Aside from my earlier babble, I have also been productive today: fixing Uncle Joe’s layout so that it works in IE 6.x in Windows; working on a page sidebar modification for Molly; and finishing up the Sessum’s Portal page.
The two images in the background for the portal page are Creative Commons licensed images at Flickr, hopefully reflecting all the interests of the Sessum clan–digital and creative. (And note, I am not a BuzzAgent to be talking about CC — this is a freebie.) It’s home will be gesproductions.com, when it’s in place.
One issue that came up when working on the Sessum page, as well as helping Joe, is being able to test the modifications with different operating systems and browsers. However, thanks to an accidental discovery in comments at another weblog, I found out about BrowserCam–a service that takes snapshots of a page based in a wide assortment of browsers, operating systems, and resolutions: for instance the portal page in IE6 on XP, Opera on Mac, and Konqueror on Linux.
Of course, there are other issues to how a page looks, such as installed fonts and user settings, but what the service provides is a way of seeing what a page would look like right out of the box. That’s usually good enough.
During peak times, screenshots can be slow, but you’ll primarily use the site to test efforts at specific stages, and the wait is worth it. I only have a trial account, but if I get more design jobs, I’ll most likely subscribe to the service–unless there are other services and/or software that are more economical.
Now, though, back to the server-side of things with my next task. I still have to get another release of Wordform out, but paying gigs take precedence.