Ever needed a smooth solution for translating content to a different language? Like, say, being able to click on a text inside the page and translate it right there on the spot?

For an upcoming CreOFF project I needed to be able to translate site content to different languages smoothly and without resorting to implementing a full CMS like Drupal or Joomla.

How does it work?

Just browse the site in translation mode and any missing texts are clearly marked in red, like this:

Click on any of these blocks and you’ll get a popup where you can translate the text block (as shown at the top of this page).

It’s an easy system for webdesigners too: they can change texts themselves or keep changing the layout without interfering with the actual content.

The page above look like this in html:

For those sites with few content changes this is still a viable solution. It’s nowhere near a complete CMS solution, but it is a very visual way of translating your site’s content.

In fact, with some extra work something like this could be implemented on top of a CMS to give translators another option to get at the original texts with the added benefit of seeing more of the context in the page.

That’s why now there’s a special space dedicated to (some of) the ideas that might become true apps:  labs.creoff.com

From time to time  extra ideas will be added, so check out this blog and the labs pages !

ReviewR is a showcase of a possible solution for reviewing websites and designs. It also shows some collaboration features like inviting people to join your review and give comments.

The ReviewR proof of concept was created mostly with designers and agencies in mind, since they often have to get feedback from customers.

NOTE: at the moment ReviewR is NOT a complete application – it’s a “proof of concept” application only, so it’s strongly advised not to use it in real life situations. Also, only a limited set of features are included at this time.

These are some of the basic features:

• browse to any site via the application and just click “review this” button to start a review of a webpage
• click on an element on the page to comment on that element.
• capturing html as well as D-HTML or AJAX states
• view comment(s) of other participants
• invite other participants via e-mail to review the selected pages
• drag and drop review files (.rvw) onto the application for easy loading of reviews
• uses Secure AMF remoting
• registration, lost password handling, etc…

Possible features planned for future versions:

• more detailed overview: comments list, contacts list,…
• printing reports
• capturing Flash states (allowing detailed commenting on Flash sites)
• improved functional layout and design
• and more…

Some ideas which are integrated into the ReviewR showcase application might appear in a final ReviewR version or even other spinoffs.

Agencies, designers and other developers are invited to give feedback and are welcome to participate in the ReviewR project.

Visit the development site: beta.reviewrhq.com

“ReviewR” is the name of a new Adobe Flex based AIR application that showcases a simple solution for getting feedback on your website designs.

For now, the concept is still in it’s early stages, with a fully functional “proof of concept” version  available around January 2009 for people that are interested in the concept and/or like to contribute to the final feature set of future ReviewR versions.

Visit the (Beta) ReviewR HQ website

Some people were amazed when they saw the new version of the CreOFF site. And -embarrassing to admit- not all in a positive way. What happened to that nice old Flash site, original yet simple and to the point?

Yep, I admit it must come as a shock to some people that the newest version of the site doesn’t add more flashy stuff but actually seems to go back to basics: html, css and images…

The truth is that while it does seem to go back to basics frontend, behind the scenes the site has evolved and it’s ready to take on anything web 2.0 has to offer. And let’s face it: now the site is easier to maintain as well.

For those of you who never saw the old version (even though it has been gathering dust online largely unchanged over the past 3 years or so) I added a link so you can still visit it. Although this version has been stripped of most functionality since updating all the content to the current status would take too much time.

Visit a (minimalistic) version of the old CreOFF flashy site

This is an example of a New Year’s card application (some 2 years old) but still something I would like to include in my portfolio. Not just because it was a fun project (the message you can send to your friend is made by typing and shuffling letters on the fridge) but also because this is one of the few occassions I had the opportunity to work with Coldfusion.

All the backend handling, the sending of the mails, the connection to the database via CF DSN, etc… is done via Coldfusion 7. In fact the programming went amazingly smooth compared to my first encounters with other server technologies.

Coldfusion has always caught my interest, not in the least because of it’s close ties to other Adobe/Macromedia products like Flash and Dreamweaver (and now Flex and Air). Personally one of the features I particularly liked and didn’t find anywhere else is the support for Macromedia FlashPaper. Now Adobe is in control it seems this feature is being abandoned but maybe their extended support for PDF manipulation will make up for that.

I’ve already used some ColdFusion ideas in PHP as well: for the Dogs on the block website I used a PHP port of the popular ColdFusion Fusebox framework.

It seems like the Belgian (or even world) market for Coldfusion is still small – in fact this is noticeable in my own projects: almost all server programming I’m asked to do is PHP. According to the TIOBE programming language ranking list ColdFusion ranks 21 (at the time of writing) with Java, C, Visual Basic, PHP and C++ as top 5 programming languages.

Still, with Adobe launching ColdFusion 8 and expressing continued support for this technology there’s a good chance it will reach the top 20 soon…

In fact it’s a very small scale site that shows some building projects that have been funded by Dexia. The webdesign has been made by a colleague at Duval Guillaume. But on this site it’s the technical hidden stuff that’s most interesting: the more advanced use of the Googlemaps API behind the scenes, the possibility for registered people to submit their own suggestions and pictures for projects, etc… the backend administration integrates more smoothly into the site itself as well.

In fact the small experience with this site (and especially the backend part) have convinced me to use CodeIgniter in other projects where a framework would be useful. It will be no surprise to you then that the new CreOFF site (choose.creoff.net) is also created using that same PHP framework.

Have a look at the online version: www.dexiapublicfinance.be

For Happiness Brussels i helped with a dynamic mailing that required a personalised score to be shown in every mail.

Two graphs were included in the mail and actually it was *fun* to create the system that generated the personalised graphs for each mail. Oops… does that make me sound too much like a geek?

I ended up making separate classes for the LCD screen and the graph itself, so it was easy to change the graphs if necessary.

No, from now on graphs don’t scare me anymore

These are two examples of map applications in Flash I made for Duval Guillaume. What’s interesting about these is that both have a Flash to Javascript connection so the Flash movie could communicate with the html page it was in.

A simplified version of that map can still be found on the Vlaanderen vakantieland site.

The second example was made for the Weekendesk.be website. It’s part of a search engine where you can select several items on the page (including the country and place on the map) to select possible destinations:

update: alas, you can no longer try it online.

I helped with the shuffling game and some of the finishing touches (like the registration pages at the end)

The minisite is no longer online now (was part of a campaign)