Nick Mealy Consulting

The Katoomba Group, an environmental organization from Australia, hooked up with Active Ingredients to develop the website and web applications around their ecosystem-credit trading ideas. I was in turn brought in to provide templates for both the main site and the content administration site.

Despite what was probably the most ridiculous schedule of any project, an utterly immovable deadline created by a presentation to the Australian parliament and a number of catastrophes beyond my control, somehow everything ended up all right.

Depending on when you check it out there may be browser bugs remaining; I'm still fixing a couple things that were broken in integration.

Live Site (launches a new window)

I worked with longtime partner Active Ingredients to implement the design they had chosen for their new website.

It goes without saying that with such a savvy client, there were a lot of cool pieces to this project, and it was pretty fun to build.

One little thing that I started doing on this project is writing a little leftnav script that traverses directories and builds all the rollovers, highlight states and links just by looking at the actual files.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Worked with the now-defunct Scenic Inc who had been contracted to build xsnsports.com , an XBox Live community site . I created all the core dHTML templates for this site, including implementations of tabbable and minimizable panels.

Additional challenges were that the project had a very wide set of target platforms, and that simultaneous with front-end development, a complex asp.net backend was being architected and built by some amazing folks in texas.

Note: Flash work as well as phase 2 of the template production was handled by Dave Richards, and the asp.net implementation was pulled off by Handwire.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Frog Design had been contracted by Sun Microsystems to develop a large design system to unify all of their myriad developer sites. I was hired on by Frog to take on the task of creating the HTML for the final design. The approach was very much based on components (as our sun.com redesign project had been the year before). Challenges included using as few tables as possible, adhering to very strict filesize requirements, staying within the section 508 guidelines and coding to an extremely wide browser spec that included Netscape 4 on Solaris.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This was a very fun project to work on, largely because of the beauty and simplicity of the design. I delivered templates for the homepage, gateway page and subpage, including dHTML for dropdowns and also for alpha-filter transition effects on some pages (Note though that the alpha transitions are not supported by macintosh IE5).

Live Site (launches a new window)

Delivered a homepage template along with several distinct subpage templates. Created a tabbed panel implementation for homepage as well as a dropdown menu implementation for use across the site. Also setup some simple includes using PHP to streamline updates and maintenance.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Another incredibly tiny project. Worked with Olivier Portet to provide huge value for just a handful of hours. Very simple design and template work, followed by a brief crash course in how to update and extend the site.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Worked with Frog Design on this massive project to consolidate all of sun.com under a unified information archicture and design. Provided all HTML for the component units of Frog's component-based redesign.

This project also included an enormous design center to be used as a single-destination reference for any and all things sun.com

Live Site (launches a new window)

Worked with Frog Design to develop the HTML templates for their redesign of i2.com. Homepage and 2 subpage templates. Overall this was a fast and simple project. However it was an interesting challenge to implement the liquid masthead design with on Netscape 4. Unfortunately the homepage has since been redesigned.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Worked with the team at Frog Design to implement the key templates for the front-end of a large web-based application of their client Nonstop Solutions. Many different overlapping dHTML interactions were called for including but not limited to: keyboard shortcut integration, dropdown menus, self-resizing iframes, scrolling divs, tabbable panel sets. Scrolling divs within tabbable panel sets, as well as a minimizable panel implementation .

This project was built as a "demo" site for guided presentation. The presentation was to be focused on the idea of there being a non-profit focused on environmentally sound architecture and buildings.

Worked with Scenic Inc on this project to consolidate all of Knight Ridder city-site properties and newspaper properties under a single architecture. Provided all component HTML of Scenic's component-based approach. Of the many components we delivered, two included very complex dHTML with extremely wide cross browser support. Sadly the more complicated of the two components never saw the light of day, although you can see two of its states in these images.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This was my first project where I had to actually build something in Flash, rather than just debug someone else's Actionscript. My role was to create the outer framework of chapter buttons, previous-next buttons, and the loadMovies to load the inner movies, each of which had it's own play, pause, fast forward and rewind controls.

