Announcing: Handcrafted CSS

SimpleBits Go to the source

I wrote another book. It’s called Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design , and it’ll be published by New Riders next month. I had help this time. The unstoppable Ethan Marcotte contributed an absolute gem of a chapter on the fluid grid. And I think it’s worth the cover price for the pages he authored alone… Read the rest here

Recent job listings

Cameron Moll Go to the source

A few weeks ago I received the following remarks from Jeff Lin, an Authentic Jobs customer and founder of Bust Out Solutions : Just wanted to let you know that I posted a job probably two years ago for a designer, got several responses, and ultimately found one guy who I tried to hire. It didn’t work out at the time, but we kept in touch, and I finally hired him a few months ago. It’s worked out great, and we recently launched Best Buy Idea X . I’m happy with the design, and in part thanks to Authentic Jobs for helping me find great talent! Employers continue to find talented web and creative professionals through Authentic Jobs , which has been filling full-time and freelance positions throughout the globe since 2005. … Read the rest here

Where’d You Go?

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been taking a bit of a break lately. But there’s some exciting stuff coming up in the not too distant future. Excuses, Excuses Despite the temptations of ever-warming weather, I had to throw most of my free time towards a new presentation for An Event Apart and @media last week, and on a gameplan for teaching in the fall. Well, that and sometimes I just don’t have much of anything to say. Rather than drop posts on here that I don’t care about, I decided to take a few weeks away from this site to recharge. … Read the rest here

Icons for Interaction

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Last week I had the pleasure of attending @media 2009 in London, where it has to be said, I had the best conference experience I’ve had for a long time. I prefer the more cosy nature of the event – a single track, not too large and overwhelming quantity of people, and simply great talks. I can’t pick one favourite presentation, as I came away feeling really inspired and energised by everything. It was also the last @media curated by Patrick Griffiths, who is moving on to follow other passions (from next year the conference will be in the able hands of the Web Directions Team ). I want to take this opportunity to thank Patrick for encouraging me to talk, and giving the best possible environment to do it in. … Read the rest here

Thatmedia 2009

Adactio Go to the source

It’s been a great month for conferences; UX London , An Event Apart in Boston , and wrapping it all up, @media 2009 . The two day event was filled with great talks. The first day was filled with design-led topics and the second had more of a developer-based approach. You can check out Colly’s slides and Malarkey has published the slides and words from his talk called Walls Come Tumbling Down . The conference finished with the traditional hot topics panel, moderated by yours truly. … Read the rest here

From Boston to London

Adactio Go to the source

The second day of An Event Apart in Boston kept up the excellent standard of the first day . Alas, I couldn’t keep the liveblogging up for two straight days …I blame the Media Temple opening party. Other attendees were far more motivated than I. There’s the Django app A Feed Apart that collates Twitter and Flickr posts from the conference. … Read the rest here

An Event Apart Boston, Day One

Adactio Go to the source

The first day of An Event Apart is wrapping up here in Boston. Dan is delivering his talk Implementing Design: Bulletproof A-Z which I’ve already liveblogged from a previous event so I can give my fingers a bit of rest now. The liveblogging was kind of fun. By keeping myself busy, I was able to stop myself from getting too nervous about my own talk. I’m so glad it’s over and done with now. … Read the rest here

DIY UX: Give Your Users an Upgrade (Without Calling In a Pro)

Adactio Go to the source

The wonderful Whitney Hess is speaking about DIY UX at An Event Apart in Boston . We are all user experience designers. Our users are suffering. Let’s help them. Whitney says we can be bumbling DIY hobbyists or we can be professionals. Meet the founders of Iridesco , based in New York. … Read the rest here

Designing with Psychology in Mind

Adactio Go to the source

Josh is at An Event Apart in Boston to talk about Designing with Psychology in Mind . He begin’s with Kurt Lewin ’s equation: Behaviour is a function of a person and their environment. That’s quite a modern view that clashed with the prevailing wisdom of the time. Lewin’s equation is applicable to design because although we can’t change the person we can influence behaviour by altering the environment on the web. We create the environment. We create a universe for our users… Read the rest here

Thinking Small

Adactio Go to the source

Jason Santa Maria , AKA Stan , is the man. Here’s here at An Event Apart in Boston to talk about Thinking Small . He’s my warm-up man. He begin in the 1980s; Christmas day in the Santa Maria household—Jason gets Castle Greyskull. One Christmas, his parents played a cruel joke on him. Instead of getting him toys, they got him books. … Read the rest here

Content First

Adactio Go to the source

Because it takes two people to replace Eric Meyer , Kristina Halvorson has stepped into the breach at An Event Apart in Boston . At last week’s UX London , Dan described her as the patron saint of content strategy. Her talk is called Content First . She begins by listing a bunch of Twitter hashtags and pointing out the excellent A Feed Apart . Kristina started out as a Copy Writer and morphed into being a Web Writer… Read the rest here

Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon

Adactio Go to the source

I’m at An Event Apart in Boston where Jared is kicking things off. He’s pinch hitting for Eric who can’t be here, alas. (Do you like the way I’m casually using baseball references like pinch hitting to ingratiate myself with the local audience?) Jared’s talk is entitled Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon and I’m guessing he’s not talking about the South American river. He begins by talking about milk. Two years ago, you could buy Tuscan whole milk on Amazon . The reviews are hilarious… Read the rest here

dConstruct Tickets on sale from 11am Monday

Andy Budd Go to the source

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to set your alarms or calendar notifications as tickets for dConstruct go on sale this Monday at 11am. As always we’ve scoured the world to bring you an amazing line-up of speakers. People who educated, entertained and inspired us over the last couple of years. We’ve got insightful speakers like Adam Greenfield , author of “Everyware”, talking about ubiquity and location, or Russell Davies from Wired Magazine talking about the rise in post digital culture. We’ve got entertaining and educational sessions like Nathan Shedroff and Chris Noessel ’s excellent talk about interaction paradigms in science fiction movies. … Read the rest here

dConstruct Tickets on sale from 11am Monday

Andy Budd Go to the source

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to set your alarms or calendar notifications as tickets for dConstruct go on sale this Monday at 11am. As always we’ve scoured the world to bring you an amazing line-up of speakers. People who educated, entertained and inspired us over the last couple of years. We’ve got insightful speakers like Adam Greenfield , author of “Everyware”, talking about ubiquity and location, or Russell Davies from Wired Magazine talking about the rise in post digital culture… Read the rest here

The debate over page zooming vs. text scaling

Cameron Moll Go to the source

After posting my reasons for switching back to px for font-size citing page zooming as the primary justification, it was apparent that enthusiasm for page zooming wasn’t as unanimous as I had thought. As a refresher from the article, low-vision users (or anyone) can alter their browser’s text size by changing the default text size permanently via the browser’s settings, or on-the-fly using the keyboard commands Ctrl+ / - (Windows) or Command+ / - (Mac). Until recently, these commands would cause all major browsers to scale up or down the size of the text while retaining the formatting and layout of the page, commonly called text scaling or text zooming . Now, however, recent versions of every major browser now default to page zooming instead of text scaling for Ctrl+ / - and Command+ / - commands AND for the “Zoom” option in the browser’s menu. … Read the rest here

The debate over page zooming vs. text scaling

Cameron Moll Go to the source

After posting my reasons for switching back to px for font-size citing page zooming as the primary justification, it was apparent that enthusiasm for page zooming wasn’t as unanimous as I had thought. As a refresher from the article, low-vision users (or anyone) can alter their browser’s text size by changing the default text size permanently via the browser’s settings, or on-the-fly using the keyboard commands Ctrl+ / - (Windows) or Command+ / - (Mac). Until recently, these commands would cause all major browsers to scale up or down the size of the text while retaining the formatting and layout of the page, commonly called text scaling or text zooming . Now, however, recent versions of every major browser now default to page zooming instead of text scaling for Ctrl+ / - and Command+ / - commands AND for the “Zoom” option in the browser’s menu. Page zooming literally zooms the entire page — layout, formatting, and text size — in unison. … Read the rest here

June

Adactio Go to the source

This is a busy month for conferences. UX London just wrapped up. I went along on Monday to listen to the stellar line-up of speakers before the subsequent two days of workshops kicked off. It was, as expected, fantastic. Judging from the scuttlebutt on Twitter , a good time was had by all for three straight days. … Read the rest here

June

Adactio Go to the source

This is a busy month for conferences. UX London just wrapped up. I went along on Monday to listen to the stellar line-up of speakers before the subsequent two days of workshops kicked off. It was, as expected, fantastic. Judging from the scuttlebutt on Twitter , a good time was had by all for three straight days… Read the rest here

Unite

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Today, Opera launched it’s jewel in the Opera 10 crown: Unite . Around 3 years in the making, this service and it’s API s allow you to easily share content from your computer to the world at large or just a select group of friends. It’s an ad-hoc personal webserver where you just choose a service (Photos, Media, Files. etc) and tell it where that content is – Unite does the rest. Lawrence Eng’s post on labs.opera.com does a great job of explaining Unite further. I was a little nervous that the marketing talk (“Reinvent the web”, “servers belonging to strangers”) would distract from what is a great fun service and idea. … Read the rest here

Unite

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Today, Opera launched it’s jewel in the Opera 10 crown: Unite . Around 3 years in the making, this service and it’s API s allow you to easily share content from your computer to the world at large or just a select group of friends. It’s an ad-hoc personal webserver where you just choose a service (Photos, Media, Files. etc) and tell it where that content is – Unite does the rest. Lawrence Eng’s post on labs.opera.com does a great job of explaining Unite further. I was a little nervous that the marketing talk (“Reinvent the web”, “servers belonging to strangers”) would distract from what is a great fun service and idea. … Read the rest here