In a previous post I wrote about the CSS3 we used in the new Pure Adapt site and now I want to post about new HTML5 elements we used.

The HTML5 elements that we used are relatively easy to understand since they were in a way already being used. For example instead of naming to containing div id=”footer” HTML5 now has a dedicated tag for the footer. Simple as that. Here are the new elements we used in the redesign.

<header> – For an introduction of a document or section, could include navigation

<nav> – For a section of navigation

<section> – For a section in a document. Such as chapters, headers, footers, or any other sections of the document

<footer> – For a footer of a document or section, could include the name of the author, the date of the document, contact information, or copyright information

Definitions via w3schools.com

The elements we used are pretty straight forward, but HTML5 has much more exciting new elements to offer like the <video> tag where a link to the source can add a video to your webpage without embedding video code. Now for more information on HTML5 please visit one of my go-to sites for development, w3schools.com.

I’ve talked about the CSS3 and HTML5 that we used in the redesign, but there’s one more post about the design of Pure Adapt site featuring responsive design techniques coming. New Pure Adapt Site Design – Responsive Design post is coming soon.

Now per the suggestion of a friend, the organization that I’ve selected is The Shade Tree. The Shade Tree is one of Nevada’s largest shelters offering free assistance to women, children, and elderly experiencing abuse, homelessness, female veterans, and those with physical disabilities.

The Shade Tree Mission – To provide safe shelter to homeless and abused women and children in crisis and to offer life-changing services promoting stability, dignity, and self-reliance.

At The Shade Tree, we believe…
That no one should ever have to endure a state of homelessness, existing in fear for personal safety and without the means to meet even the most basic of human needs – food and shelter.

That every human being, regardless of social status, has the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

That all homeless children are victims because they lack choice and mobility.

That homelessness is a community problem that impacts everyone. That everyone can be a part of the solution.

Established in 1990 The Shade Tree has grown to be one of the largest shelters in Nevada. With the aid of Donald W. Reynolds Foundation The Shade Tree has a facility that is that largest of it’s kind in Nevada with 364 permanent beds providing over 100,000 nights of shelter each year. A few programs that they offer include Day Shelter Program, Emergency Shelter Program, Life Skills, Children’s Activity Center (CAC) and many more.

They do great work to help those in need, so find out how you can help at http://www.theshadetree.org/ and $5.00 can go a long way.

Here’s how a $5 donation can help:
$5 buys a gallon of milk to help our children stay healthy
$5 buys two 24-hour bus passes to help our women seek employment
$5 buys 18 4oz. packages of applesauce; a nutritious snack
$5 buys a package of laundry detergent to keep our families’ clothes clean and fresh
$5 buys 6 boxes of Kleenex to stop the sniffles in the winter time

CSS3 Transitions are effects that allow you to change the style of an element gradually to another style. This is a great new property that adds animation without having to use Javascript or Flash. We used this in our top navigation so when you hover over one of the navigation icons it gradually drops the name of the link. see CSS3 transition property tutorial

CSS3 Border Radius property lets you create rounded corners without having to use photo editing software to create rounded corners and piecing it together in HTML. We used this property throughout the entire site. see CSS3 border-radius property

CSS3 Box Shadow property adds a shadow to elements like your div. We used this property right on homepage so when you hover over our featured sites there’s a light glow around the image. It’s not a shadow, but it’s done with the box-shadow property. see CSS3 box-shadow property

CSS3 Media Queries have been around, but with CSS3 you have much more control. Now you can assign different style sheets depending on the screen resolution, which is extremely helpful with the amount of devices that websites are viewed from. This feature was put into good use helping us create a responsive designed website, so as the resolution changes it’ll adjust to a better viewable layout. There’s more to responsive design than just media queries but that’s for another post. see CSS3 media queries tutorial

Those are examples on how we used CSS3 in the redesign of the Pure Adapt site and that’s only small sample of all the great stuff the CSS3 has to offer. Visit PureAdapt.com to see the complete redesign. Also note that CSS3 doesn’t work across all browsers. Working properties may vary across browsers, but most modern browsers have adopted CSS3. For more details on CSS3 visit w3schools.com for CSS3 tutorials and much more, it’s great web design resource.

Our Mission
The Michael J. Fox Foundation is dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease through an aggressively funded research agenda and to ensuring the development of improved therapies for those living with Parkinson’s today.

We believe without fail that our goal is within reach – but we can’t get there without your support. Please join the fight today. ~ About Us – Our Mission – Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research

Earlier this month Michael J Fox, The Michael J Fox Foundation, eBay and Nike teamed up for a unique fund-raising campaign where they put up 1500 of pairs of Marty McFly’s Nike MAGs for auction with proceeds going to the MJF Foundation. The shoes from the future have arrived, what an awesome fund-raising campaign.

Unfortunately this blog post is going up after the auctions have ended, but you can find out how you can help in the fight against Parkinson’s disease at MichaelJFox.org.

Redesign
The Pure Adapt website has never really come into play for our business, but with a new job offering our site needed a revamp to present to our potential candidates. With the recent release of HTML5 and CSS3 we had to push these new standards and features into our redesign.  Another thing that is relatively new that we incorporated into our design was a responsive design that adjusts accordingly to your screen size.  Try it out yourself, go to PureAdapt.com and resize your browser screen and watch how the site changes. Coming soon I will have more detailed posts about HTML5, CSS3, and responsive design techniques used in the website redesign. Overall everything came out fantastic as the sum of the parts from each one of the owners came together to build a better and complete Pure Adapt website.

