Wired.com: 20 years later
Twenty years ago today, Wired launched a seminal redesign of its website that helped catapult forward web technology and what our industry understood as possible for commercial websites. ~1,700 words
Wired.com: Ten years later
Ten years ago today, we pulled back the curtains on a redesign of Wired.com. The actual design and the code that rendered it are long gone. But they were significant in their time. The redesign of Wired News in 2002… ~500 words
Interesting take on the future of Wired (mag vs. website).
Wired is great print, but if the magazine can’t make money and is shuttered, taking the website down with it, I’m going to be livid. Not that making money online is easy—it’s not, especially without sacrificing your ethics and your voice—but if any mainstream outlet should be able to make the transition, it should be Wired.
I fear that may be impossible, not just for Wired but for all these old brands, because they can’t accept that the work at which they have excelled for years will be just as important when it’s online—and online only.
Reading though the comments provides an even more interesting story and a broader perspective. Comments by several former and current Wiredlings, including a few responses by Chris Anderson who passes blame to corporate (Conde Nast) decision-making.
Welcome, Wired. We call this land "Internet"
gadgets.boingboing.netWired redesign turns 3
Silently, and with no fanfare, the Wired News redesign of 2002 turned 3 years old a few days ago. I had to search my own site and find the entry to confirm the date. I almost let it slip by without even thinking about it. ~600 words
DWM interview
Digital Web Magazine just posted another interview for their latest issue, this time, the questions from Craig Saila were directed at me. Read all about why I wrote off CSS as a failed pipedream for so long, what I think about the Wired News design more than a year after our launch, and my sentiments about the end of Webmonkey. ~94 words
The Macromedia interview
One of the major players in the Wired News redesign was Aaron Jones, the Senior Engineer with whom I collaborated to make the redesign a reality. A few weeks ago, Macromedia requested an interview with both of us to discuss the Wired News redesign and our highly publicized leap into the world of CSS. Knowing the strong efforts Macromedia has been making with Dreamweaver’s support for CSS, we graciously agreed. One Thursday afternoon, I met Aaron and the Macromedia team at the Wired office, where a crew set up lots of lights, cameras, and microphones, took over an hour of audio, condensed it down into a concise three-minute micro-interview, and laid down the audio track into a Flash file, matching it with video stills, screenshots, code snippets, and supporting imagery. ~500 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
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
On office space
No, haven’t yet seen the movie, but considering the constant prodding of friends to do so, I’m likely to see it some day. What I will note, however, is that having (and enjoying) office space in downtown San Francisco… ~800 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Success in user testing
My colleagues in Boston ran some users through the Wired News design prototypes this week. While we were fairly confident that many of the usability problems of the old design had been addressed, we wanted to make sure there weren’t… ~300 words
Tiny screens
Since I haven’t jumped onto the wireless platform bandwagon yet, designing pages for the AvantGo channel has been an interesting challenge. Not too difficult, because there aren’t many choices. But that’s the challenge of it. It’s like trying to say… ~100 words
News on the go
I took a look at some pages today that Wired News generates for our AvantGo channel. The AvantGo reader only supports a limited subset of html 3.2 tags, according to their style guide for developers. After reading though their guidelines,… ~200 words
Credit where it's due
It’s worthwhile mentioning that a lot of the initial research on multi-column CSS layout for the Wired News redesign was done while studying examples from Eric Costello’s CSS Layout Techniques at glish.com, as well as Rob Chandanais’ Layout Reservoir… ~300 words
Contact made
I sent a note yesterday to Eric Meyer (considered the expert on CSS, and author of many of the books I’ve been referencing about the subject) and to Jeffrey Zeldman (co-founder of The Web Standards Project and creative director of… ~200 words
News worth noting
I should mention here one of the major reasons I’ve become obsessed with Web standards and CSS. My current project (as Design Director of Wired) is a complete redesign of Wired News. See a screenshot of the before state [.gif,… ~300 words
