home portfolio what I'm reading

What I'm reading...

A List Apart

Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web
You’ve probably heard that Apple recently released the iPad. The absence of Flash Player on the device seems to have awakened the HTML5 vs. Flash debate. Apparently, it’s the final nail in the coffin for Flash. Either that, or the HTML5 community is overhyping its still nascent markup language update. The arguments run wide, strong, and legitimate on both sides. Yet both sides might also be wrong. Designer/developer Dan Mall is equally adept at web standards and Flash; what matters, he says, isn't technology, but people.
Date:
Web Standards for E-books
E-books aren’t going to replace books. E-books are books, merely with a different form. More and more often, that form is ePub, a format powered by standard XHTML. As such, ePub can benefit from our nearly ten years’ experience building standards-compliant websites. That's great news for publishers and standards-aware web designers. Great news for readers, too. Our favorite genius, Joe Clark, explains the simple why and how.
Date:
Accent Folding for Auto-Complete
Another generation of technology has passed and Unicode support is almost everywhere. The next step is to write software that is not just “internationalized” but truly multilingual. In this article we will skip through a bit of history and theory, then illustrate a neat hack called accent-folding. Accent-folding has its limitations but it can help make some important yet overlooked user interactions work better.
Date:
Training the Butterflies: Interview with Scott Berkun
Whether it’s in front of a huge audience or a handful of executives, smooth public speaking is essential to a successful web design career. Yet most of us are more afraid of speaking in public than we are of death. In a lively give-and-take, Liz Danzico interviews Scott Berkun, author of Confessions of a Public Speaker, for tips on how to prepare for public speaking, how to perfect your timing, and what to do when bad things happen.
Date:
Words that Zing
When someone consults a website, there is a precious opportunity not only to provide useful information but also to influence their decision. To make the most of this opportune moment, we must ensure that the site says or does precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. Understanding the rhetorical concept of kairos can help us craft a context for the opportune moment and hit the mark with appropriately zingy text.
Date:

All Web Design Resources

Got (Photoshop) Gadgets? Part II
More Cool Gadgets This week wraps up our series on Photoshop gadgets for websites. These gadgets are quite generic and can be used in many different sorts of applications. The accompanying tutorials are straightforward and detailed. The more difficult ones will take more time to build, but the results will be worth it. Enjoy! Digital MP3 Player This [...]
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:42:53 +0000
Got (Photoshop) Gadgets? Part I
Spruce Up Your Website Are you tired of the same old button gadgets everyone else uses on their websites? If you are, here are a few gadgets you can create in Photoshop that may bring some bling to your webpages. A big thanks to Hongkiat for assembling most of these tutorials. Flash Drive Gadget For all those tech [...]
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 2010 00:30:14 +0000
Things You Won’t Hear About Successful Web Designers - Part II
Got Customers? Take the case of “Jesse,” a brilliant web designer. It’s obvious that he has serious skills in design and can run circles around other web designers when it comes to talent. But oddly enough, he doesn’t have many customers. On more than one occasion he tells his customers that he is “overworked” and complains about [...]
Date: Fri, 15 Jan 2010 23:29:27 +0000
Things You Won’t Hear About Successful Web Designers - Part I
What You Need If you ask most employed web designers what factors were most important in their development as a web designer you’ll probably hear “experience” and “school” at the top of their lists. Outside of coding skills there are other elements that make a web designer successful. The following traits are things that you won’t usually [...]
Date: Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:42:39 +0000
How to Select a Good Web Design College
Some Guidelines and Tips If you are seriously considering going to college for your graphic design education or web design degree you already know that there are no shortages of available colleges, universities, and online education centers that constantly vie for your attention. But how can you distinguish between the good schools and the bad ones? [...]
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:05:02 +0000

Bokardo

Are You Fun to Follow on Twitter?
Over at Harvard Business Review, Tammy Erickson observes most tweets are not very interesting: Frankly, most people’s tweets are neither interesting nor fun to read — certainly not on a daily or hourly basis. Many, not at all. I say this with no condemnation, since I admit mine are pretty lousy, too. And I have [...]
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:36:15 +0000
Five User Experience Trends
Since my blog has been broken a lot recently I missed this excellent overview of Five User Experience trends by Gene Smith. I can’t help but agree with all of them: Services as Software – Gene is one of the first people in the UX industry to admit that good enough, fast and cheap tools [...]
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:22:35 +0000
Google: Forms & Landing Pages are Key
A fascinating post by Googler Gavin Doolan: If you are considering making changes to your website design, take a moment to consider the potential revenue impact of your redesign. (This graph) shows a theoretical overview of the ROI impact of various parts of your website. I love that: “theoretical overview”. In other words, they really have no [...]
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:01:22 +0000
Dreamers of Day
I recently posted this quote on the 52weeksofUX site, but I like it so much I’m going to post it here as well: “All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds Awake to find that it was vanity; But the dreamers of day are dangerous men. That they [...]
Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:25:15 +0000
On the Origins of Avatars
As I sit looking at Tweetdeck this morning, scanning over 40 avatars of people I know and don't know, I wonder how much of my interaction is influenced by what a particular avatar looks like. Am I more willing to converse with someone who has a realistic avatar? A smiling avatar? Does the offbeat, non-human, text-based avatar inspire better communication or worse?
Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:47:11 +0000