Webdesigninformer.com

Cameron Moll Go to the source

After just a couple weeks of testing, I gave up on the Canon HG10 w/35mm for shooting HD video. Not only was the quality not stellar, but it’s a hack that’s cumbersome and really difficult to work with. Following an enormous amount of deliberation and questioning if so many dollar signs were really worth it, I bit the bullet and sprung for a Canon EOS 7D and some quality lenses. No mistaking, this thing shoots incredible photos and equally impressive 1080p HD video. I still have plenty to learn about the camera and photography in general, but so far I’m really pleased with it… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool . At first glance, it looked like just another FFFF ound , Ember or Img Spark , but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense. Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDF s), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’… Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool . At first glance, it looked like just another FFFF ound , Ember or Img Spark , but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense. Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDF s), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

One of the problems of working in the knowledge economy is the constant need to keep abreast of current trends and thinking. This would be fine if you worked in a mature industry or one with a limited number of books, papers and conferences appearing each year. However in the knowledge economy of the web, more information is being published every day than could be consumed in a year. What’s more, that pace is increasing. The problem is exacerbated by a number of things. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

Last year, the good people at Web Directions asked me if I would like to write an article for the second issue of their Scroll magazine —an honest-to-goodness dead-tree publication. I told them I would be delighted. The theme of the issue was “place.” I took the word and ran with it, delivering an over-the-top pretentious piece about language, wormholes and virtual worlds. An edited version appeared in the magazine as Disrupting the conceptual metaphors of the web . I’ve published the raw, unedited version here in the articles section under its original title of There Is No “There” There . I also recorded an audio version, which clocks in at just over eight and a half minutes. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

As a self confirmed conference junkie I speak at a dozen events each year, and attend many more. As such I’ve probably seen close to a thousand talks over the last five years. Because of this I’ve got a pretty good idea what makes for an exciting talk and how you can guarantee your session will suck. As somebody who also organises two conferences, UX London and dConstruct I’m really keen on getting new talent into the speaking circuit while still maintaining quality. As such I’ve put together a quick guide to help both new and experienced speakers kick arse/ass. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

I’ve been doing a fair bit of yakking lately, all recorded for posterity. First off, I had a chat with Tim from Design Critique on Ajax design considerations , mostly recapping what I talked about UI13 last year. Jeremy Keith on Ajax design considerations on Huffduffer After that, I had a natter with Ross from Web Axe , this time focusing on practical web accessibility . Web Axe Episode 75: Jeremy Keith interview, Google Wave on Huffduffer Then Andy , Rich and I paid a visit to the Boagworld crew out in the back of beyond where we had a free-for-all five-way chat about Clearleft and Headscape . … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

During the short time that I was at dConstruct , I nipped out with Paul and Marcus to record a quick interview about HTML5. That interview has now been published in the latest episode of Boagworld , complete with transcript. Just to show how fast HTML5 can move, on the very day that we were chatting about the content model of the footer element , the spec was duly updated. Boagworld 184: html5 on Huffduffer Speaking of podcasting and dConstruct… Thanks to always excellent Drew , the audio recordings from the day are starting to roll in. You can keep an eye on the podcast page or simply subscribe to the podcast to get all the aural goodness. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

During the short time that I was at dConstruct , I nipped out with Paul and Marcus to record a quick interview about HTML5. That interview has now been published in the latest episode of Boagworld , complete with transcript. Just to show how fast HTML5 can move, on the very day that we were chatting about the content model of the footer element , the spec was duly updated. Boagworld 184: html5 on Huffduffer Speaking of podcasting and dConstruct… Thanks to always excellent Drew , the audio recordings from the day are starting to roll in. You can keep an eye on the podcast page or simply subscribe to the podcast to get all the aural goodness. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

So, remember when I posted all those episodes of Simon Singh’s Five Numbers radio series on Pownce so that they’d have permanent URLs? Yeah, well, so much for that . Fortunately Brian had saved all the MP3s. I’ve posted them on S3 and huffduffed them all. … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

So, remember when I posted all those episodes of Simon Singh’s Five Numbers radio series on Pownce so that they’d have permanent URLs? Yeah, well, so much for that . Fortunately Brian had saved all the MP3s. I’ve posted them on S3 and huffduffed them all. I can be fairly confident that Huffduffer won’t be going the way of Pownce, Magnolia, Geocities, and so many more . Anyway, if you want to listen to the fifteen episodes of the three radio series’ on mathematics, you can subscribe to the podcast at http://huffduffer.com/adactio/tags/five+numbers/rss . … Read the rest here

