Siu Lun

I’ve been looking for a good Java toolkit (a.k.a AJAX) for a while now, the first I saw was Backbase, it looks extremely good but it’s a commercial product. Next I saw was mochikit, it seems very good but funtionality wise it is behind some others I saw. Then I found prototype and OpenRico. This seems interesting as Prototype is the framework and OpenRico is a toolkit, not only that, recently I found something called Lightbox which is built on Prototype too and not to mention script.aculo.us

I thought that combination seems the best bet to go for, but then I found Dojo toolkit. Funtionality wise this seems the most impressive – at least judging from the demo.

Today is the first day I actually try and implement it and I was using Dojo as it had a tree view which I wanted to use for the ICMA Centre website, but it took me an entire day and I still haven’t been able to make it work.

Anyway, I’m going try and doing something with AJAX on Citisky v2 now. I’ll report back some more findings later

Just finished the mock up, it’s a bit different from my conception. I wanted to use bold colours but in the end I’m using a large range of neutral colours instead, despite the fact that they’re neutral, they’re still colourful though.
Here is a shot of it

The design idea is actually based on my first published website back in 1996, it was a colourful piece of work at that time and hell the menu style I used back then is now copied by pretty much everyone – I’m talking about the use of shadows and gradients, I didn’t use gradient background in this menu though as it’s supposed to be pure and white

Been experimenting with design and colour schemes lately for a new design for this site. I think I’ll probably be keeping wordpress as my backend – system wise. Design wise, I’m thinking of reverting back to my favourite combination of colours. White, Black and Orange. I’ve been noticing lately, a lot of those “high flyers” in web design and development, their site designs have all been focused on being minimalistic, while there is a growing trend in using Times New Roman as a font to give it a bit of a artistic feel, I also notice in their colours, that they tend to be very dull, because they’re suppose to be minimalistic. You hardly see websites with bold colours anymore, everything seems to have to blend into one mush. Hence why I’m thinking of using my favourite combination of colours . Bringing back the 90s to this day and age, obviously, I won’t be dashing out a 90s website, but I think definiately some brighter and bolder colours would do so fine.

I’ve also been messing with the symbolical identity of the site (i.e. header/logo etc..) I think I’ll be using a very personal design after all. I’m just kinda sick of trying to imitate who I’m not I suppose, I don’t want to be a high flyer with my name on the web. I’ll just stick to what make the web, the web – anonymity. The way I like it.

Also I’ll take on a “f**k the world” approach in my design, as this is, afterall, a personal site. Whether anyone makes comment at all or not, I really don’t give a damn, and I also don’t give a damn about people’s opinion, hence, I think it suits me just right.