Tim Santeford » Featured

Boulder Falls Inc Web Designed Project

Tim Santeford — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 05:23:51 +0000

For this project I completely redesigned Boulder Falls Inc’s website and used WordPress as the site framework. WordPress, functioning as a CMS, worked well for the customers needs. With WordPress’s built in xml-rpc interface the client is able to submit new content directly from Word 2007. As part of this project I created a custom photo gallery pages as well as a custom admin plug-in for monitoring SEO metrics. Visit the site and see the results: Boulder Falls Inc a Landscaper in Vancouver Wa.

Project Specs
Roles	Developer/Graphic Designer/Web Master
Platform	WordPress 2.8
Database	MySQL

Document Management System (Developer & Graphic Designer)

Tim Santeford — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:39:51 +0000

I’m currently co-developing a massive enterprise level web application used by fortune 500 companies and government contractors. The application includes user roles and permissions, advanced reporting using separate reporting servers, custom APIs for interfacing with client internal systems, custom workflow processing for internal approval processes, inventory tracking, and regulatory threshold monitoring. The application includes fully customizable data driven forms that allow application engineers tailor the application for specific customer needs. The application also supports translation into over 900 languages and even allows customers to override any text with their own jargon.

As part of a 6 person development team, my primary roles are co-architect of core features, progressive enhancement specialist, and primary graphic designer.

Project Specs
Role	Developer/Graphic Designer
Platform	.Net 2.0/3.0
Database	SQL Server 2000/2005

Ceasefire On Page SEO Enhancements

Tim Santeford — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:41:33 +0000

My goal with the Ceasefire website was to create a way for the site owners to set custom titles, meta keywords, and descriptions for each of the site’s static pages. To accomplish this I created a single XML file that contained all the meta data for each of the static pages. When a page was accessed, the page loader would reference this XML document and inject the appropriate information into the header.

This technique worked great considering the static nature of the existing site design. Future SEO title and description tweaks could now be found easily and modified without the need to open every page file. I would normally store this type of information in a database and create and administration for it but that was out of the scope of this project.

Touchscreen Kiosk (Developer & Graphic Designer)

Tim Santeford — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:39:02 +0000

This application is designed to allow employee access to emergency preparedness and response documentation. The app can be run directly from a standard desktop or from a standalone touchscreen unit located directly in hazardous work environments. The application uses a local Access database to store searchable document text and document attributes. The interface provides document search capabilities by allowing the user to use an optional onscreen keyboard. The kiosk has a theme engine that uses xml skin files to allow customer’s to easily re-theme and re-brand the interface. Control size and location can also be configured. I implemented custom GDI painting routines that allows the usage of transparent PNG images for a delicious alpha blended layering effect. In addition to the advanced GDI painting, I created skinable labels and buttons that are capable of auto scaling font sizes to fit oversize text strings. This was important due to the fact that there is no control over how long translated text will be in other languages. The controls will even wrap text in an attempt to prevent text from being clipped at the edge of the control.

Atalasoft PDF rasterizer was used in conjunction with custom page caching to load PDF pages with a background thread. This allows users to immediately view the first page of the document while the rest of the document was loaded. I also create an export routine that exported the kiosk documents from a document share and information from a SQL server database into a Access database. The finishing touch was to add a language menu start page that renders each available language in is actual language characters.

Project Specs
Role	Sole Developer/Sole Graphic Designer
Platform	.Net 2.0
Database	Access
Extra	GDI Painting, Font Scaling, PDF Rendering

Cabinets Northwest Printable Online Flyer

Tim Santeford — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 06:56:43 +0000

The client for this project wanted a printable flyer that allowed users to print out items in their shopping cart along with notes. The the flyer’s content is pulled from a MySQL database and the PHP script formats and generates a printer friendly HTML document. The HTML page produced automatically spills overflowing shopping cart items into consecutive pages. By using inch measurement in the CSS the document prints perfectly on 8.5″ x 11″ sheets without clipping anything.

UPC Inventory Tracking

Tim Santeford — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:48:33 +0000

This thick client / server project was developed as an inventory package to be used in a touch screen environment. The client application takes advantage of WPF animation effects to create a fluid and user friendly interface. The server side is a PC based web service connected to a SQL Server 2005 database. The system was designed to track location and inventory based on UPCs or custom barcodes that uniquely identify containers. The client application is capable of generating and printing labels to affix to containers found without barcodes. The client application synchronizes via wireless or cellular network when a connection becomes available.

SQL Server Express proved to be a good choice for the client side data storage and ran surprisingly fast with large data sets event on portable 1.3Ghz mobile device. I was able to achieve sub minute synchronization times by using a streamline serialization method developed in an earlier inventory project. I would highly recommend using the Toughbook U1 to anyone in need of a fast and rugged portable solution.

Hardware
Panasonic Toughbook U1

Project Specs
Role	Sole Developer
Platform	WPF
Database	Client: SQL Express/Server: SQL Server
Database Size	15 tables with record counts in the 50k-100k range

Innovation Asset Group

Tim Santeford — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:35:10 +0000

This brochureware website was written in classic asp. My involvement consisted of both creating pages from customer supplied word documents as well as adding the following core elements: the context sensitive tree menu, a lightbox viewer for screenshots, and widget manager for placing dynamic page specific widgets in the side bar. Additionally, I made improvements to the existing design, corrected existing browser incompatibilities, and I dramatically improved the site’s search engine optimization by correcting meta data issue, insuring good uses of header and link elements, and establishing best practices for future content authoring. This project was successful because of the great communication and feedback channel I established with the client.

Project Specs
Role	Subcontractor
Platform	ASP/IIS
Website Size	20-25 Pages

RFID Inventory Tracking

Tim Santeford — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:55:48 +0000

This project consists of two parts: a PPC client application and a PC base web service. The system was designed to track location and quantities of chemical inventory. The client application is capable of two way synchronization and is designed to be taken into the field where there will be no network connection. The application is capable of collecting and queuing up an enormous amount of container scan events. Once an entire room or location is scanned the interface allows the user to page through the details of each captured container. The detail screen allows the user to view associated data, set the fill level, and or and highlight the container for disposal. Written specifically to run on a Symbol MC9090-G handheld, the client application worked with linear and 2D barcodes as well as RFID Tags.

I overcame efficiency problems with Microsoft’s built in serialization mechanism by devising my own custom serialization/de-serialization methods. This enhancement cut web synchronization time by 10 ten times. By fully utilizing the relational database capabilities of SQLce, I was able to create a clean and highly productive interface that allows users full access to the company’s entire product and container catalog.

Hardware
Symbol MC9090-g RFID Scanner

Project Specs
Role	Sole Developer
Platform	Windows Mobile 6 .Net/Windows NT .Net
Database	SQLce/SQL Server
Database Size	15 tables with record counts in the 10k-100k range

Note to furture RFID developers: Gen 2 tags have a about a 80-85% read rate at about 5 feet in my real world tests with the 9090-G. Tags on metal containers like paint cans had about a 2 foot directional range. Of course tags inside metal cabinets are impossible to read.