I discovered a very handy tool for creating WordPress themes recently which goes by the name of Artisteer. I’m always a bit pessimistic about using any kind of  WYSIWYG editing tool to create website code, experience has taught me that such programmes are not without their bugs or coding inaccuracies, and their lack of flexibility usually stifles creativity. For example, I had a total nightmare today with the movie maker at xtranormal.com – it kept crashing and I lost two hours of work. However, I can’t really say a bad word about Artisteer, having worked on a WordPress development project for more than five hours now (including first time user training) I am officially in love with it!

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With Christmas approaching the folks at RacingPost.com asked Firetop to design and build an interactive gift suggestion tool. The single page tool at http://gifts.racingpost.com lets people identify their preferred RacingPost.com product and compose a personalised HTML email message to a friend or relative highlighting their Christmas gift selection. The page contains a dynamic data capture form which populates an HTML email with a relevant image and text… and can also be previewed live as it is composed by the user! (more…)

With modern technology evolving as fast as it is, it’s always useful to get the opinion of the younger generation on what’s up and coming in the digital environment. Our young apprentice web designer (aged a little under two and a half) is getting to grips with web usability and layout, today she came to work (late grr!) for two minutes to lay out a basic website design – a 2 columned content area, left menu and horizontal banner… take a look at her handy work, we were fairly impressed: (more…)

This month the Firetop designers have been hard at work in creating a new optimised website design for William Reed Business Media and the Federation of Wholesale Distributors (FWD). Their rebranded magazine Wholesale News (formerly ProWholesaler) now has a shiny new website design at www.wholesalenews.co.uk (right) incorporating their content and news headlines from thegrocer.co.uk.

The site sits on a PHP/MYSQL based Content Management System (CMS) powered by Hungarian web development company Pressflex. The folks at Pressflex have been super efficient and managed to tweak our HTML to fit their needs for all browsers (including the dreaded IE6). We like their CMS, it works very nicely indeed for publishers and enables traditional print-based publishers to upload XML files for each printed issue whilst also editing and tagging the content themselves.

At Firetop we’re really very disappointed  by the lead story on the BBC Technology website ‘Microsoft backs long life for IE6’; Microsoft have announced five more years support for their ancient and flawed Internet Explorer 6 browser… taking it to 2014! Website developers hate IE6 because it doesn’t display website code in the same way as IE7 or IE8, Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome (more…)