Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Harry Seidler & Associates website
It took a while – some 4 years of gestation :-o
Yesterday we launched Harry Seidler & Associates to coincide the launching of Harry’s Park in North Sydney.
For those who don’t know, Harry Seidler was arguably Australia’s best architect. I’ve been a major fan of his work since 1991…
The site features hundreds of high-res photos of Harry’s work, and the design adapts to your browser window size, resizing images to suit (using SLIR).
Mobile devices enjoy a separate, simpler layout.
Plugins used
Lifesavers:
- cnk_versioning – allows me to use my favorite authoring software (Coda) to directly manipulate TXP templates on the remote server. A massive time-saver.
- rvm_privileged – amongst other cool tricks, this allows me to work on the live website without my shenanigans appearing to the public
- smd_horizon – shaved hundreds of lines of code down to just a few lines, and made my day. Thanks, Stef. Your TXP toolkit is amazing…
- jcb_columnize – a gem.
Indispensable:
- adi_mobile
- bot_image_upload
- bot_write_tab_customize
- chh_related_articles
- jbx_multiple_image_upload
- rss_auto_excerpt
- rvm_maintenance
If you were logged-in to the site’s TXP installation (via the magic of rvm_privileged), you’d see the sister site seidler.com.au, which uses a white background, reorders content differently and includes audio and video – all off a single TXP installation located at seidler.net.au. Thanks Jeff Soo for the code to make it work.
Last edited by giz (2011-11-10 21:56:40)
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
Cool! That’s quite a big name on your side of the world! Looks like it was a mammoth project and the site really brings across the huge body of work from the office. I recognize a couple of the life-saving plugins and it looks like you had a need for images at various different sizes too. How did the client find txp for handling such large amounts of images? And did you do any tailoring of the back-end for a site like this? I’ve done a fair few architects’ sites myself but sometimes I wish txp’s image handling on the backend was a bit user-friendler to navigate.
BTW: I like that the simpler mobile layout (as far as i can tell by changing the user agent in safari) resembles the main site in its basic approach, which is good too. Any chance of a screenshot perhaps of the parallel site?
PS: I like your notes for architects and your pros/cons (well, mostly cons) discussion of flash – and I would agree with you too for the most part – but I couldn’t help noticing you have a flash swimming pool on your site… (although you do offer an alternative pathway to the same content). Finally, my oh my, you have done a lot of sites for architects!
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
Thanks, Jakob.
The client appears very happy with TXP – they uploaded all the hi-res masters themselves – a daunting task, even for a seasoned TXPr. He commented that dealing with TXP was the easiest part of the process!
@ How did the client find txp for handling such large amounts of images?
No customization of TXP – its running a vanilla 4.4.1. Copious use of txp:variables and tcp:yield ;-)
@ Any chance of a screenshot perhaps of the parallel site?
It largely looks the same – just inverted (black on white). The seidler.com.au site is nearly there – I’ll post an update to this post when it is live…
Yeah – I really must get around to removing the Flash ‘swimming pool’ on the site – but I’d need to come up with something else (dunno how I could develop that thing in jQuery).
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
@Gary,
As Adobe is putting Flash down, you could try to use their Flash to HTML5 converter. I haven’t tried it myself, but am sure it would be worth a try.
Greetz [Axel]
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
… but I’d need to come up with something else (dunno how I could develop that thing in jQuery dunno how I could develop that thing in jQuery).
As Adobe is putting Flash down, you could try to use their Flash to HTML5 converter.
No need for that in this case. Clever people have already done the hard work, but maybe ‘something else’ is more in line with the sound advice you give to architects elsewhere on your site…
TXP Builders – finely-crafted code, design and txp
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
I’m glad to see more serious clients using TXP. Very good!
One technical comment, if I may: besides looking unpretty, the text is badly readable on a Vista/XP/FF+Chrome
I suspect it is the HelveticaNeue which I have on my machine but does not render the way it does on a Mac that makes things ugly. People who don’t have it, will see well adjusted Arial. So, in such cases any user on a PC with the font installed will see worse quality than those who don#t have the font installed. But, ähm, that’s another subject.
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
Thanks for the catch Ralitza.
I thought we had fixed this particular problem – it was testing fine on on our XP / Windows2000/ Win7 boxes after I removed ‘Helvetica’ from the font stack. None of us have Vista…
So it needs to be Arial for all – how nice.
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
@jakob
Thanks for the water treatment links: I’ll check-em-out.
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
Looks really good, easy to use – nice one giz
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
I’m using TXPQ to show off Textpattern sites with great content, so I couldn’t let this one pass by, Gary! Harry Seidler & Associates
Using Opera 11.5 on Mac OSX, I found a problem when clicking on the home page navigation to houses, apartments & housing, office & public buildings. It seems to go into some kind of loop and keeps reloading the first screen of the section and am not able to navigate out of it. I have to close the browser window and start again. It may have something to do with the arrow on the right of those sections used to scroll right, that’s when I first noticed it when clicking that.
EDIT: Some of you may not know about a couple of great articles about Giz on TXPQ. They deserve a second read if you’ve already read them when they first appeared. Gary Venter
Last edited by zero (2011-11-14 23:36:02)
Offline
Re: Harry Seidler & Associates website
Hmm. Thanks for the catch. Something must have crept into my code since I last tested Opera…
Just had look – see what you mean. Sigh ;-)
Update: It appears Opera was choking on css3-mediaqueries.js
I took that out of the loop and Opera is behaving itself again…
Ta.
Last edited by giz (2011-11-15 00:31:11)
Offline
Offline