once in a while or before starting a big project. Sorry LA, but I'll be back before you know it!

Four new website design & development projects launched!

It’s been a while since I've made a post, as I’ve been working hard on finishing up a number of great sites and some are still in the works!

Either way, an update was definitely in order to get my last completed projects listed. Each client was a pleasure to work with, and the end results hopefully speak for themselves!

Professional website hosting: now available!

I am pleased to now offer professional website hosting solutions. My hosting solutions are different than most—created to allow website owners assurance that they're site is performing optimally, regularly backed-up, monitored for errors, and as secure and stable as possible.

I’ve been published in A List Apart!

I am proud to announce that my article Letting Go of John Hancock has just been published in A List Apart issue No. 297. The publication “for people who make websites” was co-founded by Jeffrey Zeldman in ’97 and is widely regarded as the leading authority on website related articles. My article covers utilizing PHP and PDF to create proposals and contracts that may be signed electronically.

Version 3 of BjornEnki.com launched!

After close to two years in business and about 10 months after the last update—version 3 of BjørnEnki.com has finally launched! I think this new version does a great job of making my website portfolio a bit easier to browse, along with other information, and making the overall experience a bit more interesting and pleasant while maintaining the overall mood & brand of my old site. Version 3 emphasizes my custom website design services and my expertise as a professional website designer.

WestSide Hand Therapy's new website launched!

Colorado based WestSide Hand Therapy came to me wanting their first professional website design. Based upon client-provided color suggestions, their logo, and rough design drafts, I designed and developed their new website.

Overhaul of SokolowMusic.com launched

Fred came to me with a desire to update his existing website. He wanted a modern, custom website design that remained friendly & personal and an easier way for visitors to make purchases of instructional material, music CDs & DVDs and even purchase digital downloads.

Why Flash based websites are commonly discouraged

While there may be a few techniques that require Flash, most aspects associated with "Flash" do not require the use of proprietary software at all. I always discourage the use of only Flash for a website—this post explains why and goes over common drawbacks associated with Flash as a professional website design solution.

Tool to preview a page's search appearance

I just finished a tool that lets web developers see what a web page might look like in searches based on the page meta-title, meta-description, URI, bold search phrases, line wrapping and more...

Easily exclude internal analytics tracking

Excluding internal traffic from analytics can be very important in achieving accurate tracking data. For a long time, easily excluding personal traffic has been difficult for website managers. In this post I explain how to easily exclude your traffic from analytics using two methods; cookies, and my existing functionality to create a subdomain of bjornenki.com that points to my home server's dynamic IP.

Internet Explorer 6 double margin bug fix on floated elements

Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) effectively doubles margin values on floated elements. As a work-around to this bug, simply add "display:inline" to the floated element with the margin.

Separating presentation from content using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

This post is an attempt to encourage proper CSS use for the separation of presentation and content by shedding light on what exactly separation of presentation and content means and the advantages it offers a professional website designer & developer and the visitors of a web site.

Pictures of my newly printed business cards

I just got my business cards back from my printer - the colors and quality look great, they rounded the corners to the exact size I had asked, the edges are cut perfectly, and the spot UV finish is pretty much as good as it gets. I've added a couple pictures of the printed cards to try to portray the spot gloss finish (placed directly over the logo on the front and back of the card).

Opacity (hasLayout) in Internet Explorer on expanded :hover elements

Although there are several workarounds for Internet Explorer's known problems with opacity, I recently ran into a new issue when trying to create a semi-transparent drop-down menu for a client using the css :hover pseudo-class.

Preload rollover images without any extra CSS or Javascript

Using alternate background images for "active" elements, or when hovering over an element is extremely common. In changing the image, however, unless precaution is taken, a flicker or delay is to be expected while the alternate image is loaded. I often use a single image that contains many possibilities and simply shift it's position around using CSS depending on the specific button in my custom website designs.

Static subdomains for dynamic IP's

This post explains how I recently created a DynDNS type service for myself so that my clients and I may access my home server remotely using a static address as a virtual subdomain of bjornenki.com.

Bjørn Enki business card design

A new business card design based upon my new website. I wanted a card that resembled my website and portrayed a bit of my style. I also think that having design as a major part of creating websites allows a professional web designer to be a little more extravagant with their business card designs.

Vim editor for website development - PHP, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

Vim is a powerful, highly configurable text editor used mainly for programming. I develop all my websites in Vim, including XHTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP code. This post is simply meant as a teaser—to showcase the possibilities of the amazing Vim editor and let more people know it exists.

Color scheme for Vim and gVim made specifically for website development

A color scheme for Vim/gVim that I created specifically for my most commonly used website development languages - XHTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript.

Fast, free video conversion using FFmpeg

I recently had the task of converting a few videos to FLV and SWF format for use in a recent custom website design. The simplicity of this task under Debian Linux using FFmpeg inspired me to share how I did it.

Preparing for Professional Website Design

As the importance of professional website design becomes increasingly evident to those offering any form of practices, services, business, or information - the implied question is how to go about obtaining a custom website design that is professionally developed and promoted to best meet your goals?

Choosing a Professional Website Designer

Once you are finished planning and preparing for professional website design, the next step in establishing an online presence is finding the right company, contractor, or consultant to deliver the web development services you need.

The Importance of Professional Website Design

As the internet becomes increasingly popular, the importance of a professional website design that is successfully established and managed is usually self evident. Studies over the last few years reveal that the internet has already surpassed newspapers and yellow pages for information and research regarding companies, products, and services.