Blog
kc web design Canterbury
kc web design ltd are based in Canterbury and we designed and built Notebox as an internal tool for showing designs to clients. Since then we’ve come a long way and Notebox has been running live now for a good 6 months. Its been a slow start but thats how we wanted it. We now have over 600 active accounts and its growing every day.
Development has slowed down a little due to other kc web design Canterbury projects but we’re still trying to add new features and keep things moving. As a web design piece the site is now creating a lot of attention in the web design world and is appearing on website design inspiration sites such as Design Fridge and many others.
We’re really pleased how its all going so far but we can always do better. The web app landscape has changed a little over the last 12 months and other web design companies have taken their apps out of the market place – Get Signoff was one web app that disappeared this year and a few others have gone as well. Is this just hard times or a switch to desktop apps made easier by the Apple App store. Who knows. One thing is for sure though, things need to contsantly change and adapt to make the most of the market, which is why we’re thinking of a slightly different payment model. More on this change later.
kc web design Canterbury is still going strong with another project due for release later this year. If you have a web app you need designing then get in touch with kc web design now.
Server move and launch
You’ll probably notice that Notebox is now much, much faster. Hooray!
We started life hosting with Media Temple but have had more and more problems with the service as we’ve grown. We love Media Temple, they did their best to resolve our issues but neither their team or our tech guys could find the problem. In an attempt to find a quick fix we moved a dev version of Notebox over to a dedicated server on a huge backbone pipe in the UK to run in parallel for a few weeks to see if we got the same problems. Turns out we didn’t get any problems at all, and it was soooo much quicker we thought we’d keep it there. So thanks Media Temple and an even bigger thanks to Big Mite.
From today we’re running from the very heart of the UK on a blindingly quick server. We’ve added some new features and some advertising from Authentic Jobs and Yoggrt.
We’ve now officially come out of beta and have launched as a live service. In the next few weeks we’ll be adding affiliate schemes and making a few more enhancements so stay tuned…
Flash and upload errors
We’ve been having reports of some users getting HTTP errors when trying to upload images. We’ve spent some time investigating this issue and finally found the problem. Some changes to the latest Flash player have been causing problems on Webkit browsers. As we are currently developing an iPad version (sssshhhh, it’s still top secret!) of Notebox that doesn’t use Flash we’ve decided to implement the new upload system from our iPad dev version into Notebox to stop the HTTP errors, which seems to be working nicely.
We are still in beta so if you did have problems with uploads before please come back and have another try.
The new edit page
We’ve changed the way the edit page works, making it a lot simpler. We had some feedback about the edit page and editing live CSS styles and some users weren’t entirely happy doing this. We got it wrong. We thought most of our users would be web designers but it turns out a lot of you are print designers or designers that don’t know much CSS so, we admit we got our user base a little bit wrong and we’ve adapted things a little.
The new edit screen should make things a lot easier so please give it a try and let us know what you think.
Why another design feedback app/tool?
As a web design company – kc web design ltd – we’d tried most of the offerings out there such as Notable, Conceptshare, ProofHQ, etc but they were all a bit complicated, a bit much for what we needed and what our clients were happy to use. Our clients wanted something simple to use with a familiar interface, something they could use instantly with no learning curve, no logins and no tricky downloads.
We created Notebox as an internal design/concept feedback app/tool that was simple, quick, intuitive and client friendly. Our clients are busy people, they didn’t have time to signup for a new system or have to login to see a design so we created an open, secure system to allow them direct access to concepts and an interface that allowed them to leave notes directly on the design as you would on a flickr photo.
We’re not trying to compete with the big players, we’re trying to offer a simple, cost effective, designer and client friendly alternative design/concept feedback tool thats aimed more at the freelancer and small design studio. We do have plans to add group collaboration features in phase 2 to make it easier to use in larger studios with multiple designers working on the same project.
Notebox – the designers feedback app
Notebox is an easy way for designers to get feedback ‘on’ their designs. Notebox allows you & your clients to make notes directly on your design, allowing the notes to appear in context.
Actually seeing the notes on the part of the design they relate to makes evaluating feedback much, much easier.
Notebox is built by web designers, for web designers so its simple, elegant and easy to use.
Designers can create clients, projects and designs, upload artwork, edit page and note styles and view notes – in quick view or on the design itself.
Notebox notes let you manage client feedback painlessly.
Notebox v1 is here
Ok, ready, go…
Well, almost. We’re starting closed beta testing for the next few weeks before going live sometime in July.
