Macronimous is in the web development business and has been, since its inception, in the remote working space. By default, as with most businesses like ours, client-centric communication is our key strength – the ability to communicate well and transform client visions into Internet reality.

A collection of solid social collaboration solutions takes advantage of an organization’s network by bringing together the people, data, and processes needed for improved engagement and informed decision making.

Our clients often introduce us to new tools that we, mostly, adopt to go further up our learning curve as an organization. One example was Zoom which a client introduced to us in 2013 that we had some early reservations about, at the time. The rest is history.

We use an eclectic mix of communication tools for web teams:

• E-mails – Probably seen as the snail mail of today, e-mails continue to serve an important purpose among which are correspondence regarding initial requirements and pre-sales questions. This also helps keep records of client communication at all stages of the project which eliminates confusion and increases transparency. 

• Zoom, Google Meet – are quite similar in operation. Both have collaboration tools, share screen, breakout rooms, and support call-ins. The difference is with the overall price and the maximum number of participants that can join a meeting. These two conferencing tools are what our clients presently prefer, and they are, thus, the tools we work with. Like everyone, we at Macronimous started using them extensively, after the pandemic.

• Skype – This is seen as among the first VOIP systems to break traditional communication barriers. We use this to make quick calls before and during the project start. Skype also helps in the traditional area of phone calls; investing in a VOIP device with call recording is worthwhile. We have set up a Skype phone number in the USA; our local clients reach us while incurring no additional charges for international calls.

• Basecamp.com and Teamwork.com – We use web-based project management software as part of our box of remote team communication tools. They help ensure that everything is organized and our team continues to work seamlessly on multiple projects. They make both simple and complex projects easier to manage.

Basecamp is relatively old compared to Teamwork yet clients like it because of its simplicity. Teamwork is extensive, it has a bit of a learning curve.

• Trello – For our clients who like Kanban boards, Trello works well. Trello is simple and good for smaller web projects. Trello’s boards, lists, and cards enable teams to organize and prioritize projects in a flexible way. It is easier to track – all on its dashboard – with easy-to-move cards-based navigation.

• Adobe XD – is a screen-based design tool that helps our developers effortlessly share interactive prototypes with team members and our clients. Our developers create all the screens in a web app flow letting our clients get a feel of the entire product.

The chances of client frustration are low as this process of visualizing the proposed product would reduce any scope creep or deviation. It saves us hundreds of hours per project by lessening the number of e-mail exchanges.

• Bugzilla – is a robust bug-tracking system that allows our teams of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs, enhancements, and other change requests in their products.

We are open, however, to adopting our client’s preference of any other web-based or locally installed equivalent bug tracking tool.

• Slack – is a collaboration hub that brings people, information, and tools together to get work done. It ranks among the most popular communication tools for remote web teams. We use Slack within our development team. However, not all our clients are ready to get onto Slack, so we adapt to their software of choice, where necessary.
• FreshBooks – is the application we use to invoice, record expenses, and track time. This is a simple but relatively expensive tool. Apart from Freshbooks, we are use Hiveage, which has many payment integrations other than PayPal.

There are many similar applications for payment receivables and payables operations. However, we work with FreshBooks as it is a standard for most of our clients.

Loom – this is a new and easy-to-use video messaging business tool that is gathering traction in this space. You can send a one-way video message the way you would send a text message using Loom. The video can include a recording of the screen for more technical/ visual topics along with voiceovers. It is free! We send our clients explainer videos, project flows, etc. via Loom and they provide feedback, similarly, thus saving hours of inputting text. For instance: to explain how to delete an image in a post in the WordPress block editor, we would create a video and send it to the client and then deal with the client’s feedback. When our communication with our clients has to be asynchronous without their presence for a screen share, Loom videos become visual documents.

When we work remotely on multiple projects that involve different stakeholders who are allocated their separate tasks, staying organized can be a challenge. However, we have created our effective working environment using a wide range of software that we optimize for our operations.

The post Communication tools that we use in Macronimous throughout the web development lifecycle first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

In this Presentation, Chris Coyier is trying to arrive at a decent answer. We would like it to be shared on our blog too.
You can see Chris shared some useful links at the end, unfortunately, they aren’t clickable. But Don’t worry, we have given them below as links that you can enjoy.

