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New Semiomantics XO Theme for WordPress

The above Screenshots represent just some of the pages, features and looks the 2012 Edition of the high performance XO Theme for WordPress has up its sleeves. The above site is the fruit of the 2 Days Ycademy Online Seminar for Semiomantics Developers and designers.

XO Theme Features

The 2012 Edition of XO is focused on even more flexibility in as much as editing, cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility are concerned.

The Site displays perfectly on Mobile devices, showing responsiveness also of the plugged in scripts chosen of which some have been adapted to satisfy the high standards of Semiomantics Publishing Scripts for Excellence.

The site elaborated at the Ycademy Online Seminar this past week-end features some smashing features, such as:

• Background Slideshow, customizable for each page, post or archive
• Built in Directory
• Media Library for YouTube and Vimeo
• Pro-sliders which can be deployed anywhere on the site
• In addition to the responsive design, a separate light Mobile Version is available
• Bold and Efficient Navigation
• Built in Custom Fonts
• Social Network connectivity and publishing
• and much more.

XO for Developers

The XO script is well commented and offers designers a clean and straight forward environment for custom developments. XO uses best practices for WordPress development and makes the best use of the possibilities offered by the WP back-bone, assuring smooth integration and optimized conflict handling.

XO for Designers

XO is a great playground for designers. The DIY version allows anyone to adapt layout and colors to taste right from the back-office; there is no need to have any knowledge about coding or designing. The theme behaves like a Chameleon and adapts to specific needs with just a few clicks of the mouse: pre-configured layout elements transform your XO quickly into a Magazine, Newspaper, personal Author Blog, a Media Hub, a Shop, a Marketing Machine, a Social Media Publisher, a Product Promoter or a Fan Site or most anything your imagination dictates.

For the professional designer, XO offers a well commented environment. Custom code can be added right from the dashboard or, as I prefer using a child theme. XO is tuned for HTML5 and CSS3 use, making it a modern and inspiring framework for exceptional design effects.

XO out of the Box

Out of the box, the XO Theme for WordPress provides a stable and reliable, robust and optimized solution for common use. It provides built in features such a slider with multiple transitions and a one click selector for easy use.

Layouts can be easily adapted to needs and purpose of the site. In fact, most custom designers rely on the theme engine to format efficiently layouts.

Custom XO

The site featured in the above gallery uses a few pro plug-ins to add functionality in function of customer requirements. The integration of such add on scripts is a relatively simple process for designers and developers.

Customization of the XO Theme

XO has been developed for high performance, productivity, excellence in publishing and flexibility. For the professional users, the XO Theme constitues a solid base with a huge potential for customization and creative artistic expression.

Semiomantics XO 2012 Release

The release of XO Version 3.3.x is planned for the first week of February. The present Release Candidate has been thoroughly tested. A few minor issues will be taken care off before XO will be available to the public.

Upgrading existing XO installations

If your site is running on Semiomantics XO suing basic customization, the theme can just be overwritten. (Save your custom CSS beforehand.)

If you are using a custom version with custom developments or a child theme, some of your customization will need to be adapted to the enhancements of XO 2012. This concerns namely custom headers and footers as well as custom functions.

Support for developers and designers is available as usual at our Ycademy Online Calls and Seminars or through Semiomantics Pro Support.

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Responsive Themes for WordPress

Responsive Websites become a must in 2012. This tutorial demonstrates how to make your WordPress Theme Responsive.

What is Responsive Web Design?

In very simple terms: Responsive Web Design aims to display content adapted to the visitors screen size. This means namely that the layout width must be fluid, i.e. expressed as a percentage of the width of the screen, typefaces expressed in em and images must be scalable.

Practically speaking: a responsive designs can be viewed on a smart-phone or on a large PC screen, the display will always be the same and adapted to the size of the screen or browser window. n stead of using multiple style-sheets for different screen sizes, designers use Media Queries which allow to create multiple layouts using the same content. To achieve scalability, CSS media queries, such as min-width or orientation are used.

