HTMList.com, A Web Development Blog by Synapse Studios

Meet our new intern, Jeremy Lindblom:

Now, we always Facebook and MySpace (which I refuse to link to) search anyone we’re considering hiring. But for some reason, a proper Google search completely escaped my mind. Until now.

I’m just saying that we could’ve made his first day (nay, even just the *interview*) considerably more fun (for us) if we, say, dressed as Goombas or other Mario arch-nemeses.

It should be totally obvious by now that you need to be fully aware of your social networking identity, as your potential hires, clients, inamorata and life partners can, will and SHOULD do at the very least a cursory background check by making sure there’s nothing absolutely terrifying or bizarre about your personality before, well, getting into bed with you. Or, in this case, a useful source of mockery for the next three months.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: links, news

Posted in: People

Six Revisions has a great piece on 30 websites to follow if you’re into web development, complete with cute little screenshots that let you judge, near-fully, the quality of each site on the merits of its cover, instead of having to actually click through. (I kid.)

Among them are classics like Ajaxian, the O’Reilly Network and a bunch of others that you’ve probably not heard of but should definitely check out. (And a few we weren’t too familiar with, either.)

30 Websites to follow if you’re into Web Development | Six Revisions via Digg

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: Blogroll, feeds, links, resources, six revisions, web development

Posted in: Development

Synapse Studios is proud to announce that our proposal was selected for an enterprise accountability database project for Arizona State Board for Charter Schools. The project was awarded through Arizona’s SPIRIT e-Procurement system and Synapse Studios’ proposal was selected over six other web development companies who submitted proposals.

Our proposal received a 938 out of a possible 1000 points on their evaluation criteria, with the following comments for our Method of Approach:

Excellent five-phase method of approach; communication and progress reporting; timeline. Excellent case studies. Communication doesn’t appear to be a problem since it’s a local company and they are willing to communicate in person and by phone. Best Method of Approach proposed, meets and exceeds all Scope requirements.

The application will handle accountability and compliance tracking and management for the State Board. Synapse Studios is proud to add the State Board for Charter Schools to their roster of government clients. The project is slated to be completed by the end of 2008.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: arizona, awards, charter schools, projects, synapse studios, web development

Posted in: Announcements

Sometimes, people ask us about our decision to highlight our non-link text. You’ll notice that whenever there’s bold text on the site, it’s accompanied by a light green background. The reason for this is simple: People are exceptionally lazy.

The Problem: The eye is intimidated, to put it simply, by large, unwavering blocks of text. This can present a bit of a problem when you have a lot of information you want to convey to someone while trying to limit their tendency to skim.

Skimming is the enemy of basic reading comprehension. When a user is presented with a large block of text, it presents a few challenges: It’s incredibly difficult to keep your place once a block of text extends past, say, four lines of text. So people skim. They read the first sentence, they read the last sentence and they try to determine if the content within warrants a closer look.

Read More »

Popularity: 20% [?]

Tagged with: fonts, readability, sans serif, serifs, synapse studios, usability, web design, web development

Posted in: Design

We’ve brought on an intern for the summer and we’re excited by our pick: Jeremy Lindblom has been coding and working on the web for a few years and is looking to really dive in to high-end web application development and is ready to get his feet wet with some of the very advanced concepts we work with.

At Synapse Studios, we like to hire people who have existing side projects or personal web sites going. It represents a certain drive and passion for the technology and personifies the obsessive zeal we’re looking for in our team. Jeremy recently started Finding Restaurants, a kind of restaurant directory-directory. In talking yesterday, I suggested he consider making it a bit of a restaurant review site aggregator, ala MetaCritic. I’ll talk a bit more about our discussion that followed in another post. In the meantime, look for a proper introduction by Jeremy to come real soon.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged with: internship, introductions, metacritic, synapse studios, web development

Posted in: People

My name’s Chris Cardinal and I’ll be the primary editor of the Synapse Studios Blog, and likely its most active contributor.

We’re a web development company based in Mesa, Arizona. We’re all passionate lovers of technology and everything web and we’ll be using this space to talk about the coolest stuff we’ve found on Digg, the challenges we’ve had to overcome and some of the ridiculously technical things our programmers have accomplished.

We’re still finalizing our layout and formatting of the blog itself, so some things may change but take a second to add us to your feed reader. (If you don’t have one, consider checking out Feed Demon or Google Reader.)

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with: introductions

Posted in: People