CSS, HTML, and Web programming resources: 

CSS-Tricks
http://www.css-tricks.com

CSS Wizardry
http://www.csswizardry.com

Smashing Magazine
http://www.smashingmagazine.com

BRICSS
http://www.bricss.net

Cognition
http://cognition.happycog.com

24 Ways
http://www.24ways.org

NetTuts+
http://net.tutsplus.com

Codrops
http://www.tympanus.com/codrops

Web Platform
http://blog.webplatform.org

Individual who share their thoughts and learning:  

Paul Irish
http://www.paulirish.com

Zoe Gillenwater
http://www.zomigi.com

Jeremy Keith
http://www.adactio.com

Estelle Weyl
http://estelle.github.com

Nicolas Zakas
http://www.nczonline.net

Ryan Seddon
http://www.thecssninja.com

Nicole Sullivan
http://www.stubbornella.org/

Dave Rupert
http://www.daverupert.com

Tab Atkins
http://www.xanthir.com

Christian Heilman
http://www.christianheilmann.com

ShopTalk
http://www.shoptalkshow.com

Rails Casts
http://www.railscasts.com

The Web Ahead
https://thewebahead.net/topic/css

Non-Breaking Space
http://www.nonbreakingspace.tv

This Developer’s Life
http://www.thisdeveloperslife.com

The East Wing
http://www.theeastwing.net

Build Podcast
http://www.build-podcast.com

BizCraft
http://www.unmatchedstyle.com/bizcraft

Tech Twitters: 

Elijah Manor
@elijahmanor

Lea Verou
@leaverou

Mike Taylor
@miketaylr

Divya Manian
@divya

Ethan Marcotte
@rwd

Ben Alman
@cowboy

David Walsh
@davidwalshblog

Scott Jehl
@scottjehl

Jeff Starr
@perishable

Mat Marquis
@wilto

Simon
@simurai

Hakim El Hattab
@hakimel

What  we recommend:

Cat The code

@catswhocode 

Not but not least:

@macronimous

Weekly doses: 

Web Design Weekly
http://www.web-design-weekly.com

CSS Weekly
http://www.css-weekly.com

JavaScript Weekly
http://www.javascriptweekly.com

HTML5 Weekly
http://www.html5weekly.com

RWD Weekly
http://www.responsivedesignweekly.com

The post How to keep up with Web technology? Overcoming the challenges with learning first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Tablet browser view

Flat design:

Design trends change over the years. Now, people like to get rid of curved edges, gradients, reflections or shadow effects. Sharp edges become a favorite, along with minimalism.

If you like to start, you must first get inspired by some designs, take them as inspirations and practice yourself. You can see a lot of Flat UI designs at Flat Design. Also, I recommend Flat UI Colors to choose your colors and for more inspirations take a look at Dribbble’s Flat collections.

Less framework:

We have written couple of blogs on Responsive Web Design months ago when it was catching, one was about the CSS frameworks that we liked and used. But, recently with few projects we got an opportunity to explore Less framework. It’s quite impressive

The layout will be made to 992pixels and add CSS media queries within the child layouts. Child layouts will be 768pixels, 480 pixels, and 320 pixels to make it ready for different browsers.

If the browser isn’t supporting CSS media queries such as Internet Ex­plorer 6–8 and most old mobile devices, the default layout will be served and for other browsers which support media queries, child layouts will be served based on the screen resolutions.

Less Framework is MIT licensed, so we can even modify it. However, the learning curve is little steep, a designer who is strong in HTML5 and CSS3 will require at least a weeks’ time to learn and master it.

Mobile browser view

WordPress:

Finally, we decided to retain our blog with WordPress, through the new blogging platform Ghost looks promising. Maybe we should try that in for coming years.

We used WP Touch WordPress plugin for years. Thanks to this wonderful plugin by Bravenewcode.

In order to see our new RWD, we had to disable WP Touch.

Now the final design is ready for different browsers and Feel free to give our feedback on our new design.

The post Flat design + Less framework + WordPress = Our new responsive Blog design first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Help The Victims of the 8.9 Earthquake in Japan by Spreading Awareness and Aid. Visit https://american.redcross.org/site/Donation2?idb=0&5052.donation=form1&df_id=5052 to donate and provide your generous support.

God Bless.

The post Help The Victims of Earthquake in Japan first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

1. Social Marketing: Facebook and Twitter will rule over the next few years. Every SEO company which helps their client to succeed online should help them by letting them consider these technology giants, which might take them to the next level. Social media optimization will not replace Search Engine Optimization, but social media optimization should go in parallel with SEO.

