Catchy type
I usually go back to Columbus, Ohio to see my mom and visit other family and friends a few times a year. Christmas is one of those times, this year being no exception. Every time I come home to visit,… ~300 words
Classy
Tantek continues his mnemonic and cliché-based 7 steps to proper web authoring with #5: A Touch of Class. In it, he weaves through the ups and downs of the HTML class attribute, and even dips down into CSS… ~44 words
Mixing it Up
You, a doorway to the W3C, and your valid, user-centered design full of intrigue, aesthetic appeal, and inspiration. All potentially part of wthremix: an independent contest challenging creative types to redesign the W3C’s recently revamped homepage. Think you… ~64 words
Upgrade messages
Via Clagnut a few days ago, Richard Rutter summarized some interesting observations and conclusions on the “Upgrade now!” message often seen in the unstyled version of CSS-based designs. Contrary to the current snafu with browser detection scripts over… ~600 words
HotBot redesign launched
Ah, I can finally talk about it. It’s so far off everyone’s radar that hardly anyone has noticed yet. Let’s change that. Another project I had a hand in design directing and pushing to XHTML/CSS (smack in the middle of… ~900 words
Representational language
I discovered an excellent resource over the weekend that I’ve been (and will be) digging through in my spare time. All of a sudden, I’m starting to understand the logic behind Braille by reading through the incredible information at Dotless … ~300 words
They say imitation…
is flattery. But I’m not sure what I think about this recently discovered copy. It’s obviously a work-in-progress. Remnants of my content still poke through in places. I don’t know how long it will stay up, but I’ve taken a… ~600 words
All about the brand
Leander continues the Wired News Mac loyalty series with two more articles pushed out today. Both deal with the power of brand. Apple: It’s All About the Brand makes the point that Apple is not necessarily selling product as much… ~100 words
Small talk in SF
Since MTM/SF in October, Tantek and I have been batting around the idea of holding an informal discussion about style, blogs, workarounds, etc. at a local cafe here in San Francisco. Preferably with free wifi. And space to flip our… ~200 words
Mac loyalists
Continuing on the theme of Mac loyalty, Leander begins a series for Wired News dissecting the reasons behind the passion and obsession for Apple’s machines. Mac Loyalists: Don’t Tread on Us examines the Mac cult and why it continued… ~100 words
Middle of the road
Confusion seems to have surfaced around the Confessions piece I posted last week. Some think the article was wishy-washy and were hoping for a more definitive ending proclaiming loyalty to one OS or the other. Questions were asked like, “So… ~400 words
Touring D.C.
I’m in Washington D.C. this week, spending time with a few good friends. Since everyone is still working, today is my opportunity to tour around independently and see some sights. I haven’t been here since my eighth grade class trip,… ~300 words
Confessions of a designer
Recounting the downward spiral and early recovery phase of a designer’s switch to the Windows operating system. ~1,600 words
The game has changed
New rules govern my play. My professional environment is suddenly different. No one expects me to be “in the office”. There are no looming deadlines. I have no voicemail waiting for response. No conference calls planned for the day. Just… ~300 words
Changing chapters
After 6 years, 3 months, 3 days, my employment with Wired comes to an end today. What a ride it’s been. Jumping back in time, I remember picking up an interest in bulletin boards in ’92 while I was still… ~800 words
Accountability
Anitra Pavka wrote an article for Digital Web a little over a week ago. Accountability of Accessibility and Usability digs into some of the reasons Southwest Airlines was brought to court over their alleged inaccessibility. Anitra explores some basic ways… ~61 words
eXtreme design
Somehow, I recently stumbled across the controversial discipline and methodology of XP. Not another lame X-based abbreviation for the new OS from Redmond. I’m talking about eXtreme Programming, which has roots from 3 to 6 years ago, depending… ~500 words
Spontaneous BayCHI
At the very last minute, I gave in to an urge to head down to tonight’s monthly BayCHI program. Ironically enough, I ended up driving down to Palo Alto with Peterme of Adaptive Path and Erika Hall from Mule… ~200 words
Strip it down
How do we say more with less? When I write, I tend to be wordy. Four long convoluted paragraphs that could probably be summed up in one short sentence. As a designer, I was never trained to be a writer… ~200 words
An interview with Douglas Bowman of Wired News
An interview conducted by CSS guru and standards evangelist, Eric Meyer, covering the ins and outs of the conversion to a standards-based design for Wired News. (Translated into: Japanese) ~34 words
More Miami
Sitting in the Miami airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago. Here’s a few more shots to highlight from this past weekend: … ~22 words
South Beach sights
The AIGA I/O Conference wrapped up yesterday. Overall, it was an excellent 2-day conference with a nice range of topics covered. I stuck around in Miami for an extra day just to relax a little. Over the last couple days,… ~100 words
Hearing Hillman
After listening to Hillman Curtis speak twice today, (once for the opening keynote, and another for a session on design process) I now have nothing but respect for him, and gratitude for the inspiration he provided through what he had to say and how he said it. ~300 words
I|O: Interaction Only
I just arrived in Miami for the AIGA‘s Interaction Only Conference. A balmy 85 degrees with lots of humidity took my breath away as I stepped out of the airport. I’m excited be here, and am looking forward to… ~200 words
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… ~600 words
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… ~200 words
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… ~500 words
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,… ~400 words
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… ~500 words
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 … ~300 words
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… ~400 words
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… ~400 words
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… ~100 words
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… ~300 words
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… ~300 words
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… ~100 words
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… ~200 words
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… ~200 words
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… ~200 words
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… ~94 words
Lost in space[r]
I was looking up flights to Miami on Orbitz.com today for an AIGA design conference I’ll be attending in November. I came across this awkward rendering [.gif, 48 KB] of their much-touted “matrix display”. All missing images pointed to http://www.orbitz.com/d.gif,… ~200 words
How to Build a Portfolio
I’ve been debating how to build out my portfolio pages for the last few days. The current pages are all flat files that required a ton of work to create, and have been a nightmare to update. I’d like to… ~100 words
Teaching CSS
I’ve been planning out the structure for a CSS workshop we’ll be offering to Lycos designers and developers sometime later this month. I’ll be collaborating with Steve Mulder, a colleague of mine in Boston, who wrote a book on style … ~300 words
Measured accessibility improvements
Tom, a colleague and IA in our User Experience group in Boston, took the time today to run some Wired News pages through the Bobby accessibility evaluator. For comparison, he tested both the old and new WN designs, along with… ~300 words
Time for major surgery
I started batting around ideas for a redesign of stopdesign.com a few weeks ago. Today, I actually made progress by sketching out some rough ideas and planning a simple architecture. The site has basically remained untouched in the four years… ~200 words
Well said
When Eric Meyer visited last week, we pressed him for a quote or two about the Wired News redesign. I was blown away with what he sent back. While his comments were intended for the press release and the story… ~300 words
Issue-based content
Finally had a chance over the last two days to begin thinking about the Wired magazine site design. The current site is riddled with usability problems, poor architecture, and a very awkward design. I can be brutally honest about it,… ~200 words
Versioning CSS and images
We implemented a secondary version control technique for Wired News images and CSS files this week. Images and CSS files have been moved one level deeper than they were, into a folder named according to the current release date (ie:… ~200 words
Missing style sheets?
We moved some of our CSS and image files to a different central server today which we can all reference for design and development versions of the site. I almost immediately noticed that Mozilla and Netscape browsers weren’t rendering our… ~100 words
