Sometimes conventions adopted by many unrelated sites across the web help make sites more friendly and familiar for visitors. That is certainly the case with adoption of the orange feed icon across the web.
It is such a good idea to develop ‘standard’ icons that there are now multiple ‘standard’ share icons and behaviors.
- Share Icon Project
- Open Share Icon Project
The later project started in part due to licensing and ownership issues with ShareThis’s graphics, which is something I’m sympathetic to, however at what point do we have too many conventions that the behavior of these conventions remains a mystery to visitors?
Molly recently lamented that twitter has sucked the blogging out of her. I’ve been feeling the same way for some time, though I was never as prolific a writer has she is. Though for me I think it was Web 2.0 that has sucked the blogging out of me, and unfortunately the slow down isn’t all that recent.
Bookmarks hidden in one service, interesting news stories in another, photos and other content in yet another. I tried to remedy that with the creation of a tumblelog-like Place Name Where but I never did get it integrated into this site beyond tag searches and so it never felt like part of any discussion that might take place here.
So where to next? The basic tumblelog format doesn’t appeal to me, nor does simply putting a bunch of widgets on page or daily “this is what I bookmarked today” posts along side of any blog content. That kind of leaves most existing solutions behind. I’m not quite sure what form this site will end up in when I’m done or what purpose it will serve. But I do want to start playing again and posting more doodles or pieces of what I’m playing with for others to see.
In the mean time I also have a backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to write or finish writing, some even describing subtle features of the current design [open the site in a browser, not a feed reader and resize the width!]. I may revisit those ideas as a way to get some activity here again and get myself back into the habit of posting on web dev stuff.
Things are getting a little old and dusty around here as a result of me being quite busy with work as well as contributing more elsewhere on sites like flickr, ma.gnolia and newsvine.
To honor its crusty-ness I’ve aged the site’s color palette some, like a fine, aged, um, newspaper? Enjoy.
The above screenshot of a page from The Jersey Journal shows one of the most annoying web advertising I’ve come across in some time. Whether on purpose, or due to some insane twist of [random] fate the page in question displayed the same auto-playing video ad with audio in two ad spots on the page. Due to page load being what it is the audio was staggered by half a second or so making the unexpected audio even more obnoxious. Particularly as it was loaded in a background tab so I didn’t know where the sound was coming from at first.
The page also gets bonus points for displaying ads for police recruitment on a story about a highly decorated cop getting arrested.
They do. really do, and I never do a good enough job of pointing their efforts out. So here are a few new products to check out.
Davin Risk’s new print on demand photo book I have been where you are just arrived. 118 pages of great photos, some from his Flickr stream.
Samia Saleem and many other designers originally from the New Orleans area have gotten together to create the Degrees of Separation project and together have released a postcard book with their post Katrina responses with some proceeds going to local AIGA efforts.
Jemma and the team at Sans Nom have just posted images of a sweet new laser etched skateboard deck for Refill Magazine’s 7 Laserdeck Skateboard Show. Photos on the site are a must see.
Hey look, I did it!
After roughly six months of sitting on a design I was happy with I’ve found both the time and ambition to finish building an update to Place Name Here. Not quite sure what version of the site this is, but 6 seemed like a good number when I started.
Like with all previous versions of the site the new layout is fairly simple, and doesn’t use a lot of images or tricks to play things up. This site always proves to be difficult to rebuild in a uniform way because of the patchwork of different side projects, and technical demos that have been posted since the site first launched in late 1998. The new design and slightly rearranged navigation will hopefully help give a better perspective of what is hiding on the site.
Though not glitzy, there are a few tricks hiding in the new design which I’ll cover in detail in a future post. One element in particular is the code used to create a “liquid” like layout via JavaScript. If you are reading this and seeing a two column layout the left column is made of content that has been pulled out of the main column and repositioned to fill the gap on the left. This is similar to using floats where content will stack if there isn’t enough room to go side by side, but in this method I can pull content from anywhere in the flow of the main column depending on the given page — introduction content from the top, extra content from the bottom, or something I’d like to highlight from the middle.
Another new site feature is the beginning of better integration with the aggregated content on Place Name Where?. This can be seen in the combined tag searches found on pages such as the PHP tag page. This was really what I build the mechanics behind PNW for, but hadn’t gotten to any implementation before this redesign.
More about the guts of the site can be found in the updated colophon. Please take the new look for a spin and let me know what you think in the comments.
Andy Clarke has posted a quick write up of his approach to browser testing new site designs. Though a bit of a simplification, he follows a line that looks similar to:
- Gecko
- Safari
- IE 7
- Opera
- IE 6
And then trails in with testing the stragglers at various degrees based on spec, but always for at least access to content. I don’t have too much to add to that other then I agree. When I’m coding I will typically be working on my mac with Camino open (it always is), Firefox (for the DOM Inspector + JS console) and Safari. When the page is stable in those I will turn to IE/Win (flipping between 6 or 7, depending on which box I’ve got easiest access to) and then work out from that base. The only real difference in our approach is that more often then not I still give IE5/Mac style information.
Last Thursday I had attended the one day course on presenting information by Edward Tufte.
The full day lecture style talk consisted of jumping through 4 of his books (which are included in the cost of the day) as he takes you through his thesis about how to present data and information so that it is understandable, credible, and in context.
Review of Edward Tufte's Course
Some may only know Tufte for his anti-powerpoint position (or those who don’t know him, key in on PP like in these slashdot comments), and he surely is that, but its only as part of a bigger thesis about presenting information in ways that aid digestion and understanding. A big part of which is the notion that data is inherently multi-dimensional and textured and partial sentences as bullet items or 3D rainbow bar charts filled with “chart junk” are too “low resolution” of a device to convey any of that.
The 360 dollar question for me going into the day was that though I was sure it would be an interesting day, would it at all be relevant to me as a web site builder. Its now a few days later and I’d have to say a qualified yes, tough not always directly. If I had the need to prepare a lot of presentations or regularly work in a data heavy industry (vs. more marketing or application type products) I’d say the answer was easily yes. But while I don’t, the day did solidify some things about general information consumption as well as plant a few seeds in my head. It also peaked my interest in a few new tools like sparklines, and a really new tool called paper—both used to convey a high density information in small spaces.
If you have the opportunity I’d definitely recommend attending one of his future lectures. Though much if not all of the material was covered in his books (one of which I was already familiar with), I thought the emphasis and complete picture provided by Edward Tufte in person was worth the time out of my typical work week.
Now, I just hope I don’t take too much more time out of my day reading through his site’s message board.
