News from Proteus Virtual Ltd. in Windsor, UK.

We’re looking for a designer/creative artworker with at least three years’ experience to join our expanding Windsor studio to work on all our print and digital projects.

If you’re a highly creative all rounder with top notch DTP skills (and a penchant for biscuits), this a great opportunity to join an established team and stamp your personality onto our brand.

Send your CV, examples of your work and salary expectations to design@proteusvirtual.com 

Strictly NO recruitment agency applications will be considered.

We know, we know... it's been a while!

We've been flat out all year with some big projects that we will be uploading to our website shortly but we had to find time to BIG UP the Charity Calendar that we are proud to be involved with. We helped produce The Merry Men Of Windor 2012 Calendar showing local businessmen of Windsor who have kindly put aside their pride for this worthy cause. 100% of the proceeds will go to two chosen charities, Thames Hospicare and The Parapet Breast Clinic.

THAMES HOSPICECARE is your local hospice providing specialist hospice care for families affected by cancer and other life limiting illnesses. Their aim is to help each person achieve the best possible quality of life for them, their family, friends and carers. THC offer a wide range of services to support the needs of each person, all provided without charge. They must raise 80p of every pound they spend caring for patients and local families. The year 2012 marks the charity’s 25th anniversary year serving the Windsor community.

THE PARAPET NHS BREAST UNIT is a dedicated diagnostic and outpatient facility based in the King Edward VII Hospital in Windsor that provides screening, diagnostic, treatment and follow-up care for the residents of East Berkshire. The Parapet also runs a charitable trust fund supported by kind donations and fundraising events which enables the unit to fund additional furnishings, equipment and services that enhance the quality of care for patients in a relaxed and comfortable environment. They also collaborate with clinicians in the purchase of equipment which enhances the quality of care for patients. Currently the trust fund is supporting a pilot project offering complimentary therapies to cancer patients.

The work and the services that these two charities provide in our community are invaluable and touch the lives of so many people in such a positive way. If you'd like to support these charities and buy a limited edition, genuine piece of Windsor memorabilia then visit the website at www.merrymenofwindsor.com

This is a great time to do a critique of your website to assess what you need to fix, improve, update or delete in 2011!

1. Take a look at last year's analytics month by month and assess what worked and what didn't.

2. Ask your users to feedback on how you could improve their experience on the website. 

3. Check that your site is easy to navigate and a user can find appropriate information easily. 

4. Are all your reciprocal links still live and relevant? If not delete or relink them.

5. Refresh the copy content which is good for improving search engine optimisation.

6. Revisit the sitemap to ensure it is relevant to the latest content.

7. Link in to social media application such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in order to attract a wider audience.

8. Add a Blog or News section to keep your audience informed.

9. Have a mobile optimised version of your website. Mobile internet usage more than doubled last year and with more smartphones this trend will continue.

10. Contact Proteus Virtual to help you with any or all of the above!  design@proteusvirtual.com

All the above will ensure that your website remains fresh, informative, user and search engine friendly.

We are currently seeking an experienced, freelance front end developer with the following skill sets....

- XHTML (handcoded)

- CSS (handcoded)

- Experience with HTML emails

- Javascript / Jquery(or other javascript library)

- Flash/Actionscript

It would be a bonus if the applicant had experience of the following:

- Source control (SVN)

- HTML 5

- CSS 3

- Umbraco

- ASP.net

- PHP

Send CV and example urls of your work to phil@proteusvirtual.com 

No recruitment agency applications will be considered.

We are delighted to announce that the winner of our recent Win A Website competition is Edd Dibb of Procintu Teamwear!

Edd said "I can’t believe we have actually won this competition, Proteus are offering us such a great opportunity. We have been trading for just over a year and as a relatively new business trying to organise all the things you need to make your business cutting edge is really tough. The prize from Proteus of a free website will really make a difference to our ability to gain new customers and really portray a slick professional image. Thank you."

We look forward to working closely with Edd and his team to deliver a dynamic, practical and professional looking website.

We'd like to thank everybody else who entered as we've had a fantastic response over the past month. We will be running this competition again at some point in the future so watch this space! http://www.procinctu.co.uk

I am sure that we have all completed an online form at some point in our lives?  I am also sure that some of these forms have been the cause of much frustration and confusion, both for users and developers.  It is easy to see why when you consider that the basic form elements found in the HTML 3.2 specification, which was finalized way back in 1997, are still used in much the same way today, with later specifications producing only minor changes.  More recently, developers have embraced the use of javascript to enhance their forms and keep up with the demands of an evolving online world.  Whilst there is nothing wrong with this approach, it can lead to usability and accessibility problems, and in my opinion, breeds too much inconsistency.

