October 2002

A Different Gravity

Last night, I received an email message from a gentleman named Mark. The subject was: appreciate your blog and designs. I’ve received quite a few messages like this recently. But there was something about Mark’s message that had a different gravity to it. The first three words of his… continued

link 31 Oct 2002 in Technology, Web

Sizing Up Web Type

I’ve been thinking a lot about type on the Web lately. Not type that a designer sets in Photoshop and turns into an image. But type which can be selected, searched, indexed, and resized by the browser. Type marked up with tags like <p>, <h2>, or <cite>, etc. As… continued

link 25 Oct 2002 in CSS, Web

Are Websites Public Spaces?

The issue can’t escape mention, even though it’s a few days late. Robert Gumson and Access Now recently launched a suit against Southwest Airlines, claiming that Southwest’s website was inaccessible to the blind, thus was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Last Friday, a U.S. District… continued

link 22 Oct 2002 in News, Web

Meeting the Makers

I just returned home from Meet The Makers, a one-day gig here in San Francisco for (in the words of the organizers) creative people in a technical world. The small crowd included creative/design directors, web/interaction designers, IAs, founders, CTOs, Principals, and CEOs. Lots of people who make the Web… continued

link 21 Oct 2002 in Events, Web

One Change, Immediate Results

Last week’s redesign of Wired News included significant visual changes to the interface. The push toward XHMTL and CSS is certainly a big deal. But as a designer, I also love delving into visual details, especially as they impact the user experience. In addition to the usability testing we… continued

link 18 Oct 2002 in CSS, Web…

Futureproofing Amps

The high profile Wired News redesign has attracted a lot of attention, primarily because of the Web standards we’re using, and the effort we’re making at keeping our code compliant and error-free. However, daily editorial additions continue to allow XHTML validation errors to sneak into the Wired News markup…. continued

link 17 Oct 2002 in Technology, Web…

Love It or Hate It?

In reading some of the feedback pouring in since the Wired News redesign, some of my confidence that we did the right thing initially began to erode away. The launch was somewhat anti-climactic. The press release looked like a misfire because we didn’t get the site launched as scheduled… continued

link 14 Oct 2002 in Wired

What Matters?

Late last night, I got a call from a very good old high school friend from Ohio, Jon Hamilton. Jon started out soon after high school as an EMT, went back to school to become a paramedic, and is now a firefighter in a north-side suburb of Columbus. Jon,… continued

link 12 Oct 2002 in Personal

Valid.

After a day’s worth of “almost there” blog entries and email messages [xhtml validation], I now proudly announce that Wired News is there. Our developers and engineers who hunted through multiple Vignette components to find the errors and destroy them deserve all the credit. Brilliant job comrades!… continued

link 11 Oct 2002 in Web, Wired

Eric Chimes In

I’ve also been in touch about the redesign and working closely with Eric Meyer for the past few months. He’s been a tremendous source of encouragement and inspiration along the way. He powerfully adds: “… the really important stuff all happened behind the scenes. Using no tables to lay… continued

link 11 Oct 2002 in People, Web…

The Snowball Begins

Just after wrapping up my last post, I started looking around to see if any buzz about the WN launch had hit the Web yet. Ahem… I don’t think this one will sneak under too many radars. Jeffrey Zeldman just dedicated a huge amount of space to the redesign… continued

link 11 Oct 2002 in People, Web…

Finally, We’re Live

At long last, the Wired News redesign is visible to the world. We launched the site around 10pm PDT time last night. And what a relief it is. Despite numerous setbacks, delays, bugs, and technical difficulties, we pushed through to the other side and found success. Are all of… continued

link 11 Oct 2002 in CSS, News…

Coming Right Up

Since our failed attempt at pushing the Wired redesign live last night, our engineers and developers have been working like crazy to figure out what went wrong. The errors never showed up in our development environment, but only manifested themselves once we started pushing the site to the live… continued

link 10 Oct 2002 in Wired

Foiled

The Wired News redesign was scheduled to go live in the wee hours of the morning today. Technical difficulties started popping up as we were pushing everything to the live servers around 2am. Fragments were disappearing, images weren’t working, Unfortunately for us, a press release was already queued up… continued

link 10 Oct 2002 in Wired

CMS Troubles

Wired News has used Vignette as a content management system for a few years now. Today, we discovered an odd bug that shows up whenever the cache (memory) was flushed (reset). Vignette is automatically inserting one html comment tag right before our DTD. The comment contains a timestamp, which… continued

link 9 Oct 2002 in Wired

Portfolio/Database Work

Progress on the stopdesign.com redesign continues. I now have the entire portfolio entered into a sortable, reusable database. I’ve created a bunch of server-side scripts (ASP) to create each portfolio page dynamically based on two templates. One template drives the bulk of the view pages, another one wipes out… continued

link 6 Oct 2002 in Personal, Technology

Written Word

A lot of ideas exist in my head which I wouldn’t be able to do justice with a 2 or 3 paragraph entry. In the process of a site redesign of October 2002, I’m setting aside some space to dedicate for longer written articles. Maybe I’ll be able to… continued

link 4 Oct 2002 in Personal