Anyhow, we created this HTML email and decided to – just for fun – use the @font-face style rule. We knew that support in email clients was poor, but we figured that we aught to give it a go. We asked people to send info as to wheteher it worked or not and we created this table detailing the results.

	Outlook Express – 6 (win)	Outlook – 2003 (win)	Outlook – 2007 (win)	Yahoo Mail	Google Mail	Live Mail	Mail (mac)	Evolution (linux)
@font-face support

Note: Only TTF and EOT (IE) were created

As you can see, support for @font-face in html emails is BAAAAADDDDD! Only Mail on Mac supported it.

An additional note: It seems Outlook 2007 (win) doesn’t even fall back on the font stack. It appears as if it sees the @font-face font first in the stack, decides it cannot use it – then drops the font family altogether – ignoring the second font in the stack. To conclude, it reverts to the system font.

And then I came across something somewhat amazing..

The big find: Mobile Mail app works!

I was just browsing on my iPod Touch and I noticed that the email also worked in the Mail app! Woo!

I can also confirm this works on an iPhone

Why is this so exciting?

Mobile Safari (the web browser on an iPhone) only supports SVG fonts with @font-face – but doesn’t support TTF or OTF.

Mobile Maill app does!
I didn’t create an SVG font for this email which means it HAD to use TTF.

So we can add another column to that table…

	Outlook Express – 6 (win)	Outlook – 2003 (win)	Outlook – 2007 (win)	Yahoo Mail	Google Mail	Live Mail	Mail (mac)	Evolution (linux)	Mail App (iphone/iPod Touch)
@font-face support

I’m not quite sure why i’m so excited about this – but I think it’s big news – Mail app is using a different rendering enging than mobile Safari – is it newer or older? Does this mean TTF or OTF supprt is coming to Mobile Safari?
The iphone falls back on Helvetica if no font is defined

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

As you resize your browser window however – he looks less than happy…

It then gets a bit messy…

And then positively shocking…

I think it’s inspired! Well done mailchimp!

This year, instead of sending out christmas cards, we thought we would donate some money to a charity. Yet at the same time, we didn’t want you to feel left out of all the good cheer from inmeres, so we devised a Christmas game!

The game is a simple “simon says” / “memory game” in which you copy a sequece of lights. Every time you copy the sequence correctly, another light is added to the sequence.

When you’ve finished your turn, you can send us your hi-score. For every level you complete correctly we’ll give 10p to charity.

We haven’t as of yet decided on a charity to donate to, so contact us with your suggestions.

This is how it should have looked:

The solution: The solutions are always the simplest, yet always the hardest to find… Display the list item inline.

li {
display:inline;
}


Apparently this is due to the formatting you would normally do in your text editor. Another fix is to remove all formatting in your markup – but I feel this makes your code difficult to maintain. Better do the fix above.

Please note: This is not the double margin bug in internet explorer 6 – there was no margin/padding on the items.

We have also been nominated for the UniqueCSS site of the month for April 2009. We are up against some other great sites, so we can only hope we come out top. Best of luck to the rest of you!

This recognition testifies to your creativity and ingenuity.

Wish us luck and if you get the chance visit uniquecss.com and give us a vote! unfortunately we came 2nd to Kardo Ayoub, well done, a well deserved win!

We have also been listed on many website galleries. These are galleries showing the best web designs at the time. Most insist that the code is valid and conforms to rules set out for the doctype of the website. This ensures that not only does the design look good but the code behind them is sound as well.

You can see us featured in these galleries:

• 
• 
• CSS-Design.fr
• bestcssgallery.com
• cssfreshblend.com
• cssimpress.com
• bmaccess.net
• cssbag.com
• csscookie.com
• csscount.com
• cssglance.com
• cssloggia.com
• browsershots.org
• cssdaddy.com
• NoOneWebDesign.com
• cssshowcases.com
• dark-i.com
• cssmix.nl

Would Matt & Guillaume’s MarioKart experience put them on a sound footing to challenge for the top spots, or would Julien “No Fear” Mourgues’ mountaining biking experience prove invaluable on the 400m track? Some people in the office thought that Thomas would be the favourite, especially after they found out that he had not only raced twice before, but twice on this very track. Thomas wasn’t so sure, and had his eye on the two quieter members of the team, Rob and Steven. Rob had his awareness and skill of riding his motorcycle to help his challenge for pole, and in the right set of circumstances Steven would be up there with the best of them, it was all about the “tortoise and the hare” approach, or so he said…

It was decided that it didn’t matter who won, as long as it wasn’t the boss!

So the Team made their way to the Karting Stadium, the excitement building and building. Ten minutes later we were kitted out in our racing suits, some of the team looking like Lewis Hamilton, some looking more like Christine Hamilton. A quick safety talk and we were ready to hit the tarmac for the practice laps.

Thomas and Guillaume’s competitive streak began to show almost instantly, the two of them passing the other five drivers in quick succession to take their place at the front of the pack. Everyone was soon getting to grips with their karts and just as they were getting into the groove our time was up. Everyone had faired well and couldn’t wait to get back out there for the qualifying session.

Guillaume now had the kart Thomas had in the practice session, would it help him get closer to his challenger? As soon as Thomas got onto the track he knew he’d be in trouble. His new kart, inherited from Steven’s practice session had next to no grip, he’d have to take it be careful but still post a competitive time. Starting behind the boss, Thomas had the perfect position to see him spin on the tricky hairpin on the first lap. The spin also left Rob and Julien with open road in front of them, posting fastest laps over a second quick than they had in practice.