2. Cloud applications and hosting: We started using invoice applications first (Fresh books) and it ended up with cloud hosting. We moved our sites to the cloud. Also helped clients to taste the flavor of clouds. Web hosting with Amazon web services was a very different service we offered to our clients. Setting up their sites and web applications with EC2  initially needed some learning with Amazon, but it became an expert service at the year-end. Next year we will be providing setting up applications in the cloud as a key service.

3. Social Media integration: We learned FBML, Facebook SDK with PHP and started offering business pages and applications with Facebook, which will continue next year. Marketing those pages is another fruit to reap. Similarly, Facebook Like button integration and Twitter API integrations are two important promotional services clients will require.

4. Blogging: Is blogging dead? No, it has come out in a different format. Twits and Facebook status updates are microblogging and people who do not want to write much or those who like to share instantly use them. But, still, business blogging isn’t dead. Macronimous helped several clients to start blogging. WordPress helped us much. We provide SEO friendly WordPress blogs by adding SEO plugins and basic SEO readiness set up as a mandatory feature along with every blog.

5. Search Engine friendly coding: SEO readiness is no more a value addition. Every site we develop should be ready for Search Engines. It begins with lightweight coding and ends with Keyword setup. Making dynamic sites such as CMS driven content, ECommerce sites and Flash sites with PHP and .NET are offered by us as an expert SEO service.

6. HTML5 for Flash: We started offering HTML5 based presentations and sites. Flash was replaced by jQuery for many clients and they were happy too. By 2011, HTML 5 should be the standard, and Flash will move for interactive applications. The test results made at RWW in March 2010 was an eye-opener. With full-fledged CSS3 and HTML5, easy to create interactive web applications without Flash should be feasible.

7. Rich Internet Application – Flex was used much in few projects this year. We look forward to work on RIA based frameworks, such as Sencha.

8. PHP Frameworks: We used Codeigniter very much. But MVC is still not very popular, and framework based applications are relatively lower than non-MVC-based solutions like WordPress etc.

9. Smartphone and Tablet applications: We did much with iPhones this year (including 2011 World Cup Cricket app), moving to iPads. Android development for Smartphones and tablets will be our important strategy next year. By the end of this year, we see more Tablets, and thanks to iPad, which regenerated the new platform of business. Building portable applications for the mobile and tablet browsers is another channel. By providing mobile-friendly websites we help clients become accessible everywhere. Sencha Touch and DHTML X’s JavaScript mobile UI APIs will be a part of the development.

10. Security for Opensource applications: Many of us believe that Opensource application based development cost is almost nil. This is a lie. The initial cost of a WordPress or Joomla based application/site development might be relatively lower than a closed, custom application development. But the real cost of ownership is affected by the security issues that come with the open standards, mainly when they are affected by security attacks. We will work hard on providing secure web applications when we develop them with open source  now on. Even this year-end, we have an important announcement with a  major security fix from WordPress.

11. Remote project management: Managing projects across the globe was a real challenge a decade ago. Using standards and web-based project management tools we provide hassle-free project management. Tools like Basecamp, dot project, and Eventum helped us much, and we are working with few cloud-based PM and collaboration tools, GitHub etc. Apart from this, our agile based PM methods have had some customization. Part of that is a project closure questionnaire.

Overall, many easy and hard ways of learning helped our team to build the next year strategy very much. Leave your comments if you had such learning to share with others. Looking forward to another technologically challenging year which helps us to help our clients.

Dilbert stripe: © Dilbert.com

The post 11 things we improved within a year first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

A post-project questionnaire for web development clients is a strategic feedback mechanism used to measure satisfaction and technical success immediately after a site goes live. At Macronimous, we have found that the most successful projects aren’t just defined by clean code, but by how well the final product aligns with the client’s business vision. By utilizing a consistent set of questions, you can transform subjective impressions into a roadmap for agency growth and better client retention.

Why does your agency need a post-project questionnaire?

Using a structured feedback loop ensures that no project ends in a vacuum, preventing missed opportunities for process optimization. Many vendors or web development teams often ignore project feedback that is valuable in building a successful team and company. However, client feedback is essential to building a successful business.

