Recently I and my team have been looking at a design that we have been working on which of course included implementing the design into Wordpress. This was a special project only because no matter how many backup links, bookmarks you can create, manage and hold on to there is always something that you will work on where you just can’t seem to find it. We have a huge list of links and resources that are always available in case we need to go back and re-study them to complete something unique. This happen to us on this project when it came to creating a Wordpress website design and development in need to use the Accordion Vertical Sliding menu.

Having to look for a new source, using Google and MSN we noticed that we haven’t found many places that incorporate this effect well into Wordpress. Specially when your client wants quite a few custom features in it. On our search and find mission, we went through quite a bit of date, trials, tutorials and others. We’ve played around with few ideas in our heads, within the HTML and PHP coding but no matter how we tried to wrap out head around, nothing seems to work just the way our client and our team would of liked.

Finally we stumbled going through the large Wordpress Extend directory of plug-ins to find this fantastic Wordpress plug-in that simply works! That’s right you heard us correctly, a simple download, install and activate plug-in for Wordpress that will generate an “accordion sliding like” menu and use your pages. It is called the Collapsing Pages. We also wanted to get our sub-pages included in this, as a multiple drop down / accordion menu. Amazing, the plug-in just did that for us too. Styling it was a little bit of a pain, but you can select custom code within its setting/preferences and implement proper styling within your CSS file that is imported into your web page under Wordpress.

It also works great because not only can you implement this little thing into your page or blog but it also comes with its own little Widget, place it, configure it and bam! a working accordion sliding menu in Wordpress sidebar.

That said off we went, installed the plug-in, activated the plug-in, configured and bam! like a charm it worked! We placed it and used the widget style of this plug-in to incorporate it into the functioning website as the location was the sidebar.

Our client was very happy with the results and I must say that we were as well. So check it out, download it and share it. Very nice and tons of credit to the creator for this, too bad its not as popular as it should be. I must say, quite a few people around the forums, blogs and else where are searching just for such working plug-in. Hopefully this will change and boost a little bit of its popularity, so everyone can enjoy and use it within their own blogs, designs and inspirations.

Download: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/collapsing-pages

Have a blast with it, for us this one did the job and delivered the results we wanted for our client. It works better than anything else out there we could scoop up and get to work. Plus on top of its setup and functionality, 100% browser compatible folks! of course might need little extra attention when we get into Internet Explorer 6 and below.

Enjoy, share your thoughts with us on this one.

February is a great month and specially that Valentines day is almost here, just few days away. From our experience could weeks before Valentines day is usually the busy time for both designers and developers. Many companies do refreshments and updates to their sites for this great one day even to be able to fill in orders, send messages and give something back to their clients and/or customers.

We at XHTMLiT understand that in such busy times, designers a like sometimes get overloaded with work and need that extra hand to complete projects on time. We have a great and fantastic way to help you out, also to wish our valued clients a happy and loving Valentines day with a special promotion.

Starting today till Monday, February 15, 2010 we will be discounting all order by 15%. All you have to do is place “Happy Valentines” within your orders comments/instructions and sumbit to validate for this one time, special offer. We will do what we always do, that’s provide top notch service under 8 business hours for each of your pages, at 15% off your total price. So order today, tomorrow but hurry before Monday the 15th.

Happy Valentines everyone!

A large number of people visiting our website lately have been asking our team by email, chat and phone how they can receive the 10% discount. First of all, for those of you who are still wondering if this is a one-time discount or even a one-time promotion the answer would be, nope. We are offering this wonderful discount to all of our clients. Also, this is a never ending promotion, until we decide to bump it up in the near future. One more thing we should mention is that this discount is valid for not only one order total but all of your project orders. For example; having 10 orders with 1 or 4 pages, all 10 orders would get 10% discount each off their totals.

How to Apply / Receive?

