GreenOrlando Launches
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005
Recently, I have had the honor be a part of and help develop a couple of great, local, grassroots projects, GreenOrlando.com and GreenBrevard.com. GreenOrlando is more than a website, an eMagazine or a blog. So many people work for the benefit of the community, more than most people are aware of. Our goal is to tell your story, to pull together all the amazing things that goes on and thereby reveal how unique Florida really is. Imagined and built by Giant3, The GreenOrlando site gathers relevant stories, interviews and spotlights sorted by categories, each addressing a particular community. By doing so, we paint a big picture of the diverse landscape that is Central Florida.
GreenOrlando is published online and updated frequently. We exist to provide a forum for the community as it grapples with its present and future. We have no political affiliations or motivations, and see the need for dialogue, awareness and consensus-building on local issues. We live here and love Central Florida, and want future generations to love our community as well. As you feel led, write to us, contribute your opinions and get involved. Send us your historic photos, write an article or share your frustrations, so that together we can keep our communities healthy, vital and growing without sacrificing the quality of life that brought (or kept) us here.
GreenOrlando is committed to helping preserve and improve the quality of life available to all residents of Central Florida. Its mission is to help individuals, families, businesses and organizations reach their fullest potential and accomplish their evolving goals. This mission is expressed through eight quality of life aspects that are held in dynamic tension: Art, Balance, Ethics, Faith, Fitness, Nature, Teamwork and Sustainability.
Recently, I have had the honor be a part of and help develop a couple of great, local, grassroots projects, GreenOrlando.com and GreenBrevard.com. GreenOrlando is more than a website, an eMagazine or a blog. So many people work for the benefit of the community, more than most people are aware of. Our goal is to tell your story, to pull together all the amazing things that goes on and thereby reveal how unique Florida really is. Imagined and built by Giant3, The GreenOrlando site gathers relevant stories, interviews and spotlights sorted by categories, each addressing a particular community. By doing so, we paint a big picture of the diverse landscape that is Central Florida.
GreenOrlando is published online and updated frequently. We exist to provide a forum for the community as it grapples with its present and future. We have no political affiliations or motivations, and see the need for dialogue, awareness and consensus-building on local issues. We live here and love Central Florida, and want future generations to love our community as well. As you feel led, write to us, contribute your opinions and get involved. Send us your historic photos, write an article or share your frustrations, so that together we can keep our communities healthy, vital and growing without sacrificing the quality of life that brought (or kept) us here.
GreenOrlando is committed to helping preserve and improve the quality of life available to all residents of Central Florida. Its mission is to help individuals, families, businesses and organizations reach their fullest potential and accomplish their evolving goals. This mission is expressed through eight quality of life aspects that are held in dynamic tension: Art, Balance, Ethics, Faith, Fitness, Nature, Teamwork and Sustainability.
Magazines are a continual source of inspiration for website design, yet many of the techniques used in magazine layouts are nary to be found on the web.
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Another installment of CSS in 60. Where you can see a website based on xhtml and css being built from scratch in about 60 seconds or less. A screenshot was taken anytime css changes were made that significantly alters the layout. A days worth of work compressed for your viewing pleasure. This is just another example of how CSS can be used to achieve a pixel-perfect rendition of what was mocked up in a graphics program. Click read more to view the animated GIF (412Kb).
What is PNG? What browsers support the format? I thought IE didn’t have PNG support? Is it transparent or not? How can I make IE display PNG’s full transparency capabilities? These are all valid questions that arise when using the PNG format. For those that aren’t familiar with PNG (portable network graphics) it is a lossless compression that offers far greater quality and smaller filesize than the ever-so-common and proprietary GIF format. “Better quality and a smaller file! What more could I ask for?” you’re asking yourself. Well, PNG’s also allow designers real transparency. How well does your browser render them? Take a look at these images and compare the last 2 with the first, which is a GIF.

Besides nifty transparency, PNG’s are far smaller than the average GIF. The compression is lossless, which means there is no artifacting like that found in JPG’s.
Yesterday’s WordPress IRC meetup covered many topics. One of particular note, is the progress of their 

Mike Krahulik is the illustrator that brings Gabe and Tyco to life. Just about every day for the last 5 years, he has churned out strip after strip. This is the type of determination required to really make it. Regardless of finances, or circumstances – they put out strips on a regular basis. It is this repetition and high level of production that leads to true character development. Each day Mike drew Gabe and Tyco, he refined the characters.
Jerry Holkins is Tycho Brahe. Jerry maintains the news on the website and helps write the strips that Gabe draws. He can’t paint, draw or carve little wooden chess pieces. However, he shows his dominion over the English language and mastery over expletives to deliver blows of crushing humor. This is definitely not your Sunday paper comic strip. The language is course, common curse words are used – but delivered in uncommon ways. His writing keeps the strip fresh and current. Often targeting the video game industry they draw upon current events to keep their readership interested. Mike’s artistry is great – but without the content to drive each strip, it would soon grow stale.





Apparently this site’s flash banner consumes alot of cpu cycles and might turn some people off. I work hard on my Flash and do all I can to ensure viewers have a positive experience on this site. I cannot overcome bias against Flash, I can only present and package it in a way that will hopefully reach the most people. To this end I have added a control set to the header to control the animation. The icons in the top-right of the banner will now let you can stop play, skip and return to other animations. This both serves as a platform to display animations and allows users to stop the animation, should it become annoying. To free up more cpu I have set the wmode properties of the flash from Transparent to Opaque, as research shows transparency also increases the cpu usage. Other optimizations include trimming file sizes down another 12kb. All things considered I have managed to bring the cpu consumption down from ~24-28% to ~13-22% when a user stops the animation.
Fonts have always been a major concern in webdesign, or rather, the lack of fonts. To remedy this, I have recently installed