Welcome to another edition of Friday Focus, now in it’s twenty-first week of wrapping up all the weekly happenings on the web (ok, not all, but some). Let’s get started.

Sites of the Week

Expression Engine (EE) recently launched a new design for the products site, I it looks very good. It’s a really great, streamlined designs composed of navy and light blues, and whites.

Virb, a social networking site from the creators of Purevolume (Unborn Media) also launched publicly this week. It’s simple design beats out Myspace, and what’s even better is the almost unlimited ways you can customize your profile using css and html.

And finally this week comes Carfreaks, an absolutely great looking car blog / magazine. Even on dark colors, the design works perfectly.

Digg Weekly

This week’s best according to AJ, picked from the top dugg articles over the past 7 days.

Design – What Can Pulp Fiction Teach You About Typography?
An amazing animation to an audio clip from “Pulp Fiction” that uses various fonts and text sizes to convey the meanings behind the words. I thought this was very, very cool.

Programming – How to Create Sliding, Collapsible Div
An article outlining the steps to create a sliding, collapsible div with javascript and css. Includes step by step instructions.

This week’s up and coming according to Ronalfy from Digg.

Design – Web 2.0 Tutorials Round Up
Smashing Magazine does it again with a nice list of Web 2.0 tutorials.

Programming – Include Flash in web pages without “Click to activate this control”
Unobtrusive Flash Objects (UFO) v3.20 is a neat little tool that allows you to include a flash object in Internet Explorer without the user having to click to activate the control. I personally use an alternate solution that works great as well.

Design Dilemma

The purpose of Design Dilemma is to post one dilemma a week and allow the readers to voice their suggestions and/or opinions. If you have your own dilemma, please send me yours at ronalfy+devlounge@gmail.com.

Congratulations. You’re a freelancer and you’ve been hired by a company to redesign its website and input the old content into a new content management system. There’s only one minor problem: there are over a thousand static html pages and all of them contain tag soup. What would be your approach for stripping out the content and inputting everything into the CMS?

As a sidenote, nobody responded to last week’s design dilemma. I assure you that this dilemma has a solution. If you would like to know my approach, please express your interest in the comments. The solution is fairly involved, so I would have to write a tutorial for it.

WordPress Plugin Spotlight

The first plugin spotlighted is called MoveComments. When a user leaves a comment on an old post, or the wrong post, it is not very simple to move comments. The MoveComments plugin allows you to easily move comments from one post to another. The plugin is in an early version and I am looking forward to seeing what the author will do with the plugin on later versions.

The second plugin spotlighted is called Ajaxified Expand Post Now. If you use the “more” tag when you publish posts, this plugin will allow a user to see the rest of the content (via AJAX) by clicking on the “more” link. This plugin is also in an early version and is in need of an admin panel. To install and configure this plugin, you will need to be fairly comfortable with PHP.

This week as Ronalfy and myself continue to split the duty of managing Friday Focus, Ronalfy will begin his own columns, allowing us to bring more depth to your favorite week-in-review article series. Let the fun begin!

These are the two new sections to the Friday Focus, and like always, we appreciate any feedback you may provide. Design Dilemma will ask the readers for feedback on a particular dilemma. And since we have many WordPress readers, Ronalfy begin showcasing a few WordPress plugins every week or so.

Sites of the Week

The first featured design of this week is from Hyperwave. I like the design because it’s clean and professional, and that’s what your going for when trying to sell anything, especially an application that would be used on a business level.

The final two sites this week are both in Spanish, but both look really good. First there is the portfolio of Benito Castro. While the layout is rather standard for today’s blog design trends, the site is still presented in a very clean manner, and the color choices flow quite well.

And finally there is Presidentielles. An extremely fun, in your face magazine / newspaper type design gives way to a site packed full of information. Now if only I could read it… Regardless, I love the design, layout, and how much content that pack onto just the homepage itself.

Digg Weekly

This weeks hottest (according to AJ) from Digg.

Design – Unclutter Your Desk: Mount things Underneath
I have to admit, when I saw this I was very impressed. If I had the time and patience I would give it a go, but I’m a bit too lazy. A great solution for those of us with way too much on the table.

Programming – Community Driven Open Source Web Designs
Free, downloadable templates which could help new designs by giving them good looking designs to experiment and learn with.

Design Dilemma

The purpose of Design Dilemma is to post one dilemma a week and allow the readers to voice their suggestions and/or opinions. So without further ado, here is the first dilemma.

You are in charge of updating a company’s website. The client has no technical knowledge whatsoever, and sends you several PowerPoint files and says, “Put these on the site.” However, the client doesn’t want you to simply link to the PowerPoint files. The client actually wants you to convert those to web pages. What would your approach be?

If you have your own design dilemma that you would like addressed, please use our contact form.

WordPress Plugin Spotlight

The first plugin mentioned is called Mint Popular Posts. The plugin works well, but is still rather buggy. This plugin now works with Mint being in a different database. I personally would like to see this plugin evolve and be able to also gauge how popular a post is based on views, trackbacks, comments, and date posted.

The second plugin mentioned is called WordPress Comment Spam Stopper. Spam Karma has been giving me issues, so I have been on a look-out for something like this. The plugin adds a simple question to your comment form that any human should be able to answer. Since installing the plugin, my comment spam has dropped to zero. One drawback of the plugin is that you have to modify the code if you want any customization.

Site of the Month

We would like to showcase one site a month here at Devlounge starting in March. The showcased site will have a detailed review along with a mini-interview with the site’s author.

We would like the site of the month to be user driven. If you think you have a well designed website, or know of one you really like, please submit the site for review. You can find more details on our Site Showcase page. We also may begin website critiques of the submitted sites as well (with permission from the creator of course). If you have any ideas or suggestions for the Site Showcase, please let us know in the comments.