To receive our 10% discount for any of your projects, please simply place your order on our website at http://www.xhtmlit.com, or by email. During ordering either in the extra comments/instructions mention the following line; “I here by, agree that XHTMLiT.com will display my project and their work on the examples page”. That’s it! We then will know that you are allowing us to display your project and our work on our website under the examples page. We do our best to still follow our privacy policy but now because of you receiving the 10% discount with limits.

What will be displayed?

Granting you the 10% discount from your entire order, after we are finished coding your website we will take a quick snap-shot of your design, then link the xhtml and css file we’ve created for you on our Examples page.

More Information

For more information, please visit our Examples page at the following address; http://www.xhtmlit.com/examples/

Happy New Year 2010!!!

As the new year, 2010 is quickly approaching, just around the corner now with very few days left. Our staff and development team is rapping things up here and I’m sure the rest of the designers around the world are too. We have many new ideas, new promotions and a new service planned for the new year of 2010 that we really believe everyone using our services will benefit from.

We will be announcing our new service and promotions very shortly in about 2 – 4 weeks or so as the development is still in progress. Everyone who is current or past client of InterDevil and XHTMLiT will have the ability to take advantage of a special promotion only to those who used our services in the past.  So stay tuned to our blog, sign-up and register for our Feed! This will be a great new year for everyone, developers, designers and firms.

From everyone at XHTMLiT.com;

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 !!!

We would like to thank from the bottom of our hearts to all of you, our clients who made 2009 such an amazing year. Without clients as you, our company wouldn’t have the reputation and surpass all of our goals, missions and expectations. Thank you once again for the great support and for using our company for your projects as your service provider.

Thank you!

We, everyone at XHTMLiT.com and InterDevil Company would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. We hope that everyone has wonderful time with your family, a big feast and tasteful turkey dinner.

Our office is closed but we are still processing and accepting orders today. All orders and coding will resume on Friday, for previous projects and new orders that we process today as we enjoy and give thanks on this special holiday.

Black Friday Huge Discount Special

Black Friday special will also begin, the whole day on Friday for new orders place during Friday 10 am and 5 pm. Our Black Friday discount for new orders is 15% discount. Order today and take advantage of the huge and great Black Friday special as thanks to our amazing clients through out the year. Get started by ordering!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! from everyone at XHTMLiT.com.

Recently we have been getting quite the number of questions from previous clients who are trying to get a fix of transparency on their projects (not developed by us), as well as other visitors to our company’s blog. Since the requests are flowing in more and more everyday, I’m personally guessing because we have demonstrated that such is possible with a tiny work around. We’ve came up with a small list and thought it would be a great idea to blast this off as our first Tutorial program. For those of you who are just starting off and unfamiliar with this and everything so far that has been written above became just jumbo mambo, let us explain a little in detail before we get down to the list.

Introduction and How Come?

As a designer you can design that perfect looking site but in some cases as we all know it simply is hard to achieve the perfect look without using a PNG file here or there. Sure, many of you might say “Why not use transparency with gif”. You can of course, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t but for those whom just seriously need to use PNG at some point in their design, in a background or other a fix will be needed.

Now having that great design, most updated and latest browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and 8, Opera, Safari and Chrome perfectly understand and render the PNG file. However, going a little bit back in time to the old and ugly Internet Explorer 6 and 5, PNG images are simply not rendered, showing up. In such that either your images or background will not show up or rather in some cases you will get a “white” image in that place. This is simply unacceptable by any designers and the last thing you want.

You don’t have to use the transparency fix for all PNG format images, only PNG format images that actually contain transparency within them. To fix such problem within your website development, you can visit the links below to fix this with a little bit of Javascript coding. These are provided as small JS files and little or not extra coding.

jQuery.ifixpng

Visit and Download: Right Here

Unit PNG Fix

Visit and Download: Right Here

IE7.js Fix

Visit and Download: Right Here

Twin Helix Fix

Visit and Download: Right Here

DD_BelatedPNG Fix

Visit and Download: Right Here

As a development team of some wacky websites for our clients and other firms and their clients, we have tried most of them. To be honest, right now even thought Internet Explorer is still used by 20% of the public and having two versions already ahead of version 6 (being 7 and 8), the above fixes have their own bugs. That said, whatever works for you as a designer to fix your problem and make your design compatible with Internet Explorer 6, is what you want.

