The other "City"
Luck and some last-minute arrangements have me on the opposite coast right now. I’m in New York, in the middle of a whirlwind trip which only removes me from San Francisco for a span of about 48 hours. ~300 words
Sliding Doors now in Russian
If you happen to be fluent in Russian, you might be interested in Andrei Smirnov‘s recently completed Russian translation of my Sliding Doors of CSS article, originally published at A List Apart. ~100 words
No limits
When I was designing Wired News last year, I was limited by what I knew I could implement. It’s obvious to me whenever I look at Wired now: there are things I would have designed differently had I known how — and been able — to pull them off. ~400 words
SwitchBack
Remember that confession I wrote a while ago? A sobering story of a designer who grew up on Apples and Macs, but gave into the dark side, jumped ship, and began using Windows. Well, it’s coming up on a year since I wrote that piece. Some of my friends were beginning to wonder if I was serious about shaking the Windows addiction. ~800 words
Sliding Doors of CSS, part II
A follow-up to the popular “Sliding Doors of CSS” (Part I, published at A List Apart) which fills in a few gaps of missing information, and covers additions and variations on the technique introduced in the original article. (Translated into: French I, French II, Italian, Russian) ~200 words
Selected reading
In one of the main Exhibition Halls, the AIGA has a temporary bookstore set up with hundreds of books available about design, typography, color, surface, theory… enough to make any designer drool and wish they had the entire collection in their library. ~100 words
Greetings from Vancouver
A reflective self-portrait of me, and the cool crosswalk signal icons in Vancouver. ~66 words
ALA and Sliding Doors
We’ve read words about a relaunch, seen hints of a new logo, and gazed at a teaser screen that promised it was coming soon. After weeks of patient waiting, the new version of A List Apart is here. As is my contribution to ALA 3.0, “Sliding Doors of CSS”. ~400 words
Power of Design, Vancouver
In two days, I’ll be heading north to Vancouver, B.C. for the AIGA National Design Conference, the power of Design. ~300 words
Sliding Doors of CSS
It’s time to push the limits of CSS and raise another bar for standards-based web design. This tutorial walks through a new Sliding Doors technique for creating visually stunning interface elements with simple, text-based, semantic markup. (Translated into: Farsi, French I, French II, Italian, Russian) ~100 words
Mozilla advances
Mozilla Foundation charges out of the gates today with a handful of new product releases. Heavyweight full-featured browser Mozilla 1.5, lightweight standalone browser Firebird 0.7, and email/newsgroup client Thunderbird 0.3. ~300 words
Are they really separated?
“Separate content from its presentation.” One of the lingering mantras of web design and development. It exists as both a rule and a strategic practice. A commandment which promises rewards if followed. But have we iterated this phrase so much as to strip away its meaning? ~700 words
Firestarter
News.com staff writer Paul Festa draws more public attention to Internet Explorer’s lack of full CSS support in “Developers gripe about IE standards inaction”. ~300 words
Design Process, en français
If you happen to speak or understand French better than English, I’ll point you to a new translation of my design process article at Pompage.net: Les coulisses d’un design. ~97 words
A year in Cornwall
Frank Leahy is a friend and former-colleague from Wired. Frank left Wired a couple months ago, and he and his family of four recently picked up their lives and moved to England, settling temporarily in what looks like an amazing location: Cornwall. ~400 words
Version troubles
Todd Dominey beats me to the punch, and says everything (and more) about software version naming schemes I was thinking of writing. Inspired by Adobe’s drop of the numerical versions in favor of a letter-based system (“CS”) for their new “Creative Suite”, the move seems to be a short-sighted marketing ploy in attempt to follow a trend set by Apple, Microsoft, and Macromedia. ~300 words
Spaced out
If you live in the Bay Area (or happen to be visiting next week) and have a passion for typography like I do, no doubt, you’ll be interested in “Spaced Out, Black Holes in Typography”, happening next Wednesday, 1 October at 7pm. ~300 words
Explaining the value
Adaptive Path just published an essay written by Jeff Veen, entitled “The Business Value of Web Standards”. It’s a short, concise overview focusing on the tangible benefits of designing and coding a site using web standards like XHTML and CSS. ~200 words
VeriBadSign
Yesterday, VeriSign resorted to more anti-competitive, monopolistic tactics. With so many people, companies, and organizations upset at VeriSign for such an unethical move, we’ll see how long this scam lasts. ~400 words
Extremes
Where else can you go only 2 miles and experience a natural temperature drop of 25 degrees+? That was my experience in San Francisco yesterday as I went from Noe Valley to Pacific Heights to watch a portion of the T-Mobile International cycling race. ~300 words
In remembrance
September 11, 2001 ~10 words
SFBags.com
If you have a notebook computer, most likely you use (or have been looking for) something of quality to tote said portable. If you’re like me, you want something well-designed, with convenient pockets in all the right places, and a sturdy construction which protects your investment. ~700 words
Like Lichen?
