Review – Pad & Quill luxury iPhone 6 case

We don’t do a huge amount of product reviews on the kc web design kent website (but please do send us stuff if you’d like us to review it!  ;o)  but when we get a product as good as this its hard not to write about it.

I recently bought a new iPhone 6 which felt like a huge leap forward from my old iPhone 4s in all sorts of ways, most notably the size. The iPhone 6 is flippin’ huge compared to my old phone! I even have to make sure I choose trousers with big pockets so it will actually fit. I hope this trend for big phones slows down, they really don’t need to get any bigger and the iPhone 6 plus is just unnecessary in my opinion. But we’ll leave all that for another review post!

To protect my – very large – new iPhone 6 I wanted a new case that would offer security and space for other bits and bobs. I’ve always been a big fan of the BookBook cases as they offer space for money and cards and considering the size of the new iPhone it would be silly to have a case for that and a separate wallet, there just wouldn’t be enough room in my pockets! Sadly, BookBook cases we’re only available for the iPhone 5 at the time so I looked around for a similar style wallet case and eventually came across the Pad & Quill luxury iPhone 6 case.

I’ve a real soft spot for anything handmade. The work that goes into creating something of high quality by hand makes for something very special. These Pad & Quill cases are hand made in America from the finest leather and the actual phone cradle is carved from a block of Baltic Birch. It arrives in the most wonderful packaging – just a brown paper envelope fastened with a wax seal! When you first open the packaging the thing you notice is the smell of rich leather. The case feels very tactile to hold and I was very surprised at how perfectly the phone fits into the cradle. Small rubber pads hold it into the corners but the fit is still perfect and there’s no fear of the phone ever slipping out. The workmanship on the leather and wood is exquisite and it really does feel like its been specially made for you. You can even have you own words embossed in the leather if thats your thing.

I’ve been using it as a case everyday for a few months now and it has to be the best case I’ve ever had. Its also started to get a bit marked and scratched and a case like this is only going to look better as it ages. One thing to note is that the case does make the iPhone 6 feel even bigger, but its worth it for a case of this quality.

Cirrus one weather app launched

kc web design has launched Cirrus one – A new weather app for mobile devices with a unique feature…you can design your own icon layout!

A few years ago we had an idea for a weather app. We started to create an iOS only version but soon decided the dev costs would be too high for a side project at a small web design studio so we shelved what we had and left it for a while. About 9 months ago we decided to revisit the idea of a weather app because in the past few years we still hadn’t seen anything come on the market that had that one killer feature that we’d always wanted to add. We also decided that native apps wasn’t the way to go so we designed and built a web based app that would work on all mobile devices.

This week we are launching Cirrus One slowly out into the wilderness. We’ve already had a few great reviews and the new weather app is also now in the Google Chrome Web Store. We want it to build slowly so we can keep a eye on server performance and the API’s we’ve used and make sure the experience stays consistent for everybody. With any new release it’s important to take things slowly and make sure everything is working as it should before diving in to a huge launch with thousands of users.

Over the next 6 months we have a great list of features we’re going to add including a new desktop version that will work as a chrome app, weather alerts so you know if you sunny day out fishing is going to change to a rainy day out! There will also be additions for user uploaded background images, more weather icons such as moon phases and much more.

Panic release Coda 2.5 – the best web design tool gets better!

Panic has released the latest version of Coda – it’s web design and development app – and there’s a lot to like in this new version.

To be honest, this latest release of Panics Coda app doesn’t feel very new to me but that’s probably because I’ve been using it for over a year now while testing on the beta team. It started with just 30 of us and then grew to over 700 in the last few months. Some very cool new features were added that bring Coda up-to-date and keep it at the forefront of web design and development apps. After almost a year of beta testing and refining new features Panic made the decision to take Coda out of the Apple App Store. Why? Because Apple’s insistence on sandboxing anything to do with the file system meant that the app didn’t quite work as expected and added more steps into the users workflow to access local files. I’m glad they removed it, it’s a better and smoother app now.

New features for web designers and developers

So whats new in Coda 2.5? Well, quite a lot actually. Some big changes and new additions along with lots of small improvements.

Speed

One big issue with the old version of Coda was syntax highlighting speed on large files. When opening large files you had to wait while the syntax highlighting caught up and rendered the colours on the text. In the new version of Coda there is no more waiting and the speed is super fast!

Interface improvements

Along with the new slightly flatter Yosemite style look to the UI new colour coded tabs where added which makes it much easier to pick out specific types of docs in the tab bar, especially useful when you have a lot of files open. One of the nicest additions for me is the new indent guides which makes it incredibly easy to line up code. Lots of people don’t like indented code but as a web designer and not a true hard-core coder I find it much easier to scan and read indented code and it helps see the hierarchy of the code blocks as well.

Site-wide autocomplete

Now this one is very clever and very useful. The autocomplete now indexes everything within your site so while typing it will suggest all types of files, images, class names, etc. It will even pick up LESS variables which is incredibly useful and means you don’t have to keep a copy of the variables file open to check all the time. Coda also now deals with LESS very well with syntax highlighting and autocomplete. There’s even a new plugin to help with CodeKit integration.

CSS override

One of the new features in Coda 2 that I tried very hard to push for was the need for easily getting to CSS styles by clicking on the web page. Jump to styles was added to help with this and works quite well most of the time. Although still not perfect it does serve its per pose well. As an addition to this you can now open a website design in preview windows and extract and override the style sheets and then change them. This allows you to edit and make quick changes to CSS files without having to upload files or work directly on the server. Great for test out tweaks and changes. Although still not perfect its a great addition.

Plugins

Plugins now have there own manager in the pref panel which makes them much easier to install and remove. You can also search for new ones!

Panic sync

Panic sync now allows you to sync all your prefs and site settings across all the computers you use Coda on. It even works with Diet Coda on the iPad as well. I do tend to sit with the iPad sometimes and edit sites in Diet Coda and previously had to save all the site settings in Evernote so I could copy them over. No need for that now!

All in all this is a fantastic update to an already brilliant web design and development tool. The new features really do make a difference. Get it today!

Myers Lister Price Solicitors

A few years ago, kc web design Kent built a website for a tradition solicitors in Manchester. Myers Lister Price has recently gone through a branding redesign so kc web design Kent were commissioned to bring the website up-to-date with the new modern vision and direction of the company. kc web design kent worked closely with the PR company to make sure the new brand was reflected in the new website and that all parts of the brand were executed in accordance with the guidelines.

The new website is responsive – it works on all devices and adapts to screen size to show the perfect layout for each device – and is again built on WordPress.

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