I hope everyone enjoys our list of transparency work-around for Internet Explorer 6.

As mentioned in my previous post, there are many new changes and updates coming along very well I must say. As mentioned the InterDevil website is having a total re-done look and feel. As well many new marketing materials are being done as well. New information and projects regarding our great work and quality of work in design that we do here at InterDevil as well.

NEW/IMPROVED BILLING and CLIENT AREA

Important news first and one part that has been completed sooner then later is our NEW billing, support, and client area in general. Few screenshots in the below examples as well. We have listened to many of you, our clients from both companies, InterDevil and XHTMLiT regarding improvements, stability and simplicity of the entire progress of billing, support and profiles kept. I believe we have achieved that with this new software up and running. Stability and simplicity as been improved as well. Much quicker as well.

Before I head over to blabbing a little bit about the hockey post season which is completely outside the normal business blog, I’d like to state that there are many many new features and updates coming to both of our companies, XHTMLiT and InterDevil. Such features and updates, as the very new and fresh looking InterDevil website, we have also updated our billing and support system making it much more easier for clients from both services joined together, a new marketing service as well will be revealed in the upcoming month, and one but not least a new incentive much more like a giveaway to one special designer. The giveaway is actually going to be ran through few popular blogs. I will also get into that as soon as possible, spoil the giveaway on here a little bit for those whom are following my blog.

2009 Stanley Cup Champions

Now, its is time to take the hats off and congratulate from everyone at XHTMLiT and InterDevil to the newest and one team that did it all in 2009, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Most of us here at XHTMLiT and InterDevil are huge hockey fans and have been following every year the entire hockey season and post season. This year, we have been following closely once again, just like last year the fight for the Stanley Cup between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings. Pittsburgh Penguins are the 2009 Stanley Cup Champions as I write this. I must say, being at the game, the entire experience was amazing in Detroit. I’m sure that the Pittsburgh Penguins have not been the favorite team of winning the Stanley Cup, but as we all know at XHTMLiT and InterDevil, I’m sure many of you readers as well, being an amazing team, working together and bringing 200% to the game of business is going to soon follow by success. After all, at the end of the hard work, team work and pain, success and dreams come true like the Stanley Cup for Pittsburgh Penguins.

Personally, I’m very glad that the team has players from both countries and being able to work together, winning the best trophy in sports. I’m sure many of you know which players I’m specially outlining here, Sidney Crosby’s hunt for the cup is finally over, first but hopefully not last for the kid from Nova Scotia.

Once again congratulations to the Pittsburgh Penguins, the franchise, managers and coaches, players such as Sidney Crosby, Maxime Talbot, Marc-André Fleury, Evgeni Malkin (also for his MVP trophy), Jordan Staal, and Ryan Malone. Congratulations to them all for finally for some of them, catching their dream through hard work and pain.

Go Pittsburgh Penguins!!! 2009 Stanley Cup Champions

Stay informed and signup to my RSS feed as I will describe in more details the updates coming to XHTMLiT and InterDevil, as well the giveaway.

Since our new design and the new XHTMLiT blog about my little life around the office and any part of it that I decide to share with you kind readers and clients, I noticed how hard it is to manage a busy business and manage an actual blog. It is not just the matter of finding the time to write something up for you all to read but the fact to find a topic.

Let me state that since the new design, we have been quite the feedback and the amount of emails that we receive on everyday basis, quite surprising. Deep down I knew our design would come unique but not this much. Really great to see how much our clients appreciate the new look of XHTMLiT and how much easier the Ordering Process has helped to keep things simple, just click click and you’re done. I will however get into the Order Process a little bit in another blog here, to make things clear on how the entire order process is taken care off. Thank you to all of you whom submitted their responses regarding the new look and design, greatly appreciated.

On behalf of the entire team at XHTMLiT and InterDevil, we would like to kindly thank the sites whom have taken a step ahead and written a review not just about our creative design look but also related to writing a quite amazing review on the services we provide. We are honored to be given such compliments and as always, have the ability to provide our clients with the services and support they really deserve. That for sure will not change, with us.

Giving thanks to everyone out there, I personally and with the entire team would also like to send thank you, to the websites whom display insporations to other designers and their viewers. I’ve listed just a few below, yes I’m actually referring to the galleries that take interest in creative work as well as css and xhtml.

Thank you!

CSS Mania, CSSinCOLOR, Web Creme, DivineCSS, CSSClip, CSSLeak, CSSBased, CSSChick, DesignScraps, CSSTea, Inspiration 98, CSS 2.0, Best CSS Design plus many more!

Thank you for making us that much and more, popular.

Hello Everyone!

Seems few of you, our clients, have suggested that you would like to hear about new and upcoming features, options and changes at XHTMLiT that might be happening. I personally wasn’t expecting for it to be something as this blog but I can’t complain. It would be a pleasure to get to know some of you and hear your feedback as well as suggestions. I’ll be glad to keep you updated not only on what is going on around our XHTMLiT office but also the thoughts and ideas we come up with. As you can probably see, I’m not much on blog writing or writing in general but I will do my best.

New Look!

First is first. As the new year was approaching I believe it was time after a long and successful year to give our XHTMLiT department and website a new, more creative look. In early December I had the pleasure to select few creative folks out of our team of designers and developers to come up with a green, much greener type of look. We’ve always been about “green” and loved our flowers. I must say, I was surprised with the amount of suggestions, examples and other ideas I received from the team regarding the new XHTMLiT look I’ve asked for them to come up with. Selecting the proper theme, design and implement some ideas was quite crucial for the entire website to stand out. I’m sure you will agree that the new look of XHTMLiT is quite impressive, at least I was impressed with the new design and approved it. If you read this far, thank you and I would be happy to hear your thoughts on the newest theme and design of XHTMLiT. Post your comments. As you can see from the images I’ve posted here, it’s quite the change.

New Pricing Structure!

With the new design all ready and set, I have met with our team assigned to XHTMLiT to find out if the pricing and options from previous years offered, needed any changes to be made as well. It was simply time to find out what exactly you, the client needs were the most. I’m not going to go into the whole detail on what the discussion was about and who said what said, too boring for the both of us. The good news is, that with the new design we have decided to restructure the pricing as well, discontinue few options and add them as included options to our new packages, rather then extras. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, we have also been getting into Content Management Software (CMS) implementations on client basis and per requests. In 2009, we are going to offer four (4) available implementation that our design and development team is capable of handling and which are the most popular, such as; Wordpress, Drupal, Shopify and Joomla. We’ve kept the pricing structure for these at competitive level to keep everyone happy!

Now let’s get a little bit into the packages and what have we done. In the “older” version (if I may call that) of XHTMLiT, we offered Basic, Professional and Advanced leveled packages. In the “NEW” XHTMLiT, we are offering only two packages, Basic and Advanced. As you can see, the Advanced package is actually filled with extra options, such as browser compatibility going across the border, style of coding has changed from Basic package being Transitional to Strict 1.0 in the Advanced package, load speed optimization and complete presentation has also been included. The Advanced package has also been discounted from the previous package (old package) now offering it at $199 USD from $219 USD.

Options such as; Dynamic Menu, Rollovers, Javascript and SiFR implementations as well as Commented CSS and XHTML are also left and available to those that need it.

In conclusion, I believe we now offer a more competitive service, lowered pricing structure, more available options for your markup with same delivery times. If you do have any questions or suggestions, don’t hesitate to either post a comment or contact me directly, I’d be more then happy to hear all of them. Maybe you have a suggestion that we may want to look into and offer it as part of our service, please let me know if that is the case as well.

Hope you enjoy another satisfactory and productive year with our new design, new pricing and improved XHTMLiT.com.