Job Offering
Now to the job that we’re offering. This will be one of Pure Adapt’s most important hires. He or she will be number five and I’ve always said this is our most important hire. The position that we are offering is the Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support Specialist for DetailedImage.com. This hire is going to be vital to our company as Detailed Image is growing beyond what our current staff can handle. We offer a great opportunity to work with an up and coming company with benefits and flexibility. If you’re in the Upstate New York area and interested check out career page at PureAdapt.com/careers/ for more details.

Again these are exciting times as we grow and continue to hit new levels every day. Stay tuned for more about the redesign of PureAdapt.com.

I personally never heard of Missoni but the fact that the activity was even close to comparable to the biggest shopping day of the year is pretty amazing. To add to the impressiveness of this launch is that their website wasn’t prepared for it either. The numbers visiting Target.com during the launch must have been through the roof, I mean it’s Target.com.

This reminds me of one of our former records sales day we had a few years ago at DetailedImage.com that completely caught us off guard on how successful the sale we ran was as our site temporarily went in and out of commission. I can see how that happened us as a small growing company but Target crashing for one new popular product line is shocking to me since I assume they would already be prepared for a holiday rush so the demand for Missoni must have been truly unprecedented.  Nonetheless I think the Missoni at Target partnership had a successful launch since they almost cleared out inventory in one day for a planned one month limited-time exclusive on the line.

Hurricane Irene didn’t come through as violently as it could have but it rained on us for about 24 hours. Flooding became prevalent as rivers overflowed. The Hudson and Mohawk rivers hit record levels overflowing into towns and cities that I thought could never happen. Norman’s Kill near our warehouse was a spectacularly shocking site knowing what it’s like normally as I walked around Tawasentha Park as land became water and the river roared nearby.

Norman’s Kill

Mohawk River Lock 8*

Downtown Schenectady See more images at TimesUnion.com*

My business partner Adam was actually evacuated from his apartment for good reason as flood waters flowed in the complex displacing him for days now.

Damages in New York are suppose to top $1 billion dollars and NY Governor Andrew Cuomo says over 600 roads and 22 bridges have been affected.

Back to the heart of things, people have lost their homes or even love ones and they’re in need. The American Red Cross of Northeastern New York is out there helping those affected by the hurricane now like they have done for many, many years. Please visit http://www.redcrossneny.org/ to make a monetary donation or find out other ways you can help those in need.

*Credit images to TimesUnion.com

In Rachel’s words…

On June 12th 2011, I’m turning 9. I found out that millions of people don’t live to see their 5th birthday. And why? Because they didn’t have access to clean, safe water so I’m celebrating my birthday like never before. I’m asking from everyone I know to donate to my campaign instead of gifts for my birthday. Every penny of the money raised will go directly to fund freshwater projects in developing nations. Even better, every dollar is “proved” when the projects are complete, and photos and GPS coordinates are posted using Google Earth. My goal is to raise $300 by my birthday, June 12, 2011. Please consider helping me.

Thank you so much!!!

This is really a sad and amazing story at the same time. Rachel has truly done something amazing. You can read more about Rachel in a story from CBS here or visit Rachel’s campaign page to see how you can help.

One unselfish 9 year old girl made a big difference. She is an inspiration and in a way a hero to people that she has helped. Give to Rachel’s campaign before it ends. Take a step back and consider what you can spare to help those that are less fortunate.

The organization that I’ve selected this month is TOMS shoes. With every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS gives a pair of shoes to a child in need.

In 2006 entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie started TOMS after traveling to Argentina and finding out his new children friends didn’t have shoes to protect their feet. TOMS shoes comes into play by matching every pair of shoes bought with a new pair for a child in need, this was his way of helping.

Why Shoes?

Many children in developing countries grow up barefoot. Whether at play, doing chores or going to school, these children are at risk:

• A leading cause of disease in developing countries is soil-transmitted diseases, which can penetrate the skin through bare feet. Wearing shoes can help prevent these diseases, and the long-term physical and cognitive harm they cause.
• Wearing shoes also prevents feet from getting cuts and sores. Not only are these injuries painful, they also are dangerous when wounds become infected.
• Many times children can’t attend school barefoot because shoes are a required part of their uniform. If they don’t have shoes, they don’t go to school. If they don’t receive an education, they don’t have the opportunity to realize their potential.

This is a great example of social entrepreneurship where they are able to create a business that has a social or environmental goal in mind. Blake Mycoskie has started the “One for One” movement with TOMS shoes helping children in need.

The One for One movement is about people making everyday choices that improve the lives of children.

As of September 2010 TOMS has given 1,000,000 pairs of shoes to needy children around the world.

Buy some TOMS and help a child in need or visit http://www.toms.com/ to find out other ways you can help children in need.

After some brainstorming and working with old school design methods (see why in my Designing for Emails post) we were on our way to a redesigned newsletter.

New Detailed Image Daily Special Features

• Daily Special Product Reviews
• Current Weekly Special
• Recent Ask-a-Pro Blog Posts
• Detailing Guide Navigation
• Prominent Call to Action Buttons
• Optimized Viewing for Images Off
• New Twitter and Facebook Icons

Now this email not only features our Daily Special product, it now includes content and other current promotions. You can now get everything you know about what’s happening at Detailed Image in a daily dose with the new email design.

See images below of the new design compared to the old design.

The Old Email Design

The New Email Design