SUGAR :: The Creative Studio :: Cardiff » 8. Fun Stuff

Merry Christmas from all at Sugar

Sugar — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:54:45 +0000

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas from all at Sugar Creative Studio.

The Sugar Creative Studio Refurbishment

Sugar — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:55:28 +0000

On the weekend of the 15th, 16th and 17th of April, we refurbished the Sugar Creative Studio office.

This is the resulting timelapse of the 2 and a half day project.

Equipment and Software:
Canon 60D DSLR
Gorillapod
Digital Timer Remote Control
Quicktime
FinalCut Pro

Music:
Penguin Cafe Orchestra : Signs of Life

The Sugar fridge magnet tech demo…

Jason — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:38:44 +0000

Here is a technical demo (dont expect it to look too good yet) of the top 300 pixels or so of the new Sugar website. You can rearrange the magnets in any way you want and, when you hit the save button, it will save it so the next person on the site will see how you left it. There are also a couple of presets in there if you get in muddle. Dont forget to type you name in too.

http://www.sugarcs.com/fridgemagnets4.html

You can throw them around to but dont be too fierce..they will fall off the fridge never to be seen again!(until you hit the refresh button). Its been built in Flash using PHP and MySQL to save and load the locations of the magnets and the TweenMax Actionscript framework for some of the subtle animations.

Let us know what you think and leave us a message…

Did you know…

Sugar — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:50:45 +0000

A great video presentation that includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist.

Well worth a gander.

Twitter and Augmented Reality become one…

Jason — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:58:50 +0000

This iPhone (3GS) application, called TwittARound has been described as an Augmented Reality Twitter viewer. It shows live tweets on the horizon through the phones camera in realtime allowing you to see where the tweet is coming from and the distance between you and the twitterer. For the geeks amongst us, the 3D scene is based on Safari Mobiles brilliant 3D CSS transforms. The Ajax part is done with jQuery.

Bizarre Microsoft IE8 Adverts

Jason — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:00:43 +0000

Microsoft have finally stopped trying to get one up on Apples’ “Im a Mac…” adverts and gone their own way with a new series of spine cringingly bizarre adverts for their new browser featuring ex-Superman Dean Cain…

I think i have F.O.M.S.
Theres more…

Lip readers beware…

What is a “Browser”?

Jason — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:17:56 +0000

What happens when you ask 50 (American) people, at random, the question “What is a browser?”

Scary isn’t it!

Can we leave IE6 behind now? Please!?

Jason — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:50:36 +0000

Sugar always try to support as many forms of browsing as possible when developing websites for our clients, testing them on mobile devices and game consoles together with the popular browsers.
But, is full support for IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) becoming one step to far?

Funnily enough, there are several campaigns out there to rid the world of IE6. StopIE.com, Bring Down IE6 (by .Net magazine)to name but two. There are also the pro IE6 campaigners at SaveIE6.com providing us with some (sometimes laughable) arguments to keep the browser alive.

But as firm followers of web standards, we put a great amount of weight in the opinions of standards gurus’ such as Jeff Zeldman who has recently been quoted:

“IE6 is the new Netscape 4. The hacks needed to support IE6 are increasingly viewed as excess freight. Like Netscape 4 in 2000, IE6 is perceived to be holding back the web.”

Clients sometimes pressure designers to ‘force’ sites to work in IE6, and designers, not wanting to lose business, comply, using hacks and workarounds. This wastes time and money. Microsoft needs to fix this, designers need to unite, and we all need to move on to bigger and better things.

This IE6 problem has become an issue in a current development at Sugar, where a once beautiful design and interactive experience is in danger of being diluted to fulfil its duties on the IE6 platform.
The question we are asking ourselves is ‘how far do we go?’. Do we say good bye to IE6 users with a detection script to warn them of their shortcomings or do we spend additional time and money on workarounds that have the potential to hold back the development and have a negative impact on the end result?

Additional reading at BringdownIE6, Wired.com and the Facebook campaign.

Quality illustration by robotjohnny