After completing a Web Development, Mobile Development, or SEO project, a team’s self-evaluation should prioritize insights provided by the client.

We’ve found that dedicating 10–15 minutes to a thoughtful questionnaire can yield valuable improvements. It enhances our understanding of your needs and results in better deliverables overall. If you can convince your customer to respond, remember—you have an important tool that can help you improve.

Which client feedback questions for web development are essential?

The most effective questions target the intersection of communication, technical execution, and business ROI. To get the most out of your post-project questionnaire for web development clients, you need to ask questions that uncover both praise and pain points. Here is our recommended checklist:

1. How would you rate the final website deliverable in terms of your original vision?
2. Was there any specific moment during development that you found frustrating? (This identifies process bottlenecks).
   

   Project feedback questions are tools to improve!

3. How would you describe our communication and responsiveness throughout the project?
4. Did our developers ask the right questions to understand your technical requirements?
5. Were you given sufficient time to review interim updates and milestones?
6. Does the final website accurately represent your brand identity and values?
7. How effective was our team at addressing your feedback and concerns?
8. Do you feel this project provides tangible ROI for your business? (This is a great lead-in for a testimonial).
9. Would you be likely to partner with us for future phases or new projects?
10. On a scale of 1–10, what is your overall satisfaction rating for this project?

How do you implement your questionnaire effectively?

Effective implementation relies on automation and the integration of data into internal review cycles. You can build an online survey using tools like Zoho or Typeform to capture these client feedback questions for web development and store them in a database.

At Macronimous, we recommend discussing these results during internal “post-mortem” meetings. In our 25 years of experience, we’ve seen that discussing this feedback openly helps identify system defects, improves the development lifecycle, and helps our team reach higher performance levels.

Refining this feedback loop is also a critical part of our WordPress maintenance services, as it helps us understand how the site needs to evolve to meet changing business goals.

Do you have a web or Mobile project in mind?

We at Macronimous can help you with our expert development team.

Feel free to ask us today for a no-obligation Consulting.

contact now

Written by the Macronimous Web Development Team — 25 years of WordPress and web expertise.

The post 10 Vital Questions for Your Post-Project Questionnaire for Web Development Clients first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Now, this is the right time to know about the power of Codeigniter. So ignite yourself and initiate reading to know why you want to choose Codeigniter. It will suit if:

• You require a framework that can be set up very quickly and efficiently.
• You need an outstanding performance.
• You are a developer who needs methodical and clear documentation.
• You need a framework that does not call for sticking on to restrictive coding rules.
• You want a framework that needs nearly zero configuration.
• You need a framework which is compatible with many environments

Some of our developers always prefer to use  CodeIgniter, write to me if you want to see some samples and know why they used CodeIgniter. If you want to start using CodeIgniter start right here at codeigniter.com (Need some help? check with us here)

1. PHP Frameworks we like

2. PHP Frameworks we like 1. Zend and why?

3. Frameworks we like: 2. CakePHP and why?

The post Frameworks we like: 4. Codeigniter, and Why? first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

Working with PHP is something you enjoy every day!. You always wanted to do your best for your clients. But when the deadlines are pressing and when the clients are on your shoulders people start to mess codings, and the standards get ignored. But you practice the best ways of programming every day, it becomes your style, and you have no alternate choice of doing quick and dirty work. Here are some simple best practices discussed by Matthew Weier of Zend technologies. Use them when you get an opportunity, and they will become your style of programming.

The post PHP – Best practices and worst mistakes first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

But as the years passed by, the requirements too changed. When people started working collaboratively, (which was made much easier with the internet and with bandwidth growth) people slowly started moving into web based applications. Web-based Emails are possibly the first web applications we used. Software companies started developing cross-browser compatible web applications. At a point, We stopped application development with Visual Basic and started focusing only on ASP and then ASP.NET. Now Web 2.0 has changed the perspective of ’software’ totally. And Hybrid applications became possible with APIs etc.

Likewise, in Mobile development, there are two ways to create  applications. (1) Mobile browser-based applications – which are websites optimized for Mobile browsers and (2) Installable (or Native) Mobile applications.

They both have advantages and disadvantages.

Why Mobile Browser based applications and why not?