It’s nice to see someone take an influence and actually do something with it. ~100 words
Making the absolute, relative
A reader wrote to question the use of positioning for the Adaptive Path navigation. Certain positioning requirements can be met by wrapping one positioned element with another. ~900 words
Quizzical
Dan Cederholm starts a brilliantly simple concept of quiz questions to spark discussion and debate on semantics. ~100 words
The Big Apple
No, I’m not moving to New York. Not anytime soon. Though I have considered such a move, and may likely end up there at some point in the future. However… ~100 words
On standards and semantics
Reaction and response to Kottke’s original post on the confusion surrounding web standards, semantically rich markup, and the relationship between the two. ~800 words
Weaving CSS dreams
In promising news for web design and development, Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX 2004 claims it will possess much more powerful CSS support, as well as significant improvements which will help its users create accessible content. ~700 words
Phases
Sometimes, I go through phases where I just want to design. ~300 words
For posterity’s sake
Seven years ago, yesterday, I packed up everything I owned, left many friends behind in San Diego, and moved to San Francisco, (where I knew absolutely no one) to start my job at HotWired. ~200 words
See also
I’ve decided to make my collection of Links, Sites, and Books a public one, create a list of references I’ve used, and group it all under a new section for Stopdesign appropriately dubbed See Also. ~400 words
Merging lines
Once devices like Sony’s UX50 handheld begin to fill breast-pockets of executives and shoulder bags of early-adopting gadgeteers, kiss goodbye the assumption that one “minimum resolution” exists to which we can design any interface. ~300 words
A pirate’s life
Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t on my list of movies to see until I read what a few others were saying about it. Now I can’t recommend it enough. ~300 words
New ink for Inc.com
Congratulations to Dan Cederholm and team on launching a brand new Inc.com. The site sports a clean design, valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional markup, and a nice dosage of the CSS background-image property to pull in decorative icons and bullets,… ~100 words
Rebuilding a portfolio
Matt Haughey provides great insight into how he’s taken advantage of MT’s flexibility to manage his sites in Beyond the Blog. Here’s how I did the same for my new portfolio relaunched last week. ~1,400 words
Netscape killed, Mozilla freed
In not-entirely-unexpected news, MozillaZine reports that AOL dropped the axe on Netscape today, dismantling what was left of the Netscape team. In what could be a positive spin on the whole deal, AOL has pledged $2 million in cash to… ~200 words
Adaptive Path’s MT setup
Jay Allen posts an extended response to a commenter’s question about the use of Movable Type on the new Adaptive Path site. He provides a behind-the-scenes look at the MT setup, outlining each blog configuration and it’s purpose. He also covers static content blogs, template modules, and gateway pages created to simplify Adaptive Path’s content management through MT. ~1,100 words
The new Path
Today, I can announce completion of the first major publicly available Stopdesign project since the redesign of Wired News last October. Last night, Adaptive Path completed the launch of a brand spanking new redesign of their website. ~700 words
View, sans fog
A couple of readers wrote to me wondering what my normal view — described yesterday — is like. Yesterday’s photo was actually taken from a street corner behind my apartment building looking toward Twin Peaks and the fog-obscured Sutro Tower… ~200 words
Morning, fog city
Early on a Sunday morning. I wake up and open the living room blinds to a sea of white. On most clear days, I have a view of half the San Francisco skyline, a portion of the Bay Bridge, and… ~300 words
Redirection complete
While I can change and control internal links pointing to my own content, lots of external links exist on other sites which point to files on stopdesign. I wanted to make sure as many of those links as possible still pointed to appropriate places on this site. ~700 words
Mid-process
The conversion to Movable Type is going smoothly so far. I’m continually amazed at the application’s flexibility, power, and speed. The ability to expand its functionality with the plugin architecture gives MT endless possibilities for small-scale sites like this one.… ~400 words
Changing wings on the plane, mid-flight
I’ve been talking about it for what seems like forever. Over the past week, I finally started to make the jump. If you’re reading this entry, the DNS changes have propagated to your neck of the woods, which means you’re… ~700 words
HotBot hacks results
The company I used to work for (Lycos) used a project in which I was originally involved (a redesign of HotBot) as a base for a CSS skinning contest (Hack Hotbot). I don’t care what the internal debates and politics have been between HotBot product management and Lycos Legal, but this situation totally blows… ~200 words
IE/Mac, rest in peace
With the confirmed news that Microsoft is ceasing development of Internet Explorer for Macintosh, a wave of sadness sweeps through the web design and development community. Three years ago, I was only getting my feet wet by messing around… ~100 words
Quark site finds standards religion
In a related note, Quark recently redesigned their site using XHTML for structure and CSS for presentation and table-free layout. The pages are simple and beautifully clean. The main navigation features slick slide-down subnavigation, though they could have built this… ~100 words
Quark delivers for Apple
In January of 2002, Quark dumbfounded Mac design professionals by releasing QuarkXPress 5 sans support for Mac OS X. Because of Quark’s rush to release an already outdated product, Mac-based print designers have either held back in upgrading from OS… ~200 words
Poolside with the Baghdad Blogger
Via Paul Boutin, an interesting read from Peter Maass over at Slate. “Salam Pax Is Real” tells an inside story of Driving Mr. Pax, discovering his musical and literary tastes, and taking advice on buying Persian… ~100 words
A design process revealed
A detailed look at the process and decisions which were part of a design for the CSS Zen Garden submission titled, Golden Mean. (Translated into: French) ~1,900 words
In the garden
I returned last night from a relaxing holiday weekend spent in Pismo Beach with a few good friends. One afternoon, while most of the others retired to their rooms for a midday siesta, I pulled out my laptop, settled into… ~1,200 words