Hardly rocket science, but not bad for my first real crash course in Flash development. Jacqueline Davey designed the whole thing and also all the tweening production and main timeline stuff.

The NOW Tour is still up, but they simplified the IA and rebuilt it. looks all icky now so I'll spare you the link.

This tiny project was just a newsletter for our office at Rare Medium. However it contained some whimsical dHTML where little rare employees would come out of our office on Townsend street and have to dodge fast moving trucks.

This project was done while at Rare Medium. The delivery called for a large number of templates, and challenges were implementing the intricate design while fully supporting Netscape 4, and keeping the use of tables to a reasonable level.

Vinfolio, an online wine-management and procurement startup, had been working with the impressive San Francisco development shop Carbon Five. The two companies brought me in to implement some sophisticated dhtml interfaces they wanted to add to Vinfolio's customer-facing web application.

The approved visual design was very complex and involved a great number of unique components and subtle variations. The interaction design then upped the ante even further. With moving-target specifications for dropdown menus, graphical dhtml-driven checkboxes, scrolling areas, complex layouts within datatables, complex hierarchically bordered layouts and dozens of elements that had to appear and dissappear when form elements were in various states, it was as ambitious as they come.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Worked with Active Ingredients on this cool little project for National Public Lands Day, to implement their midsize site for managers and interested volunteers. The usual system of light includes and high tech css, and as is getting to be increasingly common in our projects, certain pages were passed off to a coldfusion developer for integration into a database they had developed in parallel.

Live Site (launches a new window)

LCAV is a San Francisco-based legal organization that contracted with Active Ingredients to partially redesign and modernize their website. Although the scope was quite small and large sections of html stayed almost unchanged, we were able to achieve nice results and the site does feel new.

My work as usual consisted of taking the final design and building out the actual site, taking all the usual approaches that help small organizations keep their website maintenance costs down.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Margot Merrill brought me in to implement her portfolio site when she left Frog and officially became a badass project-management contractor. The budget was tiny and so my hours were few and far between. Nevertheless I think it's worth a spot here, since i managed to do some wacky little dHTML bubbles on her testimonial page.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This project was with Active Ingredients, for their client, Dan McCall Catering, a prestigious Bay Area caterer. The site has a flipside dedicated to their wedding catering business, with a slightly different design.

The site was fairly straightforward, although there are two small highlights. First, some simple php controls all the second-level navigation, as well as the photos which are associated with each section. And secondly, I implemented a simple but cool little javascript slideshow system for their venues, and all the client has to do is upload the photos and change one attribute in the html that says how many there are. Okay, it's not like i wrote a webservice or anything, but you have to admit it's cost-effective considering it was only a couple hours of tinkering.. =)

Live Site (launches a new window)

the 404minefield was a personal project that I had built back in 2002, and at that time it was the first relatively complex web application I had ever designed and built myself.

So much for the good news. 2 years later, that php was looking pretty creaky, and the nicest thing I could say about it, having learned so much since, was that it worked.

So in a lull created by a large cancelled project, I threw it all away and rewrote it. Better, faster, stronger, but most of all, VASTLY more flexible. Not only did i rebuild it, but managed to add some tactical bits of dHTML here and there to make it prettier and a bit more powerful.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Rosa and Liza wanted to build a site of some kind around reviews of 'chick-lit' books, since they were tired of scouring the web for reviews.

I agreed to do some web development to a) get it integrated with the Amazon Web Service, b) cache the aws information in Mysql and c) build a little CMS so they can enter reviews, publishers and book genres into the system.

