Articles
News, reviews, insights, tips, tricks and more from Mat Tyler & contributors
Case Study: the new Bandwood website
Jan 31st
Web design and development: Sometimes it takes the opportunity to conquer a large, intimidating and extremely challenging project before you realise: it can be scary stuff.
I recently completed a new website for Bandwood Pty Ltd; an Australian software design, development and consultancy company. It is, to date, the most extensively structured and coded website I have ever had to construct. In this article I will detail the process, the tears and the triumphs that became the Bandwood website.
We begin with the original website (best viewed in Internet Explorer 5 or greater, by the way!):
Remember to view it in 800 x More >
Tex Murphy Trailers
Jul 12th
As part 2 of my resurrection of Tex Murphy goodies from the golden era of PC gaming (the 90s) I have another surprise. Since the Adventure Game Genre’s extinction, a lot of valuable and priceless “digital artefacts” began disappearing into the abyss. I’m talking about materials related to the games of yesterday, the gems of our childhood and the creators of many wonderful memories. Despite the world moving on, we see today how having the foresight (or the obsessive compulsiveness, you decide) to collect and preserve these digital artefacts has certainly paid off. No longer will a trip down memory More >
Tex Murphy Soundtracks
Jul 11th
It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of the Tex Murphy series of Interactive Movie Games released by Access Software in the mid to late 90s. In fact, I have been so actively involved in the Tex Murphy fan community that I have had the opportunity to speak directly with, and even work with some of the Games’ creators and crew (including Matt Heider, music composer for the series, who became the composer of the original musical score for my own short film ‘The Masque of the Red Death’).
A long time ago when I was becoming more actively More >
Industry standard, does it still exist?
Nov 16th
Can't you see the beauty?
I was inspired today to write an article about a phrase you often hear in creative circles: “industry Standard”. Now that open source alternatives have become a more prominent force in the creative arena, is there still a need for such a thing?
When my previous article on open source filmmaking (and the Blender Foundation) made the rounds, I noticed a particular comment posted by an obviously avid Blender user. They said; “Let’s keep the Blender ball rolling and get some market respect.” One phrase in that comment stood out at me: “market respect”.
The saddest part is, when people More >
Open Source Filmmaking – Will It Blend?
Nov 10th
Big Buck Bunny
Some of you may be unfamiliar with the concept of open filmmaking. Well rest assured I was until I discovered this amazing way of producing top-notch animated productions with the power of open-source filmmaking, and a little program called Blender.
Wikipedia defines open source films as the following:
“Open source films (also known as open content films and free content films) are films which are produced and distributed by using free and open source software methodologies. Their sources are freely available and the licenses used meet the demands of the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in terms of freedom “
So what More >
Tips, tricks and the rules of creating an efficient website, and the 8 second rule
Aug 24th
Something that is often overlooked when building a web-site is optimisation of content. It’s one thing to design a web site that looks great… and it’s another thing to have it function efficiently so that users are able to learn as much about you in as little time possible. This is where web optimisation comes into play.
Despite internet connections getting faster every day, the general public’s patience has decreased significantly in tandem to this development. More sites, and greater speed in which to access them means users are getting into the habit of searching through pages as a rate More >
