Click here to get your tickets! Don’t wait too long; the event sold out last year and it’s almost certain to do the same this time around. I’ll be talking about Business Blogging for Non-Writers & we’ll be giving away copies of our book as well. Hope to see you there!

Today I needed to write a bit of code to take the style attribute off of an HTML tag and convert it into something I could use inside PHP.

My first thought was to use regular expressions, but it occurred to me that there might be a simpler way to do it with just a couple of explodes.

Just in case this might help someone else out there, I thought I’d post it.

So, assuming you will pass something like “width:1090px;left:-340px;top:-144px;” to the function
you should get back the following:

Array
(
    [width] => 1090px
    [left] => -340px
    [top] => -144px
)

function styles2array($styles){
	$styles = rtrim($styles, "; ");
	$arr = explode(";", $styles);
	$return = array();
	for($i=0; $i<sizeof($arr); $i++)
		{
		$split = explode(":", $arr[$i]);
		$return[$split[0]] = $split[1];
		}
	return $return;
	}

Cheers!

-Matt

One of the great things about WordPress is that it’s constantly being updated with bigger and better features. The switch from 2.x to 3.0 brought some seriously cool new additions, like custom menus, custom headers, and custom post types.

We’ll be blogging about all the new stuff 3.0 has to offer on the companion site for our book, The WordPress Visual QuickStart Guide site. Pop on over and take a look at the first tutorial, Custom Menus in WordPress 3.0!

We’re pleased as punch to announce our latest launch: Moody Eyes Online!

We jumped at the chance to take on this project, since at least half of couldbe studios is blind as a bat (though the other half got his first pair of glasses recently – which counts, even if he only needs them when he spends too long on the computer) and most other online glasses retailers…well, let’s just say we had lots of ideas! The Moody Eyes guys let us take the design lead, and the result is a site that makes us really want another pair of glasses.

The collections are hand-picked and showcase the frames, and each collection features a piece of pop art by the fabulously talented Hillary White. The whole thing has a retro feel without being too kitschy, which really complements the product lines.

One of the coolest (and most developmentally challenging) features is the prescription form – not only did we integrate it with the product pages, but we tied it to customer accounts so that if you enter your information once, it will automatically populate the next time you order glasses. Cool, right?

When we announced the launch of the Clink Room last month we said the redesigned Shop was right around the corner – and we meant it! Check out the custom Shopify theme we put together for Casey & Jason. Of course it looks cool, thanks to their amazing graphics, but the really neat thing about it is how it functions behind the scenes. We made it as easy as possible to switch out the background graphics and the sidebar links so that the site will always look fresh. (One of the things we love about designing for Shopify: custom theme settings!)

We’re really excited to announce the launch of the new blog for The Clink Room – and not just because we had a hand in making it! The Clink Room guys do fantastic design work – they’re the people who do the official logos for Major League and Minor League Baseball teams – & we’ve had a blast doing this project. We got to flex our layout muscles getting the site to look just right, and we even got to create our first mobile site! Seriously, it’s very cool and all of you with iPhones or Android handsets should check it out, stat.

We’ll be launching the revamped Shopify store for these guys very soon, too – keep your eye out for the announcement.

We’ve been working like crazy on client sites, but that doesn’t mean we can’t give our own site an update every now and again. The couldbe logo has gone through some pretty major changes through the years, but one thing has remained the same: the paper airplane. Everyone loved the paper airplane, but we felt it was missing some undefinable something. You know when a word is on the tip of your tongue? Like that, only involving Photoshop.

But now our beloved paper airplane has had the makeover it deserves, and we love it! We gave the typography a bit of a touch-up as well.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments!