We’ve just completed a new site for The Library, a collaborative of product and design specialists, based in Johannesburg. They produce public sculpture, design books and exhbitions. The site itself is really simple and clean – the design idea behind it is to create an online documentation of the projects, so the site design consists […]

I was reminded the other day of a programming technique I first encountered in the early nineties (yep – that’s twenty years ago. How scary is that?). The technique was used in programming animations with java applets, and it involved constructing each frame of the animation off-screen before drawing it on-screen. This simple technique eliminated […]

The Assemble-a-site system works by assembling all the required parts into a whole, like a jigsaw puzzle. Every project is different, being comprised of a different set of modules arranged in a different way. This creates challenges when it comes to CSS. Variables The most obvious issue with CSS is the requirement to make skins […]

The Black Square CMS allows the client to edit the content of individual pages, but the global areas of the site, and the design, are not editable. There is no need for them to be, because the site is custom designed by us for the client’s individual needs. Our design carefully defines exactly what colours, […]

One of the largest and most obvious challenges we’re facing while developing the Assemble-A-Site project is the extra level of abstraction. This article explains abstraction, and why it’s a challenge for this project.

We’ve discussed previous how much a website should cost, and we’ve explored ways the Black Square has tried to reduce these costs by creating industry-targeted packs. We have realised, however, that there is an enormous market out there for websites that are super-cheap, and we asked ourselves, “Is there any way, any way at all, […]

Managing News and Events in website content. A short article on how we use the Black Square CMS to let our clients manage their news and events feeds onsite.

When the World Wide Web first appeared, adding content to your site was a blissfully uncomplicated matter. You added a page, and wrote your bit. Done. Ah, the innocent simplicity of it all. But those days are past now. Today, we have content, news, blogs and tweets, decks and discussions. The wide range of content […]

Adding an article to your site will provide your visitors with useful information, but to provide the most value for your page, it is often helpful to provide supporting information to an article. We always provide a page layout template that includes a thin right column next to the wide main column specifically to allow […]

Image or photo galleries are extremely useful in many situations, and essential for some websites (photographers’ websites, for example). They come in many shapes and forms, each according to the purpose of the gallery, and how it is to interact with the rest of the content on the page. To cater to the various styles, […]