HTML5 is currently being developed as the next major revision of HTML, and it will bring with it over a dozen new input types that can be used in our forms, hopefully making my job easier, and improving the experience of the user.

I have picked out a few elements which I think will have the biggest impact:

Date and Time Picker

HTML5 finally defines a way to include a native date picker control without having to script it yourself. In fact, it defines six: date, month, week, time, date + time, and date + time - timezone.

Email and web address input

This new addition will mainly benefit users of touch-screen devices such as the iPhone.  By specifying that an input box is expecting an email address or web address, the virtual keyboard can be optimized by removing the space bar and replacing it with three more useful keys: a period, a forward slash, and a “.com” button.

Required

The ‘required’ attribute does not need much explanation.  It is simply used to indicate mandatory fields within a form. However, instead of using an entire javascript library to validate your fields, we will just need a single word in HTML 5.

Sliders

You may have seen examples of this already – when a webpage has a range of numbers to choose from, the user can drag a graphical ‘slider’ instead of entering a number in to a text box.  A very useful solution in some situations, but again, up until now, this is achieved via javascript libraries.  Not for much longer though.  HTML 5 has the answer!

So, when can we expect to see these changes?  Well, if you are a developer, you can use them in your code right now!  Unfortunately, you will not be able to see the results until browser support improves, but as all of these features degrade gracefully in every browser, your forms will still work…even in IE6!

Well, it's the start of the new financial year and we've kicked it off with a couple of great multimedia projects that we've been commissioned to design and build.

The first is an interactive flash presentation for the NHS in conjunction with BlackBerry and O2 promoting both the new facilities at Portsmouth Hospital and various other techy products such as the Digital Pen by Developer IQ. We're still in the early stages of development but we have used some really sexy code and we're very pleased with the results so far!

We're also building a interactive sales presentation for one of our long standing clients, UK Parking Control, to showcase all their services. This includes their new iWarden mobile application that we recently helped develop for them in conjunction with a crazy Kiwi and a very talented Canadian! If you're interested in seeing the finished product, get in touch at design@proteusvirtual.com.

Thats about it for now as I have loads to catch up on because Adam is sitting on some beach in Thailand right now!

Well....sort of!

We're all on a high here, not just because of the great start to the year that we have had but because the office smells of bubble gum!

We're chuffed with our new brochure, credentials, portfolio and bubble gum scented, matt laminated business cards that are all hot off the press. So we're now armed and ready for a new push for new business in 2010.

The idea behind the business card was to engage three senses using sight, smell and touch with the recipient being more inclined to keep the card, take it out for the odd sniff and show it to their friends and colleagues. Anyway, it's doing the trick so far, receiving a fantastic response and we're on our second print run already! If you want us to send you one, or any of our other collateral then just email design@proteusvirtual.com

We've also produced a cool set of posters for our new office walls and if you're interested to have a look, we'll be showing one a day on our FaceBook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/proteusvirtual 

More police on the streets equals less crime.... a no-brainer!

Delivering smartphone mobile technology to frontline police and staff is starting to revolutionise modern policing in the UK. Providing officers on patrol with improved access to critical information on the spot allows them to make informed operational decisions enabling them to react and respond more quickly and appropriately.

So when commisioned by Research In Motion® to design and develop a marketing campaign for the South Yorkshire Police to promote the benefits of the BlackBerry solution as part of the force's Mobile Information Programme we jumped at the chance. We designed a range of literature coupled with email marketing to create awareness both internally and externally of MIP with the aim of having a long term impact on public confidence.

Our successful campaign was recognised by the National Police Improvement Agency who in turn invited us to present to other forces at a number of national seminars. We demonstrated how we worked with the SYP and RIM to deliver the campaign and also advised in their workshops and through this we were asked to do the same for the Hampshire Police Constabulary!

So a great result and we're proud to be a part of this exciting new initiative.

A new decade, a new office, a new website and of course… a new blog!

Proteus is all about adapting to change and with a new year and a new start we wanted to dust off the cobwebs and re-invent ourselves. We’ve outgrown our current offices and we’re all really excited about our new premises in The Courtyard. Still in the heart of Windsor we’re not going far but we have more space and have also upgraded our infrastructure. As seamless as we want it to be, there’s always going to be a few glitches so please bear with us but it’s business as usual and we’ve already hit the ground running in 2010.

We hope you like our new website which we think more reflects our personality here at Proteus. The general consensus of our team was to come across as a more friendly, creatively edgy agency, remove the waffle and distance ourselves from the stuffy, corporate look and feel of the previous iteration. We received lots of feedback and comments from people who thought that we were just a web development agency but as you can see from our showcase, we’re much more than that!

So we thought that this would also be a good opportunity to say a massive thank-you to all our clients, suppliers, friends and families who have supported us over the past seven years to help us get us where we are today.

Happy New Year to you all!