Everyone was getting quicker lap by lap, most notably Steven improving greatly inspite of a deteriorating ankle injury that would eventually lead to him sitting out the big race. A mere ten minutes after the session had started and they were back in the pits. The times were impressive, 6 of the 7 drivers posting sub-31 second lap times. Thomas would be on pole, followed by the French contingent breathing down his neck in 2nd and 3rd places on the grid, with Rob and Matthew completing the line-up.

So the Final was now here, Thomas had re-gained his kart from the practice session, while Guillaume now inherited to rogue kart that Steven and Thomas had been blessed with in the earlier sessions. The kart proved to be the deciding factor, Guillaume once again spinning early on, and his challenge was over. The ever-improving Julien began to make in-roads into Thomas’ lead, but it proved not to be enough. Everyone had enjoyed a great evening of racing and couldn’t wait to get out there and do it again.

A short drive to a local restaurant for a celebratory meal for the now award-winning team was in order. Guillaume and Julien eating their own weight in meat, Thomas’ magical knife and Matt sipping his feminine drinks – it wasn’t a bad way to celebrate 2008.

And we’re all certain the next twelve months are going to be even better.

The Team’s Racing Times can be seen below:

Practice

Qualifying

The Final

Your osCommerce shop

Of course, if your shop is online, it should be a quick and easy change, and all of your price ‘labels’ will be updated automatically. But a lot of people with osCommerce shops are not sure how to do this, and to be honest, it’s not the most intuitive system.

So to help with the change, we’ve put together a quick guide to changing the tax rate in your osCommerce based online store. If your store is set up correctly, you should be able to offer the new rate in no time at all.

Note: This applies most osCommerce derived systems, so if you have a Zen Cart or CRELoaded store, make sure you read on too.

Update: The following instructions apply if you want to pass on the saving to customers. There are many reasons why you might not want to do this, including the rising cost of delivery and ending up with very odd looking prices. Click here for more information on keeping your prices the same.

To check if your store is set up correctly:

1. Go to your admin zone
2. Click on “Locations / Taxes”.

Old-style osCommerce splash page

The osCommerce location / taxes menu

You should have the following:

1. In your “Countries” page, there should be an entry for the United Kingdom
2. In the “Tax Zones” page, you should have a Tax Zone folder for the UK or similar, which contains the United Kingdom country (you should see this if you click on it)
3. In the “Tax Rates” page, you should have a 17.5% tax rate applied to the UK tax zone.

Your current tax rate should look like this

Is this what you see? If not, your tax may not be set up correctly, and it could be difficult to change to the new 15%. Contact us using the panel on the right and describe your current setup, and we can help.

If you are all set up correctly, these are the steps you need to follow:

1. That last screen mentioned above is the one we need, so go to “Locations / Taxes” -> “Tax Rates” if you are not there already

1. Click on the tax rate that is assigned to the UK. If you only have one tax rate, you do not need to do this as it will already be selected
2. Click on edit on the right
3. Change the tax rate field to say “15″ (without quotes)

Changing the osCommerce VAT tax rate

1. You might also want to change the description to include the “15%”, even if you do not currently show the rate in your description. This will reassure customers that you are aware of the change and are passing it on
2. Click “update”, and you’re done!

Still experiencing problems?

Are you having trouble applying the new rate? We can do it for you! Just contact us using the panel on the right.

Have you applied the change, but are still seeing the VAT unchanged? It may be that your shop has custom modifications or contributions that interact with VAT. These may need tweaking to include the new rate. Use the panel on the right to contact us and we will get a quote to you as a matter of urgency, so that this issue can be resolved as soon as possible.

Keeping your Prices the Same

Of course, you may wish to keep your prices looking the same to your customers. Using the above method means that your customers will be presented with a lower overall price, and this may not be practical. Unfortunately the answer to this is to up all of your base prices, which will mean a demoralising and lengthy trawl through your products in your admin zone.

If you don’t fancy this (and who would), we can do this for you. We will take a complete backup of your database, apply the change directly to the prices in the database, and we will also carry out the changes above to complete the process. The charge for this will be 100GBP plus VAT (We always issue our invoices before work is carried out, so the VAT charge will be whatever the VAT is at the time of issuing the invoice). If you are interested in this service, please ring us on the number to the right or send us an email so that we can discuss timing.

November 24th is the date of our christmas party, and we’re all going karting! 75 laps in total and just one of us will be victorious.

With Matt being an ex-MarioCart Champion and Guillaume kicking his MarioCart-ass on an arcade machine, the battle is most definately on!

However with Steves cool, calm attitude under pressure and Juliens hard-core mountain bike experience, we could see the trophy being raised above any head. Tom has his golf wins against Guillaume to keep as apparently they get wiped off the board if he loses.

As for me? I’ve been secretly watching Police, Camera, Action and I definately think I have the P.I.T. maneuver down!

May the race begin!

p.s. The term “champion” is used for creative writing purposes only.

Well as it was a Team win, Guillaume decided it would be apt to reward us each with medals…

… we look silly with them hung around our necks, but to be honest we couldn’t care less! We are all absolutely chuffed to bits!

They are even engraved with our names and the award we won!

So thank you Guillaume from all the team at inmeres!

On a personal note, I would like to thank the rest of the team for all their hard work, because without it I wouldn’t have this cool ipod to play with!

You may have read that we were up for this award back in October. Low and behold, we won!

The Team Award involves demonstrating strong leadership, working together towards a common goal, having an action plan in place, support risk taking and the team has 100% involvement and inclusion.

We are all absolutely chuffed to bits, especially when business coaches, who know what they are talking about, are validating your processes.

So thanks to our coach, Andy Sleet for pushing us constantly so we keep moving the business forward, and keep getting better.

You can see a picture of “ze boss” on stage picking up the award (he’s the one with the nice tan because he is always on holidays, another advantage of having a great team around you I guess!).