Andrew Maddox | Chasing the Wind » Web

Google Finance

Andrew — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:06:16 +0000

I frequently visit Google Finance, but the graph on the home page always confuses me.

For the graph, there are two keys, the one above with colored lines and the one below, indicating percentage and numerical changes.

Why not combine the two:

And only have one key. It seems like a huge improvement for a company that loves simplicity.

Student Ministry Website Ideas

Andrew — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:54:44 +0000

Below are some designs I put together for our the new student ministry mini-site here at Champion Forest Baptist Church. I designed their current website, In Your Element, in 2006, and was featured in a the book, Web Designers Idea Book (2008). The aims of the ministry have changed since then and a new student pastor has also arrived. As such, they requested a new site to represent their new identity.

Here’s what we’ll present to them next week.

Website Design Sketches

Andrew — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 14:26:18 +0000

Below are some design sketches for the new TNCCA website. The TNCCA is a small consultancy which helps churches and their buildings.

The sketches provide a basic overview of the elements of the design and constitute a wireframe to work from. This is always my first step in visualizing how to orient a site.

The second sketch was the one presented to the client.

Online Prayer Room

Andrew — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:11:34 +0000

I had the privilege of working on the Online Prayer Room at Champion Forest Baptist Church. I designed the interface, and David Corley, our application developer wrote most of the back end. I helped polish the remaining loose ends. You can see a brief screencast of the application below. (I’m narrating)

Site Preview, 1

Andrew — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 23:02:24 +0000

Here’s another preview of the site…

The New Site

Andrew — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:25:49 +0000

Here’s a sneak peak of our new website… in IE6. Microsoft, can I hate you any more than I already do?

Introducing Source

Andrew — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 23:51:41 +0000

I’m proud to inroduce SOURCE, the code behind the Champion Forest website.

SOURCE is a place to share what we’ve created with the rest of the world (for free too!). Today we have begun with FIRO: Flash Image Rotation, a system that dynamically rotates and mattes images. In the future we plan to add Diago (our service management utility) and Helpdesk (computer management system), as well as anything else we create.
I hope that the code we share will be helpful to lots of other people. Share the word…

Facebook’s Big Blunder

Andrew — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 03:20:41 +0000

In one day, Facebook’s valuation has likely dropped 50%. Why, you ask? Because they created features which undermine the whole culture of Facebook.
Facebook unveiled a few huge new features yesterday morning called the “News Feed” and “Mini Feed,” both of which are designed to help you keep track of the changes in your friend’s lives. The idea is great…but I think that the Software Engineers let their enthusiasm get in the way of the reality of the user’s needs.
I broached the subject last week when I described the odd phenomenon called Myspace. And I wondered why people loved a product that betrayed so much privacy. And as the Facebook saga unfolds, I am beginning to understand how the world views privacy.
Facebook was great because you could logon anonymously, check out your friends changes and check up on their lives. And likewise, you could update your profile and your friends could see the details, but none of the specifics…like, the date and time of each change to your profile. So instead of someone just updating their profile, the world now knows that they have updated the profile six times in the past two days, or that, in my case, the last 10 notes that I have sent have all been birthday greetings.
Before, the information was out there, but no one would have actually done the research to discover that.
The revolt is large and growing, and I wonder how long it will be before Facebook rolls back the changes. Michael Arrington at Techcrunch thinks the new features are good, but I don’t think he understands the mindset behind Facebook users. Whenever your users are openly saying that a product is becoming a stalking tool, you have a huge problem.
Other sites have noted the revolt, and a new site is calling for a boycott of Facebook for a day. If Facebook doesn’t act quickly, the site will die a quick and painful death…

It’s Time to Vote

Andrew — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 05:19:15 +0000

That’s right folks, the brand new Champion Forest Website has been listed on The ChurchBeauty Website. The website is dedicated to beautiful church websites (as the name implies), and because we made the list, I’m encouraging ( / asking) you to visit the site and give our new website 5 stars. We’re on the homepage close to the bottom…
Check it out and vote: ChurchBeauty

Champion Forest, Part II

Andrew — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 06:26:12 +0000

Yes, folks, we’re now entering CFBC v2. (That simply means the second version of the church website). With little fanfare and even fewer problems, we launched the new version of the website. For you less-technical folks, you may want to skim this post, and I do plan on posting about several of the interesting new features of the site.
So, before I begin, check it out at Championforest.org.
Things Removed:
The color “Baby Blue”
Large title graphics with “related” imagery
Bloated Stylesheets
Clumsy Nav Structure
Rigid Home Page
Unneeded Forms
Things Added
The color green.
Textures
Popups
Fades
Customizable Home Page
firo (Flash Image Rotation)
Useful Forms
Notables
The cleanest, purest, and best code I’ve ever produced. The code is completely void of hacks which clogged the former design.
The JavaScript was written entirely by me (except for a few reused Fucntions, sIFR, and the moo.fx toolkit).
firo and the Flash Graphic were both imagined and written by myself.
The idea is a culmination of my design efforts and a watchful eye on thousands of other sites. I think it’s very unique, but you can find similar concepts among other websites.
It was conceived and produced in a significantly less amount of time than my first version of the site.
So, go check it out at Championforest.org.