This is a collection of the articles I've written over the past 8 years, I've edited and tidied them up for clarity. I also got rid of a lot of older, less relevant (read: stupid) articles. I'm going for clean, and quality.
You know you're doing something right when your interface is clearly better than Apple's. Sparrow for Mac did it and now Sparrow for iPhone has too.
Categories: Web Responsive
A quick rundown / stream of consciousness about the different use cases and contexts that *should* govern how we think about responsive web design. There is a definite lack in technology preventing responsive design from being the amazing revolution that it should be.
I often harp on about how responsive web design is MORE than just adaptive CSS layouts. I believe that we should be building websites that contextually respond to the device/screen size in question.
Categories: Web
A quick look at a the UI decision at Google to not have a status bar, nor a window border on OSX and its effect on web design. Basically, I think it's hard to make a website look well grounded with the new google application UI.. so here's a solution.
Categories: Web
On a VPS (with the usual sparse memory allocation), it's important to minimise memory usage wherever possible. The Django FCGIs for http://the-hive-mind.com got completely annihilated by metafilter.org a few weeks ago – leading me to explore caching and optimisation options.
Categories: Web
A brief rant about the web designer/developer obsession with validation. Both other developers/designers and clients are constantly asking about validation. But is it really important? The purist in me says yes.. but the pragmatist says no.
A medium to advanced user’s tutorial for using Jquery to display a set of RSS headlines as links in a widget on your page. There are code samples on this page, however if you want to follow along easier, here is the complete final file (it’s all in one HTML file for ease of use - obviously you’ll want to separate your JS and CSS out into external files..)
The term semantic markup has become another of today’s buzzwords. People always talk about it, but few of them really understand the concept. The problem is unless you’re a philosopher, the idea of semantics is about as meaningful as metaphysics.
Categories: Apple
Digital Color Meter is basically your Photoshop colour picker for your entire mac desktop. Gone are the days where I needed to open a PSD just to work out the hex codes for a colour off a site.
I believe holds true is that the responsibility for spam provention should be the developers, not the user. In short, I hate and completely disagree with “captcha” style spam protection on forms. As a user I find sometimes, in attempt to make the image in unreadable by a computer that the text is so obscure I find it difficult to read myself.
Categories: Web
Having been a web developer (professionally and for fun) for the better part of ten years now, I’ve watched the art of making websites change significantly. This post is a stream of consciousness about the web industry and standards.. hopefully these things change in the future.
A really simple (and old/obvious) tutorial for building an accessible HTML menu using a CSS styled UL - common practice. Styling the nav of a site is something we do.. well, everytime we build a site. The nav of a site is one if the most important (and often most neglected) elements. So what can we do to make sure our nav is as accessible as possible?
The original blog post about monitter.com
Categories: Rants
A look at photo libraries from behind the lens. **Designers hate plagiarism.. it steals our worth. Stock libraries are killing photographers.. but designers still love them.. why? ** This article is a reflection on the pros and cons of stock photography.
After reading a post over at Jonathon Snook's blog about CSS resets (which I also don’t use). I found myself thinking about whether I care if my designs are implemented pixel perfect in all browsers. The short answer is: no. Pixel perfection is a thing of the past - pure and simple. The mantra "content is king" isn't just a mantra anymore - pixel perfection was never relevant. But now it's absurd.
Categories: Web
Everyone knows Google Analytics is free. It’s extensive. It works well. Like all Google applications, it’s interface is dull.. filled with primary colours and non customisable. Well, I was drifting around the internet a few months back.. and I found Clicky – they offered a free account, so I figured “what the heck, I’ll give it a try”. I installed the clicky JS right after the analytics JS, figuring i’d still have my statistics in analytics (in case clicky couldn’t do what I wanted).