Make your WordPress Theme responsive using a Child Theme

A quick and easy way consists in creating a child theme; this allows you to upgrade your theme as the case may be without altering your customizations.

How to create a responsive child theme?

1. Create a new folder in your wp-content/themes folder and name it anything you like; for the purpose of this exercise I call it “responsive”

2. Create a style sheet in your new Child Theme folder (call it styles.css).

3. Suppose your main theme is called “wptheme”; paste the following into style.css

 /*
 Theme Name: wptheme Child
 Theme URI: http://www.yourdomain.com/
 Description: Child theme for wptheme
 Author: Your Name
 Author URI: http://www.yourdomain.com
 Template: wptheme
 Version:1.0
 */

The only line you really need to respect is Template:wptheme; this line refers to the parent theme folder.

4. Import the parent themes style-sheet by adding now the following line to your new style.css:

@import url(“../wptheme/style.css”);

5. Define the screen sizes you design for. (Smart-phones, tablets, PC) To test the result we just create different h1 color values for the different screen sizes:

@media screen and (max-width:320px)
{
h1 {
color: #ff0000;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:321px) and (max-width:768px)
{
h1 {
color:#00FF00;
}
}
@media screen and (min-width:769px)
{
h1 {
color: #0000FF;
}
}

Having set these basic parameters, you can now apply styles and layout values to taste, such as vertical navigation display on small screens.

How to make Images responsive

To make images responsive we will need to take some WordPress specifics into account and there fore we will intervene with CSS3 and Media Queries and modify styles.css and functions.php of our theme.

Add the following to your style-sheet to make images scalable:

img{max-width: 100%;}
img{ -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; }

Now the images will be re-sized to fit horizontally, while the vertical scaling is still defined by WordPress. We need to remove WordPress image height and width values to scale our images proportionally.

In WP, image classes come with a with and height properties; we delete these properties like so:

change in your WP editor:

<img class=”imgclass” src=”../images/imagethumb.jpg” alt=”” width=”100″ height=”100″ />

to this:

< img class=”imgclass” src=”../images/imagethumb.jpg” alt=”” />

This will work for your post and page images, however not for the images created by WP dynamically, such as post thumbnails. We need to delete with and height properties dynamically with a function.

Add to functions.php:

function remove_wp_width_height($string){
return preg_replace(‘/\/i’, ”,$string);
}

Now you need to make a final modification in your template and replace:

the_post_thumbnail();

with the following:

echo remove_wp_width_height(get_the_post_thumbnail(get_the_ID(),’large’));

That’s all!

Hopefully the above will help you to do additional customization wok and as the case may be, to adapt your great themes to the requirements of 2012 Web Design.

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A clip with XO 2011 Sites

 

The clip presents some of the custom sites built on Semiomantics XO 2011.

Semiomantics XO 2012 will be released in January to catch up with the latest WordPress developments.

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Animation for Beginners with After Effects

Since Disney’s hand-drawn animation, nothing has changed when it comes to the basic principles of animation. The success of Disney was not just in the design of Mickey and friends but in the way the characters were put into motion.

At Saturday’s Ycademy Seminar we will explain the

12 Principles of Animation

and see, how to apply them with After Effects.

1. Slow in – slow out

Acceleration and deceleration is created with Easy Ease in and out functions is AE. The effect creates fluid motion.

2. Anticipation

Anticipation designs the action leading to the actual movement, like the backwards swing before hitting a ball with a golf club. Anticipation prepares the viewer for the action which will occur. Surprise actions can be more effective without anticipation.

3. Squash and Stretch

Squashing and stretching blows life into a volume. The rule is, not to change the volume while designing the effect: a vertical squash goes with a horizontal stretch.

4. Arc

Objects tend to move along an arc, rather than along straight lines. In After Effects we animate along a path.

5. Straight Ahead Action vs. Pose to Pose

Straight Ahead Action refers to drawing frame by frame, while Pose to Pose refers to designing first the key-poses and then filling in the frames in-between, hence the terms of “keyframe” and “tweening”.”

6. Staging

Staging refers to the act of drawing the audiences attention to important actions or events in the movie. It has to do with camera positioning and handling and composition.