So, in short: The advantage of a mobile browser based application is the low development cost, and the disadvantage is the bandwidth limitations and the limitations of Mobile websites, which does not access your Phone’s components like your Address book, Camera, etc.
Mobile Brower based applications are slow due to the bandwidth limitations and will eat up your data usage on your phone plan. Also, the user needs to remember the URLs and type it, which every cell phone user knows is just plain  hard. One advantage is that the development cost is low since the developer only needs to consider how to make it compatible with most mobile browsers, and not each type of cell phone. Also, now that many Mobile browsers support HTML and smartphones come with bigger screens to see full sized websites, and users can zoom in and out. We have keyboards too to manage this. But, if you want to browse websites, you can do that in your tiny Netbook, which you always carry with you, right?

So, in short: The advantage of a mobile browser based application is the low development cost, and the disadvantage is the bandwidth limitations and the limitations of Mobile websites, which does not access your Phone’s components like your Address book, Camera, etc.

Why Native mobile applications and why not?
Native (installable) applications reside in your cell phone, and you  launch it directly from there, with whatever search parameters  are stored within your mobile (Eg. The names of the 50 states in the USA, your favorite locations, daily weather, etc). Except for free text search, all of  the search parameters can be stored in the mobile – OR they can be updated just one time.  The communication between the Data/Web server and the mobile phone could be drastically reduced. An application like a stock portfolio can be created within your Phone and stored. Every day you just need to update the stock prices. You need not download the entire portfolio each day. Also, the application resides on the phone, and can access your phone’s features such as your camera, phone book /contacts, etc.

It has also quickly become clear that another  hidden advantage of native applications is brand loyalty. If a customer installs a mobile application which you supply, he or she will rely on your application and trust it. For Example, I use Viigo for regular information updates (News, weather, etc) but a site called Justdial.com or Google local for local address research. If Justdial comes with a Blackberry solution, they captured me as their user.

The disadvantage is obviously the development cost. No two mobile platforms can share the same mobile application, and there are too many Mobile operating systems (or platforms) existing in the market. If you develop a mobile application to market it widely, you need to develop that in J2ME (for phones that support only Java with no loaded OS), Symbian, Mac iPhone, Android, RIM, WebOS( for Palm pre), LinMo and Windows mobile. Though J2ME (or Java ME) is widely used, it has  severe graphic limitations, and I am sure it won’t be pretty  in my Blackberry Bold! If a developer does not have expertise in more than one technology, then you need to use various mobile developers, and finding them all under one roof would be difficult.

So, in short: The advantage of native mobile applications is quick access and fewer data transaction, and the disadvantage is the cost of development.

Hybrid mobile applications?

No, “Hybrid” applications are not ways of  ‘going Green’ or developing applications to be ‘environment-friendly!’

They are Applications that use BOTH browser interfaces and native mobile components. With HTML5 and JavaScripts, now the browsers are becoming capable of accessing a phone’s built-in features like contacts, camera etc. We started developing applications using PhoneGap and I believe solutions like this should, hence the name, fill in this gap.  Platform free mobile solutions are what we need now and the gap between the browser based applications and native mobile applications is getting narrower.

Finally, what would be the disadvantages of  hybrid mobile applications? Two things come to my mind…(1) Application security, and (2) the learning curve for the developers. Mobile developers need to know HTML and Web developers need to know mobile phone APIs. Right? Let us see how these obstacles are overcome.

The post Mobile applications: Browser based or Native or Hybrid? first appeared on Macronimous Blog.

1. Test, Test and Test your applications before you send it to QA team

2. Fix all the bugs which you find

3. Remember this: If you forget to include QA in the project schedule and swallow QA time by extending your development time, you are doing injustice to the client, your employer and the worst is to yourself.

3. Fix all the bugs which QA team finds

4. Assure yourself that you leave no faults in your application before sending it to the client

5. Do NOT expect the customer to test your application for yourself. The customer need not be a Testing professional.

6. Make the list of changes and bugs reported by the customer.

7. Schedule them – and Let the customer know the turnaround time to fix them all.

8. Fix them and let the QA check them.

9. Make sure that you make the customer happy, and let him prefer you as their favorite developer.

10. Learn from the bugs; By not repeating them you can become a super developer.

11. If a project has strict deadlines, it needs strict QA.

12. Avoid reporting the known bugs to the client – instead, fix them!

As I said learning never ends, I welcome if your valuable rules or strategies or comments could extend this list. Shoot them as your comments.

The post Web application testing – 12 simple strategies for developers first appeared on Macronimous Blog.