Misc

We are pleased to announce that our high definition video tutorial sister site www.vercana.com is finally getting off the ground. We have added some great videos already, and have lots more planned for the near future.

The site specialises in HD 720P quality video tutorials, and topics that will be appearing on the site in the coming months will include:

1. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
2. C# and Visual Studio 2008
3. WordPress
4. JavaScript, PHP, CSS
5. Flash and ActionScript
6. 2D and 3D Graphics
7. XNA Development
8. MS Excel

At the moment the site is in beta mode and s has a reduced monthly subscription plan. For just £3.95 per month you have access to all of the current video tutorials, as well as new ones coming out! So, why not check us out at www.vercana.com, and let us know what you think!

Oh my goodness, has it been that long since our last blogs/site activity!? We have been working hard on other projects recently, but I am pleased to say that we are back now and working on new and exciting gwycon projects.

One thing in the pipeline in the near future is a test/labs area on gwycon where we will be creating and experimenting with new (and existing technologies) such as Flash, Silverlight, WPF, C#, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP 5. Most of this information will be freely accessible but we are considering making certain sections available to subscribers who can access premium content. Any content accessible by subscription only (such as source code, scripts, windows applications etc.) would of course be Ok for users to implement in their own projects royalty free! Let us know what you think.

David

You may have noticed that things have been a little quiet on the blog front lately, apart from a few updates on new WordPress Plugins we have been creating.

The reason is that this has been taking up most of our time. But it is time well spent, as we have managed to produce 4 quite useful (we think!) WordPress Plugins in a little over 6 weeks.

You can see the fruits of our labour, at our WordPress.org Plugin directory page.

We will probably not be producing any new Plugins for WordPress, at least not for a while. But, we will be adding some nice new features to our existing Plugins. Any suggestions by the way, be sure to let us know!

We do love WordPress though, it is a great environment for developers to get their teeth into, and features a rich API to enable programmers to create some really great additions to the core WordPress Blog.

We will be getting back to C# development over the next couple of months, and also concentrating on SEO/SEM. This field is moving along rapidly and a site can really benefit from a deep understanding of the current technologies. If you have any requirements in this field than we would be happy to discuss them with you.

We already have clients who need a dedicated SEO/SEM solution and are working with them to enhance their web presence. Our next client could be you, so please do get in touch if you have any ideas you need help with.

Watch out for further announcements soon!

As from today you can now contact us directly through Skype. You can add us to Skype and contact us when you are online. Try it out, click the button below to add us to Skype now! Or if you wish to add us another time you can always easily find the button on our contact page.

See you soon, on Skype!

Anyone who has been visiting our site recently will have noticed there are a lot of changes happening! This is a very busy time for us as the site undergoes some serious development. So we just wanted to say a big thank you for putting up with all the changes – not just with the site design, but also with the layout. We hope swapping things around hasn’t hindered your navigation around the site too much.

The good news is that most of the major changes have been made, and the tweaks that will be happening over the coming weeks and months will be much minor. You will still notice changes going on from time to time, but hopefully you will agree with us that these are for the better!

Enjoy the new site!

As always, please let us know your thoughts and comments. I can assure you that your messages WILL be listened to, and will help form future layout/content. If you wish to contact us, simply leave a comment or use our contact form.

Today we installed a new feature on our site for visitors – a multilingual content translator. Wow, that’s a mouthful! Basically it means there is now a very easy way to translate ALL the textual content on gwycon.com, from the default English language, to any other language of your choice (well, almost any). This can be simply done at a click of a button, so it is very quick to swap between languages.

Try it out right now, it can even be fun just to see what other languages look like; even some that you have never seen before.

If you hover over any text that has been translated you can see a pop up displaying the text in the default language (English in this case). Users can show the original English text again by clicking the ‘View original web page’ link at the very top of the page, or by clicking the ‘Original Page’ item from the drop down box. continue

There are lots of things to consider when setting up a new website. So we’ve outlined just a few that we think are key and which you really need to keep in mind when setting up a new site. So whether you’re setting the site up on your own, or using a web designer, just make sure you’ve got these covered!

Objectives and Target Audience

Your objectives and audience will dictate the look and feel of your website. So think carefully about what kind of web presence you want. Take into account all your current needs and requirements, and factor in any future expansion you’ve got planned. Give careful consideration to the purpose of your site. What are you trying to achieve, what are your main aims and objectives? Maybe you’re selling a product, or service, or using your site to market an off-line business. Your objectives and your target audience are going to drive the look and feel of your site, so make sure you know what they are before you start building your site. That way you can make sure your website achieves them all!

Website Design

Give careful thought to the design and structure of your website. Do you need a content management system (CMS)? Even a small website can benefit from a good CMS allowing you to easily develop and expand your website – it can be difficult to update static sites, and a good CMS can save you money in the long term. continue

Ok, so any self respecting site developing applications for the desktop and the web needs to be able to display code clearly. This means formatting it so it is laid out in a similar style to the code editor it was created in. So, mono-spaced font type and code highlighting is essential to making your code readable to others. Of course this doesn’t simply mean covering HTML and CSS languages to code highlight, and be assured that will be posting code snippets in a whole range of programming and scripting languages!

With this in mind we have implemented a system to highlight code written in many different programming languages. See below for a couple of quick examples:

Here is some formatted C# code:

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using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
 
namespace WindowsFormsApplication22
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }
 
        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Hello World!");
        }
    }
}

Below is some more formatted code. This time XAML (XAML, or Extensible Application Markup Language, is the new mark-up language used in Microsoft’s WPF language).

This time no line numbers this time, so this gives us flexible options for displaying formatted code:

<window x:Class="WpfApplication6.Window1"
  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
  Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
  <grid>
    <textblock Text="Hello" Height="21" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch"
     Margin="10,10,0,0" Name="textBlock1" VerticalAlignment="Stretch"
     Width="120" Background="Coral" TextAlignment="Center" />
  </grid>
</window>

continue

Welcome to the gwycon.com consultancy site and blog. We are currently undergoing an overhaul, so please bear with us whilst we get things up and running again! We will then be blogging away on all sorts of cool development stuff we happen to be working on! So don’t forget to check out our consultancy services, as we offer a broad range of bespoke services at very competitive prices! You can also find out more about these as our new blog evolves!

The site is taking off fast so make sure you bookmark us and keeping come back for new and updated gwycon blog posts!