The site is still learning to walk, but we have over 3000 reviews and 600 books entered, and it was recently featured in 7x7 magazine as one of 7 "things not to miss"

Live Site (launches a new window)

This full production project was to create a direct-marketing site for the SwingHat. This project included some Flash integration and the usual code to automate navigation and simplify maintenance, written in php.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This was a straightforward Full Production project for a nonprofit organization. Some coldfusion was used to automate a lot of the navigation maintenance and eliminate a great deal of repeated code across the site.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This full production project involved a lot of integration of embedded Flash alongside HTML and graphics, and required development of a simple system of communication between php and flash and javascript. Note: the visual flash work itself was by another developer

Live Site (launches a new window)

This project was a full production project for a development company. Coldfusion was used to automate a lot of the navigation, thus simplifying the process of creating new pages, and reducing repeated code across the site.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This site included global dropdown navigation using dHTML, a javascript 'value calculator', and some seamless flash integration. . Although the site has a very professional design, note that we kept the actual content layout quite simple and straightforward. This is an excellent example of how high-end design can be done on a low- to middle-end budget. Keeping everything elegant but simple results in a site that can be built with far less hours, and even better, that's easier for you to extend and maintain down the road.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This site was built for the gallery and performance-art non-profit New Langton Arts. Included in the project was a MySQL database to hold nearly all the content, as well as an off-the-shelf web-based tool called PhpMyAdmin to add and update that content.

Of all the designs I have implemented, this is one of my favorites. it managed to keep a very clean modern "designed" look although notice that it was one of the smaller full-production projects in my portfolio.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This is one of many real-estate-developer websites I have built freelancing with ActiveIngredients and Clickimpact. It is a great example of a standard full-production project. Starting from the final design as reflected in the psd files, I implemented the initial HTML templates as flat files. Once these were tested and approved, I used them to build out the site with the final content as received from the client.

Note: Flash work for community floorplans and the community map was done by another developer

Live Site (launches a new window)

This was an unusual project. Although I think of it as a Full Production project, the site was only a 25-30 page demo, designed to be shown during a guided presentation as an example of a non-profit focusing on pesticide issues in healthcare.

This personal site was built from scratch more or less for fun. Contains a complex backend with a 7 table MySQL database and many custom-written PHP objects in a modular architecture. Users can edit their content and colors, create new pages and do pretty much everything they might want to do, all without opening an HTML file.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Built this website for the now-defunct Scenic Inc. I should note at this point that I was the actual design technologist at Scenic at this point, not working as a freelancer yet. Anyway, we designed and built this site to showcase our originality and creativity in interactive work, and this site was the end result of a long and fruitful charette process.

With a completely custom coded dHTML interface on the front end, the scenic site also has a robust database and CMS solution powering nearly all of its content.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Bryan Medway and I both share this site as a personal blog and experiment platform. I'm sorry to say though that we dont post or work on it nearly enough anymore, unfortunately.

As for the technical aspects, I wrote the php archiving system, all the experiments save the 'light never forgets', and the dhtml 'smoosher' navigation.

Live Site (launches a new window)

Factor Design needed to fix a number of bugs for this project, needed to do it quickly and brought me in essentially as an offsite repairman. In just a few days of part time work I rebuilt some sections entirely and tweaked everything else to get the browser support they needed

Live Site (launches a new window)

This project comprised many repairs to both html and css of this live site. Some portions of the templates were rebuilt entirely, to allow greater flexibility. Also since filenaming had become a bit inconsistent in the time since the site's creation, I took the opportunity to renormalize the naming scheme.

Live Site (launches a new window)

The main task of this quick project was to rewrite the site's navbar using a more solid CSS-based approach.

Also some additions and repairs were made to the site's masthead, and some tactical quick fixes were applied to other problem areas in the leftnav.

Live Site (launches a new window)

worked with Scenic Inc very briefly to help integrate and extend the functionality of youngpup.net's slideoutmenus script.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This project entailed significant rebuilding and repair to both the HTML and also a lot of the CSS that had been originally built. This project was also broken down into several subprojects, one of which was the complete replacement of the dHTML dropdown system with a more stable and flexible implementation.

Live Site (launches a new window)

This was hardly a project at all. I spent some hours adding some whimsical interactivity to my friend Brian Kralyevich's website. However it is quite cute, and I consider it worthy of a spot in this portfolio. Check out the site if you have time.

Live Site (launches a new window)