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HiDef Web Solutions has provided web solutions for great causes since 2003. Now, we are proud to announce new services offered and new growth in our team in both Albuquerque and Denver, Colorado.

Mobile Application Development

As part of our full suite of services, we have built a powerful mobile application development process for iPhone, iPad, and Android, with the ability to scale to other mobile operating systems as well. You'll be able to check out some of our work in June when a couple of the applications we've developed launch.

Our mobile application team specializes in creating applications for multiple platforms using fast, secure application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow designs to be tailored to each device's strength without having to recreate the wheel on the backend.

We've thought through our mobile application design process so that our clients can get applications on the platform or platforms that meet their needs best.

Following on the heels of T.J.'s post about Ned's experience using CiviContribute and CiviEvent, I accepted the challenge of putting together a mockup for a new default look for the first page of a CiviContribute contribution page. I had a lot of fun with this and think it'll be a great first step toward improving an already wonderful free and open source tool for nonprofits.

In this screencast I walk through specific usability changes and reasons why I'm proposing them. There are notes posted after the video as well (thanks for those, T.J.). Enjoy!

Facebook is famous for ruffling its users' feathers by springing design changes on them with little foreknowledge. Last week they started rolling out a new look featuring some subtle and--we think--not so subtle changes. Brian and I decided to offer our initial reactions to the latest iteration. Check out the two videos below and let us know what your reaction is.

Perhaps this story sounds familiar: Your organization began with a handful of people, and as you grew you recognized the need for a website to market your product or service. Because you didn’t have a lot of funding, you commissioned someone with a little tech know-how to create your site, using Dreamweaver. He or she did a decent job--not world-class design or anything--but decent. Great! You had a website and were getting visitors.

Icon design is a fascinating niche that requires its own bag of tricks and techniques. One popular technique I've been seeing around lately is a perforated metal texture. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch take a look at the Settings icon. If you look closely you will see a very subtle but wonderful perforated metal background. Textures such as this add a level of polish and detail that can set your icons apart and can help make you a leading icon designer. Today I'll walk you through how this texture is created using simple shapes, basic gradients and easy to master transformations.

Final Image Preview

This is final image that we will be creating. Download the final Illustrator file.

Over the past two years HiDef has grown in size, but most importantly, in vision and purpose as an organization. In the early years of the company we were happy to take on any project that kept power running to the team’s computers and covered a few coffees every once and a while. Because we've worked with some wonderful organizations and realized our passion for helping great causes reach their goals, the meaning of our name--and now our website--is freshly inspired.