Skip to main content Screen Reader Website Version

New Web Program: Brain Development Maps

Creating braindevelopmentmaps.org was a great opportunity to work on a very interesting site; Shirley came to Livewire with very specific needs. There is nothing ‘typical’ or ‘standard’ about this website, it is in a word, unique.

Braindevelopmentmaps.org allows users to view highly detailed brain mapped images online. These images, when standing alone are several hundred megabytes each. They have extremely high resolutions to enable and support high magnification levels. This is not something that is very web conducive. Large images take a long time to download. Fortunately, Shirley had this part figured out and was using a nifty program called Zoomify to provide a web interface for viewing these high resolution images. This program essentially cuts the large image up into small pieces and displays them in such a way that you only need a few ’tiles’ at any given time, so the entire image doesn’t need to be rendered by your browser. Embedded zoom capabilities make this program perfect for what the website is trying to accomplish.

In order to upload (since files groups are still large in size) a regular custom file upload program would not work. But a simple FTP solution was all that was needed.

The best, and most highly customized, feature of this program is our page building system. Using wordpress as a content management backend, we added a new program that connects the pages built in wordpress to specific file locations within the server.  So when users view brain map sets, the pages are built dynamically preventing the owner of the website from having to deal with the cumbersome task of having to code the pages by hand. The automated system provides Shirley an easy and straightforward way to create complicated pages that have dozens of individual parts and files.

More Web Design Blog Content

WP: Adding a HTML5 Search Form

A simple script from your local Gainesville Web Designer. [code scroll=”false” language=”htmml”] <form role=”search” method=”get” class=”search-form” action=”<?php echo home_url( ‘/’ ); ?>”> <label> <span class=”screen-reader-text”><?php echo _x( ‘Search for:’, ‘label’ ) ?></span> <input type=”search” class=”search-field” placeholder=”<?php echo esc_attr_x( ‘Search …’, ‘placeholder’ ) ?>” value=”<?php echo get_search_query() ?>” name=”s” title=”<?php echo esc_attr_x( ‘Search

Gatorland Kubota Has A New Website

A great new site for a great company with new ownership. Gatorland Kubota sells and services all kinds of farm and lawn equipment. A family owned and operated business there is no doubt that they want the best for their customers. After all, they chose livewire didn’t they?

Jquery XML Shopping Cart

We’ve built all kinds of shopping carts – many from the ground up. Experienced with all the third party vendors – zencart, opencart, xcart, etc… we know that clients need something completely customized sometimes. Many shopping carts are simply to complicated for some clients to use – also

Is PPC Advertising Worth It?

The answer is: it depends. In our experience it really comes down to your industry, your ad’s effectiveness and … dum de dum dum … money. First, your industry should be visible online in the first place. Holly’s Bakery is probably going to do fine on Google ads

CSS Animation, The New Flash?

I’ve used it, so I am not immune to the pull of CSS animation, but what are we doing here folks? Used sparingly, CSS animation is at best a small way to augment conversions (button wiggle), but at worst it is a resource hog that destroys readability and

Linking Your G+ Page To Your Website

We always get asked: Does anyone use G+? Yes. Is it worth it? Again, Yes. Using Google’s products would obviously help your standing with their search algorithm. We don’t know this to be technically true but it certainly seems so in our experience. The more you use and