7. Exaggeration

Well placed exaggeration can make movements more interesting.

8. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

Follow Through refers to the motion of objects after the action while Overlapping Action means that an action does not have to stop when or before another starts.

9. Secondary Action

Secondary action makes the principal action more interesting. While the principal action may be a man walking, secondary actions could be arm swinging, movements with the head and so on.

10. Timing

Speed of action impacts on perception and emotion created. One of the most difficult principles to master, often expressed with the distance between two keyframes in After Effects.

11. Solid Drawing

This does not really refer to After Effects but to other programs you may use to draw objects, such as Photoshop.

12. Appeal

Objects need to be appealing to draw in the audience. This is not only true for animated characters. The best animation is not eye-catching if what you show is not designed in an appealing or charismatic way.

After Effects is not just about motion, it’s about expression, design, appeal and emotion created. An animation designer is therefore a multi-tasker and the best are multi-talents!

 

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After Effects Openers for Global Sports

Two simple and bold openers for Global Sports US. The opener will be used on the Season 2 fashion presentation clip by Listen Up London.

Final Version

Draft Version

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After Effects Happy New Year

Tonight at YorgoLive we will focus on editing Inkman’s Christmas After Effect Template. This is a first simple adaptation; in fact the project can be further transformed namely by changing colors and backgrounds. The goal is to become familiar with simple changes of an existing After Effects project.Of course we will show participants how to embed the movie into a Facebook page for sharing with friends and fans.

Happy New Year by Semiomantics

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Christmas Media Design at Ycademy

The Ycademy Seminar in December will focus on Christmas Media, namely on working with Adobe After Effects.In stead of producing static Christmas cards participants will be able to add motion, sound and other effects to produce a stunning customized Christmas Clip.

The above draft for a UVUYO video is a typical example for what After Effects can do for you.

Schedule

The Christmas Media Design Seminar will take place on December 17, 201, starting at 1 pm London time and closing at 9 pm London time.

As we have only one day available for the December Seminar, we will use all Daily Call sessions for an introduction into the secrets of After Effects. All pre-seminar calls will be recorded as well and video tutorials will be made available to seminar participants.

Goals

Acquire enough After Effects related knowledge to be able to work with After Effects templates and to customize, adapt or modify them.

All participants will create a customized Christmas Clip.

Materials

Participants need Adobe’s After Effects, preferably CS 5.5 64 bit version, however CS4 running on 32 bit will do.

For Customization, you may want to use some of your family photos or, if you create a business clip, some business related pictures , screen-shots or graphics.

All other materials, namely professional templates, will be provided.

Tickets

Special Christmas price: $45

Discounts as usual for Ycademy Pros.

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Eugenides Foundation Technology Exhibition

Chemical clock Belousov-Zhabotinsky from Eugenides Foundation on Vimeo.

The experiment will show how a complex solution changes color in a circular manner, acting as a chemical clock.

“Chemical clock Belousov- Zhabotinsky” is a demonstration performed by staff of the Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition, Eugenides Foundation. The demonstration is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.sciencetweets.eu.

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Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition

Eugenides Foundation Physics Experiment Collections and Technical Exhibits

The Eugenides Foundation’s Physics Experiment Collections and the Technical Exhibit Halls were created in 1966 and operated at the Foundation facilities on Syngrou Avenue until the mid-1990s. Their goal was to fill the gaps in experimental equipment at the institutions of technical education in post-war Greece and to more adequately carry out the essential educational function in the technical and scientific fields.

Two new wings were added to the Foundation in September 2003; one of them houses the New Digital Planetarium and the other, in a section of the building symmetrical to the Planetarium, houses a unique exhibition hall, the “Marianthi Simou” Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition Hall.

The first periodic exhibition, titled Science of Sports, was held there in November 2003, staged by the General Secretariat for the Olympic Games in cooperation with the Eugenides Foundation in light of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games.

Permanent Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition

A permanent Interactive Science and Technology Exhibition has been on display in this new exhibition wing since December 2006.

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