David Behan's Web Design Ireland Blog

One of our own projects that we launched earlier this year, OurMemoryOf.com, is up for an Irish Web Award. In case you didn’t know, OurMemoryOf allows users to create a memorial website for their deceased loved ones with photos, stories and online book of condolence.

It’s the first year of the awards set up by Damien Mulley, following the success of the Irish Blog Awards. We’ve made the long list in the Best New Web Application / Service category and we’ve got some tough competition:

Irish Web Awards

• Pix.ie
• PutPlace
• Locle
• Mortgages and Loans
• Nooked
• BookMeetingRoom.com
• Next Action
• Url.ie
• LouderVoice
• Twitterfone
• Zignals
• eWrite
• Album Shopper
• Edenbee
• PropertySwap.ie
• Poll Daddy
• Decisions For Heroes

There really are some great web apps and services in that list. I think it will be difficult to make the short list with such a competitive category. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I felt a little cheated that I wouldn’t get a chance to judge any of the categories in this years awards as we had a nomination. However, I just read on the awards.ie blog that Damien is doing something quite unique with our category. He’s getting us to judge all the other nominees in our category, which will then be added to the other judges scores before the final short list is announced. A great idea Damien.

Well, I just want to wish everyone the best of luck and looking forward to meeting familiar faces and new ones on the night.

Penina Apartments

We’ve been working hard on a new site for an apartment complex in the Algarve, Portugal that has had a great appeal to me personally. As many of my friends, work colleagues and clients know – I’m a golf fanatic! I’ll play as often as I can, weather permitting and I’m constantly trying to get my handicap down.

What makes Penina Apartments different is that they have a special golfing offer available to anyone who stays with them. Up to 6 people can stay in each apartment and of those, up to 4 residents can enjoy a free daily round of golf at the Henry Cotton designed Penina Championship Golf Course. Prices vary between each apartment and the week you book but taking one of the weeks in November, a 3 bedroom apartment can work out at GBP 700 (approx. EUR 860). Dividing that in to 4 golfers, it works out at €215 per person for their accommodation and their golf for the week. As many golfers will recognise, that’s a great offer.

I welcome my readers to check out the website and see what you think. If any of you are interested in a round of golf sometime, do give me a shout or leave a comment – I’m always up for a game.

Google Chrome

Google have just launched a new browser called Google Chrome. It’s aim is to be a faster, simplier and safer browser than what is currently available. Reading about speed tests of the new browser, it seems to be very impressive. I’ve already downloaded it and given it a whirl and I’m quite impressed myself with it’s speed. Flicking through Gmail on FireFox can take a couple of seconds but it flies along in Chrome.

Address Bar

They’ve added some neat features too, like Incognito Mode, where everything you do in this mode is done privately and won’t appear in your web history. I also like the way they highlight the domain you are currently on in the address bar. I’m guessing this to help with phishing websites – a simple but nice feature. They’ve also included crash control so if a web page causes a crash, it will only crash the current tab as all tabs are kept independent of each other. I also like their new tab window that shows most visited sites with thumbnails and a history search box. A bit like the speed dial on Opera but nice all the same.

I quickly ran the Acid2 test to see how compliant it is with web standards and it passed with smiley faces (FF3 also passes but IE7 fails miserably). As long as this does not become a headache to test in, I’m all for it. I’ve tried a few sites I’ve designed and all looks ok and they load exceptionally fast. When I first saw the browser, I thought… oh great, another browser to test in. But so far, it’s been a good experience so maybe not too much to worry about after all.

Well, there’s a quick review and I suggest you give it a try. What do you think of it? Will you give up FireFox or run it parallel?