Adactio Go to the source

The newest episode of Radiolab has the highlights from one of their occasional live events. This one revolves around the deliberately contentious premise of television vs. radio. AV Smackdown … The Podcast on Huffduffer Seeing as Huffduffer is all about audio rather than video, you can probably guess that I’ve got a soft spot for radio. Not that I have anything against the moving image; it’s just that television, film and video demand more from your senses. Lend me your ears! and your eyes… Read the rest here

Clagnut Go to the source

This time last week I was on a United Airlines flight returning from Orange County, where m’learned colleague James Box and I were presenting at the UIE Web App Summit . We ran a workshop on Wireframing and Prototyping for Highly Interactive Web Apps in which we covered the various joys of Post-its, paper and jQuery, and presented on Using Interactive Prototyping for a Richer Web Experience in which we extolled the virtues of HTML as a design tool. On the flight home we watched Frost/Nixon , a dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon. As the credits rolled, we looked at each other and unanimously claimed the film to be ‘bloody brilliant’. Particularly marvellous were the superb portrayals of the protaganists by Michael Sheen and Frank Langella respectively. I heartily recommend it. … Read the rest here

Clagnut Go to the source

Back in January I was part of a double bill with Jon Tan , entitled Skillswap goes typographic . It went down really well so I thought I’d better tie it all together here. My talk was on “Facing up to Fonts” the blurb for which went as follows: Browser support for the typographical aspects of CSS is gradually increasing. Things are on the up. Richard will be trouncing the myth of web-safe fonts, demonstrating how to go beyond bold, detailing the technicalities of font embedding and exploring the commercial and ethical minefield therein. The introduction of font embedding in particular is a long-awaited step in the right direction… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Last Friday I played in Coudal Partner’s Layer Tennis in a east coast vs west coast brawl with Derek Powazek , a friend and one of my favorite web designers. I thought it might be fun to give some background on the match. The view from my desk during the match. For those uninitiated with Layer Tennis, the premise is simple: two players trade a Photoshop document back and forth, each player has 15 minutes to iterate on the previous “volley” however they see fit. The matches are played live on Friday afternoons, and people follow along and comment via Twitter… Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Last Friday I played in Coudal Partner’s Layer Tennis in a east coast vs west coast brawl with Derek Powazek , a friend and one of my favorite web designers. I thought it might be fun to give some background on the match. The view from my desk during the match. For those uninitiated with Layer Tennis, the premise is simple: two players trade a Photoshop document back and forth, each player has 15 minutes to iterate on the previous “volley” however they see fit. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Over five years ago, I put together a really simple tool that let you specify a foreground colour and a background colour. The tool would spit out whether it met the W3C guidelines for acceptable levels of contrast as part of AERT . A year later, I added convenient sliders for adjusting the red, green and blue (RGB) values. I decided to take a moment to update the tool with a couple new features. WCAG 2.0 The first of these is having the tool be able to calculate the contrast ratio as defined within WCAG 2.0 . The guidelines appear to be less strict than what was defined previously… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

Over five years ago, I put together a really simple tool that let you specify a foreground colour and a background colour. The tool would spit out whether it met the W3C guidelines for acceptable levels of contrast as part of AERT . A year later, I added convenient sliders for adjusting the red, green and blue (RGB) values. I decided to take a moment to update the tool with a couple new features. WCAG 2.0 The first of these is having the tool be able to calculate the contrast ratio as defined within WCAG 2.0 … Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

I’ve always loved the constraint of a 4-track cassette recorder. So when I first came across FourTrack , a simple recording app for the iPhone, I figured I’d give it a whirl. I grabbed my trusty ukulele and laid down a little tune I often play to the kids. The audio records right from the iPhone’s built-in mic. The quality is impressive. Then I grabbed my three year old son Jack’s toy percussion kit, and banged along to the uke track… Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

One of the things that I’ve found mind-bendingly annoying about Leopard (besides its complete refusal to allow classic window management) is the “this file was downloaded from the internet, are you sure you want to open it?” dialog box. Yes, damn it: I just downloaded the file with the express intent of opening it. Stop bothering me. Keep it up and I might mistake you for PC . What’s even worse is that the dialog requires mouse input to get past. It would be just within the limits of acceptability if the dialog buttons responded to keyboard input; if I could hit command-O or something to invoke “Open”, then I’d probably keep the safeguard in place, because I could just charge past it with a quick twitch of the fingers. … Read the rest here