Webdesigninformer.com

Hicksdesign Go to the source

There are a few apps that I’m particularly enjoying using at the moment, so I thought I’d share in case any of them are news to you: Choosy Choosy does a seemingly simple task, and does it very well. For a start, it provides a central preference pane to choose your default browser, but its main thrust is letting you choose which browser to open a link in. You can do this either manually via a chooser display (right), or automatically depending on order of preference. My favourite feature is ‘behaviour rules’. For example, I get emails from Opera’s internal bug tracking system, and I always want to open these in Opera, no matter what my default browser is at the time. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

First off let me apologise for the laboured metaphor I’m about to inflict on you, but I thought it could be entertaining to try and describe the web design industry using a medium I’m sure you’re all familiar with—Dungeons & Dragons. However I should point out that I’m no D&D expert, having played it last when I was 13. So please don’t leave comments to the line of “you got that all wrong as those character classes were changed in AD&D 2nd Edition, Unearthed Arcana.” or I’ll pull out my +2 broadsword and go Berserker on your ass. In the world of Dungeons & Dragons, characters could have a variety of professions such as Fighter, Thief or Magic-User. These professions were loosely related to a characters natural abilities. So if you were intelligent you’d be well suited to becoming a magic-user, whereas if you were dexterous, becoming a thief was a good option. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Gridiron League : Wes Kull: This is not an exercise in nostalgia but an interpretation of the league’s founding principles through the symbols that we, as football fans, identify with most. Many NFL franchises — Patriots, Broncos, Rams, Lions — have updated their uniforms and logos to a swooshed-out, dropped-shadowed, and more commercial-ready image, ignoring a good deal of their team’s heritage and the original rough-and-tumble character that the league stood for. … Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

Though I certainly do not support SOPA or the PROTECT IP Act (the complete, rather contrived acronym of PIPA), I will not be blacking out meyerweb. This is largely because the vast majority of my readers already know about these bills, and very likely oppose them; as for anyone who visits but does not know about these bills, I feel I’ll do better to speak out than to black out. (Which is not a criticism of those who do black out. We all fight in our own ways.) Instead, I will reproduce here the letter I attempted to send via contact form to my state Senator this morning, and which I will print out and send by regular postal service later today. Senator Brown: I grew up in Lexington, Ohio. I moved to Cleveland in pursuit of a career, and found success. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

2011 was the year that cycling replaced the “search for the right media centre” as the main blog topic at The Hickensian. I’ve been pretty much starting from scratch in terms of knowledge, and gleaning information from all sorts of sources. Here are just some of things I’ve learnt this year: There are Rules . 87 of them in fact. … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I hesitate putting this information out there as I’m not sure what its relevance is. I merely note it as interesting, especially in light of gender inequality in our field. In number crunching the people who have purchased a SMACSS e-book or site membership, I’ve noticed that the numbers are heavily skewed in one direction: 94.5% of the purchases are by men. That means only 5.5% of purchases were by women. I wonder if there is anything in the way that I’ve presented the information that has turned women off from buying the book. Since I market the book under my personal ‘brand’, especially via Twitter, I wonder if my particular following is also heavily skewed towards men (I suspect it is). … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

The Icon Handbook is now available to buy . Here’s what it looks like: This is a book that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. Whenever I’ve looked for a book on this subject, the only available publications are reference guides that simply reproduce as many symbols as possible. Where books have gone into theory, they were published decades before desktop computers, and therefore miss the most relevant and active context of icon use. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Todays 24ways article is Displaying Icons with Fonts and Data- Attributes , taken partly from Chapter 6 of the upcoming Icon Handbook , but rewritten to fit to the 24ways format. Instead of using the traditional route of PNG s, web fonts offer a scalable and resolution independent solution. Combined with HTML5 data attributes, you can create one CSS rule to style them all in one go. This article covers both the advantages and disadvantages of the technique. Thanks must go to Drew Wilson who helped me understand how to use data attributes. He created Pictos the excellent icon font used in the article, and his experience in making Pictos was a valuable source of research… Read the rest here

Eric Meyer Go to the source

Back on Tuesday, A List Apart opened the 2011 edition of The Survey for People Who Make Web Sites , the fifth annual effort to learn more about the people who work in the web industry. If you haven’t taken it yet, please do so! It should take about ten minutes I’m proud to have been a part of this effort since its inaugural launch back in 2007. It’s a major undertaking, mostly in analyzing the data and turning that into a detailed report, but it’s more than worth the time and effort. Before the Survey, we really didn’t know very much about who we were as a field of practice, and without it we wouldn’t have as clear a picture of who we are today. There have been growing pains, of course, chief among them UCCASS , the survey software we’ve been using since the outset. Its limitations and lack of updates finally pushed us to find another platform, and we chose to move over to Polldaddy . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

