Webdesigninformer.com

Eric Meyer Go to the source

After the blackout on Wednesday, it seems that the political tides are shifting against SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act—as of this writing, there are now more members of Congress in opposition to the bills than in favor. That’s good news. I wil reiterate something I said on Twitter, though: the members of tech community, particularly those who are intimately familiar with the basic protocols of the Internet, need to keep working on ways to counteract SOPA/PIPA. What form that would take, I’m not sure. Maybe a truly distributed DNS system, one that can’t be selectively filtered by any one government or other entity. I’m not an expert in the area, so I don’t actually know if that’s feasible… Read the rest here

Snook Go to the source

It is once again that time of year where I reflect on the year that has passed and contemplate the year the come. Professionally On a professional level, this has been a fantastic year but still not without its ups and downs. This year capped my second and final year with Yahoo!. Yahoo! has been a great experience for me and exposed me to an environment that I hadn’t worked in before. I was able to work with large teams on a large scale across multiple products. To know that I had a big part to play in the success of those projects is very rewarding. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

Here’s a great find from the dusty depths of YouTube – a British Transport promotional film from 1955. Not only does this feature Tweed (plus fours much in attendance), cycling, a fantastic soundtrack, railways and country pubs, it’s also filmed around the area I grew up in Warwickshire. So if you need an antidote to haggard looking men or hipsters doing trackstands on their fixies*, this is it! Part One Part Two Via the Tweed Cycling Club *I do love Rapha and fixie videos too, its just that, well, this is the complete opposite . Tagged: britain , cycling , films , retro … 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

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

Wow, Little Printer from BERG is such a stellar little example of making something simple and fun. Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day. You configure Little Printer from your phone, and there’s some great content to choose from — it’s what Little Printer delivers that makes it really special. We have an incredible group of launch partners, and in the run-up to shipping we’re working with them all on custom publications. It makes mini personal newspapers! Count me in. Just watch the video and tell me you couldn’t see using one of these things… 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

Jason Santa Maria Go to the source

by Jessica Hische My love affair with candy has been lifelong, and while each year I seem to have a new favorite, there’s one variable that unites them all—they are not chocolate. I’m almost cartoonish in my ladydom in so many ways, but a lover of chocolate I am not. That’s not to say that I don’t occasionally crave a Mast Brothers’ masterpiece, but if I had to choose a desert island treat, it would likely be fruity, tart, or even flowery. Essentially any candy that you can clearly envision rotting your teeth to the core, that is what I want. … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

I’ve been following the announcements of the new Windows 8 UI (and particularly ‘Metro’) this week with great interest. I think they’ve done a fantastic job with Metro, it really looks like a fresh start UI wise. One detail stood out in particular. In the screenshots I noticed that they’ve adopted the Open Share Icon in their UI. To fill you in, the Open Share Icon came about after the original share icon was purchased by the company that provides the ShareThis service. While still licensed for public use, some people felt this wasn’t in the spirit of the thing, and decided to create a completely open version instead . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Ethan Marcotte: The Boston Globe : Ethan Marcotte, who was an important member of a team full of important members, describing the anticipation leading up to the responsive overhauling of BostonGlobe.com : It’s been kind of a weird experience, talking publicly for the better part of this year about a site that hadn’t yet launched. I mean, I was—and still am—incredibly proud of the small contributions I made, of the talented team I collaborated with, but still: talking about a site that hasn’t launched yet? There’s some part of me that’s felt, well, odd about that. What if people’s expectations aren’t met? What if we can’t deliver? What if the Internet gets hit by an exploding unicorn and we somehow don’t finish the project because NO MORE INTERNET YOU GUYS…… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

The New Design : Naz Hamid: Let’s say for a moment print design is on its way out — traditional mass magazines and publishing houses will shutter and move toward a screen-based medium. The current crop of designers coming out of school are ill-equipped to design for screens — especially screens that change as fast as they’re released. … 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

Andy Budd Go to the source

As somebody who has publically stated that they “don’t care about user experience” and is fed up of “defining the dammed thing” I find myself being drawn into discussions about the term far more often than I’d like. Some designers think that user experience is just a made up name and that we’re all user experience designers really. Others think that User Experience is a term used by consultants to trick clients out of money and would prefer it we all just stuck to the title of web designer. Some feel that user experience is simply common sense design while others see it as a land grab to own the fun bit of the design process. This is all complete nonsense of course, which is why I keep getting drawn into an argument I don’t really want to have and one that isn’t especially beneficial to the industry. It’s obviously nonsense to argue that the field of UX design doesn’t exist as there are hundreds of books and conferences devoted to the practice, tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people with UX in their job title and an unfathomable number of blog posts about the subject… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

I can’t wait to give these away (Apple guidelines duly noted ). The boxes above have been in my office for more than a month. This Friday at midnight Eastern time the Authentic Jobs Touchscreen Tussle contest ends, and shortly after an iPad 2 with (RED)™ Smart Cover will be awarded to three of you. I hope it’s you. And you and you… Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Puzzld! : Jacob Souva, who did the illustration for Funny Bugs , did the illustrations for this beautiful app for kids ages (I would guess) 2 to 5. Via Veerle Pieters, who just published an interview with Jacob . … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte : I have an advance copy in hand, and I can’t wait for this to be released to the general public on June 7. Ten bucks says it outsells the first A Book Apart title, HTML5 for Web Designers , which I’m fairly certain did extremely well. … Read the rest here

Cameron Moll Go to the source

Public Gothic : Really liking this typeface, and really loving how they presented it using vintage metal oil cans. /via Mark Wyner … Read the rest here

Hicksdesign Go to the source

In all the recent busyness I haven’t had a chance to let you folks know that I’m still updating the Dr Who Calendar Feed for Season 6, letting you know when the episodes are on BBC1. As I find out episode titles and broadcast times, I’m adding these along the way. This season is a little unknown, as the episodes are being split into two – the second half being show in the Autumn, so this only covers the first half for now. Note that Episode 3 is being shown at the slightly later time of 6:15pm – it wouldn’t be Dr Who if they weren’t messing with the schedules every week… Tagged: drwho … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

The rise of smart devices like the iPhone and iPad has led to an application goldrush, with companies racing to stake their claims. In the early days we saw a few lucky pioneers strike gold with novelty apps. There were also a handful of independent developers and well-known brands that invested in user experience and captured the high end of the market. However, as with most goldrushes, the obvious targets were depleted very quickly. Digital prospectors are arriving to find a very different market, one rife with competition and few obvious deposits to mine. Furthermore, our appetite for apps seems to be dwindling as we fall back on a few must-have staples. … Read the rest here

Andy Budd Go to the source

I’ve been coming to SXSW for 7 years and I’ve seen it change from a small and intimate event to the tech sector’s equivalent of Glastonbury. Back then bloggers were king and CSS2.1 was the hot technology of the day. Today the conference has gone from 2,500 people to an astonishing 25,000. Blogging is considered old hat, and the new tech superstars are the start-up founders, the professional publishers and the best selling authors. … Read the rest here

Mezzoblue Go to the source

How does a photo of a fruit fly breeding chamber lead to the discovery of one’s own lineage back to 14th century France? That’s not a question I’d ever have thought to ask, but this evening I found an answer after following the most fascinating click trail in, well, ever. It started with an idle perusal of recent Flickr photos from my contacts. Jeremy Keith is currently in Chicago for DrupalCon, and after a page of tantalizing food and architectural photos, I found myself back in Brighton looking at his photos from a laboratory-related exhibit at the Lighthouse Gallery. One especially mundane photo in particular caught my eye, his capture of a placard on a fruit fly breeding chamber . … Read the rest here