Tony Linnabery – Front End Web Developer

In this day and age of smartphones and tablets it is becoming a chore in itself to keep up with the different renderings across all of these devices. Something that looks one way on the iPhone/iPad may look completely different on a Android based device, which in no way resembles the same page’s rendering on a Blackberry or Windows phone. As designers, we mustn’t let our guard down for a moment when dealing with these devices, because the moment you do… BAM! You get caught in the cross fire. This was recently the case with an email project I was working on at my job. The design had been proofed and proofed, critiqued, cut down and built back up; Everything seemed to be just perfect with it when I received an email from the President of the company which read:

The blue links for the phone number are hard to read on a black background.

Sent from my iPad

Of course! Behold the majestic iPad(which I had forgotten about)! This extraordinary device is “smart” enough to detect phone, address, and date patterns and turn them in to hyperlinks that will trigger an appropriate event for the type of link… continue reading

As you may have noticed, I haven’t really been posting all too frequently. But trust, there is good reason. I have recently taken the next step in my life… buying a home (which has taken up a great deal of my free time). It’s a nice little 840 sq. ft. house that sits on a 50×140 lot (lot’s of space for my labs to run amok). Seeing as the house was a rental property prior to me purchasing it, there are a few minor projects I’ve taken on to fix it up a bit and turn it into my home. I will add pictures as soon as I get enough free time to take some.

Now that I have started to settle in a bit, expect to see more content being submitted as I have a running list of topics I would like to write about. For now, I am going to sign off… but stay tuned for some exciting new articles and watch my website for an upcoming re-design.

A few months ago, at work, I was given the task of taking over our email campaign and improving the methods in which we created emails to drive open rates and click-thru rates which would in turn drive revenue. Since being assigned this project I have learned a few tips and tricks to aid in the design process as well as some best practices to help increase subscriber interaction.

Bringing Texty Back

In this day and age we are so used to “In Your Face” marketing that sometimes we mistakenly assume that marketing media must be really image rich and extremely bold in order to trigger a response. However, as a designer, you can not let yourself get carried away with too many images. Most major email clients will block images, causing a major problem if your email’s “meat and potatoes” content is contained within an image or multitude of images. In order to avoid this issue and possibly increase click activity for email campaigns, images should be used sparingly and as an accessory to the text of the email. Take a look at the following examples (good and bad) of emails using images as the main content and as… continue reading


<B>This text is bold</B>
<I>This is italicized text</I>
<CENTER>This text is centered</CENTER>
<B><I><CENTER>This text is bold, centered and italicized</B></I></CENTER>

If you made it through two lines of that code, you are far more tolerant than I and for that I applaud you. This is a little snippet of code that was demonstrated for my first lesson in Internet Programming class. Needless to say I was immediately turned away from the class and ultimately was driven away from attending regularly. For those who may not have picked up on it yet, this markup is horrendous and should, in my opinion, never have been taught to any class no matter the level. While some may argue that the code does in fact process in all browsers, it doesn’t change the fact that the markup is not deemed valid by the W3C.

The first question I had for my instructor was, “Isn’t that code non-compliant with the W3C?”, to which he replied, “Well yes, but this is just to demonstrate the basic concepts of HTML.” For the rest of the class period, I was lost in thought, thinking about what it means to be compliant. Dictionary.com documents the word… continue reading

Welcome, to my personal blog! Let me begin my first blog post by introducing myself. My name is Tony Linnabery and I am currently working on obtaining my AAS Degree in Web Design from Kirkwood Community College. I also work at J&P Cycles as a web design intern when I’m not at class. Although I am tagged with the term “designer” I also enjoy developing even tho I’m really just getting my feet wet in the field. As of this point I can confidently say that I am comfortable developing in PHP (beginning to intermediate level) and I am also currently entrenched in learning ASP.NET. I am currently managing/developing/designing a few sites in my free time including: Tony Linnabery Designs(my personal site), 3rk Clan(gaming group), and Payton’s Playground(dog breeder).

Now that I have shared a little about my technical life, I want to tell you about Tony Linnabery the person! Despite my very in-doors job, I am a very outdoor oriented person. If it involves being outdoors, there’s probably a good chance I’m in to it. I love the usual: camping, fishing, boating, pretty much all of the mid-west summer activities. I… continue reading