It’s clear by now dust is gathering at this domain. I’ve been okay with that, and will continue to be okay with it, but only a little longer. I’ve been swamped with obligations on my current projects and have traveled much more than usual. I’ll visit NYC for the third time in a month starting next week, for example. More importantly, I’ve realized I need to realign the focus of this site. The tumblog, light-narrative format is definitely enjoyable, and it’s helped me blog more frequently, as well. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Just in case you were under the impression that type design or typography are easy, I suggest you try out Kern Type and Shape Type , two fun game from Mark MacKay for Method of Action . Each game tasks you with correcting default and malformed spacing, and then ranks you against the correct solution. It’s instructive and humbling! Hug your designer today. … Read the rest here

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

We’re very excited to release not one, but two, new A Book Apart titles today. We’re finishing up our publishing year with a big splash; first with Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter , and next with Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski . These guys are both personal UX/design heroes of mine and their books really hit home. Here’s an appetizer from the back cover of Aarron’s book: Make your users fall in love with your site via the precepts packed into this brief, charming book by MailChimp user experience design lead Aarron Walter. From classic psychology to case studies, highbrow concepts to common sense, Designing for Emotion demonstrates accessible strategies and memorable methods to help you make a human connection through design… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Recently I pulled this form letter out of storage. It’s one of my favorite mementos of Grandpa Moll. An independent contractor later in life, he probably sent this to companies in the surrounding area, most likely larger cities such as Reno, Nevada, as his quaint home town of Markleeville, California had only about 150 residents at the time. Back when I did client work as a freelancer, I would often describe myself as a pinch-hitter . In baseball, a pinch-hitter substitutes for another player when the coach feels the substitute player may perform a specific duty, such as bunting or base running, better than the player he replaces. Not that the pinch-hitter is better overall than the other player, just that he might have a better shot at succeeding in a specific scenario or critical play in a close game… Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

Over the last few years I’ve noticed a strange and disturbing trend amongst web practitioners. There was a time—not so long ago—when passionate individuals would blog about their work for no other reason than to share their discoveries. The more prolific of these individuals built up an online reputation and became seen as experts. Some of the more articulate ones were asked to write books or present their thoughts at conferences, and received a modicum of success. After years of sharing their knowledge freely, some were able to capitalise on their notoriety by securing jobs at interesting companies or setting up small agencies. A few even managed to make a living off publishing books and speaking at conferences, although how they managed this is anybodies guess… Read the rest here

SimpleBits Go to the source

There’s no doubt that employing a mobile first , responsive design approach to a new project is a wonderful way forward for many sites. I think the most exciting thing about seeing these best practices develop over the last few years is that it finally feels like web design. Finally. That we’re not designing sheets of paper that happen to be on screen. So yes, for new projects under the right circumstances a responsive plan is often the ideal… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader : Neato. An in-browser reader. Now I can read my Kindle books on every piece of Apple hardware I own. Update: @ nicjohnson informs me they’ve already got Kindle for Mac in the App Store, while John Gruber explains why a non-native web app is probably a response to Apple’s new rules . … Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about CSS architecture these days. One thing in particular that has crossed my mind is how to handle certain situations. For example, we want to hide content on the page and then reveal it (or vice versa). In JavaScript, this is relatively straightforward: get an element, and apply a class or remove a class to change the state of the element. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

A Word About Unsolicited Redesigns : Khoi Vinh, former design director for NYTimes.com: Unsolicited redesigns are terrific and fun and useful, and I hope designers never stop doing them. But as they do so, I also hope they remember it helps no one — least of all the author of the redesign — to assume the worst about the original source and the people who work hard to maintain and improve it, even though those efforts may seem imperfect from the outside. If you have good ideas and the talent to execute them and argue for them, the world will still sit up and pay attention even if you take care in your language and show respect to those who don’t see things quite the way you do. Consider this my public apology for so quickly embracing one side of the argument and failing to contemplate the other. Update: Some of you are suggesting I shouldn’t apologize. Aside from that being a matter of my own choosing, I believe we sell ourselves short if we consider only one side of an argument, especially in matters of design and UX. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Andy Rutledge: Redesigning NYTimes.com : Andy Rutledge: Regarding content strategy and mechanism, today’s ‘news’ is rife with irrelevancies and distractions. Part of this is due to the news industry’s abandonment of actual journalism, but much of it is due to thoughtless promotional strategy and pathetic pandering. I suggest that digital news acquire a responsible and more usable approach. Andy’s arguments and mockups are both very well-conceived — I would love to see online journalism (all of it, not just NYT) head in this direction. His design concepts are fabulous. I do believe, however, there should be an affordance for social components in news media, which Andy leaves out of his concepts… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

The Village : You already know I’m a sucker for timelapse tilt-shift. This short piece by Pedro Sousa reminds of the HO scale train sets I made as a kid. /via Paul Mayne … Read the rest here