Tips & Tricks: Creating better textures using CSS3 gradients

Jan 30 2013
Graphic Information is Everywhere

There are two fundamental elements that make up our world and how we understand the information in it: Texture and Color Gradients. These two elements play a vital role in telling us all sorts of information like whether an orange is ripe or whether a button on a website is clickable. In the world of the Web, texture is commonly known as “noise”. Despite it’s prevalent use around the Web, producing noise has always been cumbersome, clunky, graphic intensive.

Creating Noise

Noise is often used to help users distinguish important information from less important information. It is also used to give a website a unique feel or effect...

Responsive Website VS Mobile Application

Jan 22 2013

As more and more consumers make smartphone purchases, the arguments around the “New Web” escalate. The most heated being the debate about mobile apps VS responsive design. Which is best?

Native mobile app pundits all heard Mark Zuckerberg loud and clear when he made his famous statement about going to a native mobile app vs HTML5...

Nine Years. Where has all the time gone?

Dec 19 2012
Nine Years. Where has all the time gone?

Nine years ago on December 19, 2003, RD2 sprang to life within the confines of Chris Ronan’s own garage. You might say it was a humble beginning, but sometimes the best and most impactful results stem from something many may deem small. Plus, it had White Rock Lake as the backdrop so I mean, c’mon, it wasn’t that bad.

Our First Home

Our Current Home

Over the years, RD2 grew in client base and employees. There were growing pains, and lessons to be learned. Throughout all this, the singular vision of RD2 was never lost and remained steadfast. Simply Innovate Brands. An easy to remember and understand concept, yet so many other companies have tried the same and faltered...

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Traffic Metrics Require Context

Oct 2 2012

Last Friday, Chris posed a question to the team regarding the traffic numbers that various analytics tools provide: why do we trust the numbers so much, regardless of their source? This got me thinking… why do we put so much faith into the numbers we’re looking at? Are we applying the correct context to these metrics?

I did some further research into two different tools we leverage at RD2, Inc...

YouTube Browser-Based Uploader with PHP

Aug 21 2012

Download Example

RD2 wanted to add something special with our 3rd iteration of building the World Traveler Internship website. We created a very unique feature within the application process...

Responsive: Fluid Width YouTube Videos

Jun 28 2012

Building a responsive website requires many variables. You have to think about every element in the DOM and how it will react when the browser is resized. Here at RD2, we recently converted our site to be responsive. I have to say, it’s pretty awesome. But when I threw a YouTube video in one of our blog posts, it wasn’t responsive to the browser window or any smaller device.

Problem

Using WordPress’s auto embed feature, how can I modify the video’s width and height when I resize the browser using YouTube’s iframe code?

Answer

My original attempt at accomplishing this with CSS alone was not successful...

One Big Responsive Family

Jun 27 2012
One Big Responsive Family

It’s a sign. A signal that something special is happening at RD2. Today we’re rolling out something for ourselves and that is altogether different for us. Typically we’re the last to get the good stuff, but this time it’s different. We wanted to be the test subject. This version of our website offers a glimpse of our new framework that we’ve been building as a WordPress add-on. Known in our industry as “Responsive Design,” this version of our website takes on a new design approach.

No matter what your website is all about, chances are if you look at your google analytics over the past few years you will notice new device types (mobile devices) are requesting content from your website...

PHP Weather widget using Google’s weather API

May 17 2012
PHP Weather widget using Google’s weather API
UPDATE 08/28/2012

Google has abandoned their weather API and are now using wunderground.com Weather API. I will be creating a new tutorial showing the API in action very soon. Check back to the RD2 blog for updates. Please disregard the below code.

With the recent launch of the Elbowz Racing team website, we decided to add something a little bit fun, but still applicable, into the project: a self-maintaining weather widget using Google’s weather API and PHP...