RussellStoll.net

Columbia University has proposed building a new campus over 17 acres of West Harlem in an area called Manhattanville.  The university had a pre-existing information website describing the project but it was sorely in need of an overhaul.

Russ built Columbia’s new site from scratch in XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a future-proof combination that works with all modern browsers and offers support for people with visual disability.

Visit the site at: http://neighbors.columbia.edu/pages/manplanning/

I’ve been a bit lax about posting recently.  The holidays came and went and that ate up a lot of my time.  But the real reason for my silence is a new part-time job at Columbia University’s Digital Knowledge Ventures.  At DKV I’ll be a site developer working primarily with Drupal and Joomla, two popular open source content management systems.  I’ll still be taking on new freelance work but at a more measured pace.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here.  Today, Russ launched a redesigned Malickcontractors.com.

Kudos to Erica Stoll for pushing pixels on this one.  Yes, she is Russ’ sister but there’s no nepotism in play here—she’s a pretty sharp designer.

The site features a Flash music player positioned in a frameset (so that the client-requested music doesn’t restart with every new page).  Instead of pop-up windows to handle the enlarged thumbnails, Russ used the Lightbox 2 javascript library for a neat image overlay effect.  Gotta love the elegant transition effects as you move from image to image. 

A fun project overall. 

I just finished two Flash animations and some general HTML edits on MedallionRetail.com.  Take a look.  The splash page intro is easy to find.  The second animation is in the Process section.