by Tracy Brady of Modernista! and Matt FaJohn of FL2
“The Goal... the National Park Foundation needed a digital experience that could drive action and involvement—primarily in the form of email submissions and donations.”
There seems to be no shortage of new (new to the market or new to me) web design related applications appearing weekly if not daily. I'm always looking for ways to do things more efficiently without sacrificing quality. Unfortunately finding the time to try out these apps and assess whether or not they are worth the time and cost is difficult. I'm guessing most people don't change the applications they use unless they encounter a catastrophe and are forced to change. To help cut through the clutter I look to fellow web designs, and people in the industry, for reviews and recommendations. The following is a list of a few potentially useful web design related applications I've come across over that past few weeks. All come recommended although not by me until I do my own due diligence. If you've used any of them or prefer something else I'd love to hear about it.
Mockingbird
An online tool that makes it easy for you to create, link together, preview, and share mockups of your website or application.
(via multiple twitter sources)
User Testing
The fastest way to watch and hear real people using your website
(via bokardo)
ABtests
Learn. Share. Improve your conversions today.
(via bokardo)
skEdit
Simple, Flexible, Powerful Text Editor for the Web
(via jessebc)
Billings3
Time billing + invoicing
(via Noah Stokes)
Four recent write-ups on how to use CSS @font-face.
@font-face in Depth by Zoltan Du Lac
Starting with @font-face from Dave Shea
Bulletproof @font-face syntax by Paul Irish
Screencast: Converting OTF or TTF to EOT by Jonathan Snook
Web Design conferences such as SXSW and An Event Apart, to name two of the many, have always been a source of current trends and best practices from experts. These multiple day events average around $1,000 (plus hotel and travel). With the slow economy budgets are tight and attendance to conferences has most likely dropped. This opens the door for workshops offered at half the price with one or two experts covering a single topic. The following are examples (past and present) of workshops that have filled a void.
Designing for the Web workshops (£325 - full day)
Practical, applicable design theory
Presented by Mark Boulton
Handcrafted CSS ($450 - full day)
A Day of Markup & Style
Presented by Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte
For a Beautiful Web - Master classes (£373.75 - full day)
Advanced CSS styling
Presented by Andy Clarke
Adaptive Path Virtual Seminars ($129 - 60 minutes)
The Basics of Information Architecture
Presented by Chiara Fox Ogan.
Forty Training Sessions (Free?)
Mood board development, creation, and interpretation
Presented by Amy Lamp
A few things that caught me eye and made me think.
Browsers
Google Chrome Frame - A browser plug-in that enables HTML5 on Internet Explorer.
Why Corporations Don’t Upgrade IE6 and How Chrome Frame Could Help
Google Has A Solution For Internet Explorer: Turn It Into Chrome
Also some talk of accessibility issues with Google Chrome Frame.
ContinuedI put together a quick example of CSS3 @font-face with open-source type from The League of Moveable Type - Junction, Chunk and Sorts Mill Goudy. If your audience uses current browsers this font embedding option has great potential. View the example
Screenshots of how things look in a Firefox 3.5 which supports @font-face and in IE7 which does not.
You've designed and coded a website and now you want to see how it looks across multiple browsers and platforms. What's the fastest, easiest and best way to test? If you have the resources you could install all of the browsers on all of the platforms you are developing for. Another option would be to use a web based service that does most of the hard work for you in a few clicks. The following is a review of four major web based browser capture services.
ContinuedI read web design related articles daily via the usual sources (google reader, twitter, etc.) and feel I have a good pulse on the community. Most of these articles are positive and say great things about a website, designer, product or service. An equal amount are negative and critical of a company or service. Rarely is an article critical of an individual website or designer.
There seems to be an unwritten rule to avoid honest opinions if they may be perceived as negative which unfortunately is at the expense of some real insight and understanding. Lets face it, there is less risk in saying nice things, following the popular opinion and sugar coating things. At the same time it's always open season for negative articles towards easy targets like Microsoft and Google. Overall everyone plays is safe - "your the best.. no, your the best" or "Microsoft is evil." So when I come across a real article that cuts through the niceties and tells it like it is I read it many times, add it to delicious and post it on my blog.
The following article by Noah Stokes is that "reality check" article. The successful Web Designers are doing well for themselves and not grumbling about bad clients and IE6. These same Web Designers are successful because they are professional - they consistently do great work, they share their knowledge, they add to the web design community and they promote the profession. No whining and excuses. They actively look to make things better rather than sitting around complaining about things that are not going to change any time soon. Prime examples are Dan Cederholm (as mentioned below), Jeffrey Zeldman and Paul Boag to name just a few.
Read The State of the Web Design Profession by Noah Stokes
My initial thoughts - very Flash like animation and Google is confident HTML5 will be the standard. Also the tagline "Not your mother's JavaScript" is somewhat funny although hard to picture.
"we wanted to create a showcase for innovative uses of web browsers and JavaScript... We're very excited about HTML5 becoming standard in modern browsers."
The Font-as-Service is a balanced and up-to-date overview of font delivery services (Typekit, Typotheque and Fontdeck) by Elliot Jay Stocks at ilovetypography.com.
"we are now entering the age of the font-as-service: where the font becomes synonymous with web hosting, mobile data plans, and movie rentals." - Elliot Jay Stocks
A review of Smashing Magazine - An online magazine for web designers and developers.
The Good
Smashing Magazine has current and relevant articles on web design related topics. They must scan the web (blogs and twitter) to see what the hot topics are and quickly craft a story. Are they experts on the subject matter? It's hard to tell. On many articles the authors are not well known names. The author of "The Roadmap To Becoming A Professional Freelance Web Designer" describes herself as "a 20 yr. old college student" so I'm not sure how much freelance experience she has. The following article was co-written by Jeremy Keith who is clealry and expert.
Good example - Misunderstanding Markup: XHTML 2/HTML 5 Comic Strip
ContinuedMisunderstanding markup
Jeremy Keith gives a balanced view of what XHTML 2 was (not HTML 4/XHTML 1) and what HTML 5 is.
Web fonts, HTML 5 roundup
Jeff Zeldman gathers the top articles on these two highly debated topics
The following is a behind the scenes look at my process including images for my sketchbook and mockup options that were not used. The final homepage concept was completely reworked (look & feel, functionality) near the end of the project and below I explain why and show the original concept.
ContinuedAn interesting opportunity to learn from two experts in standards-based web design. If you live in the Boston area the added bonus is that this is in Salem, MA.
"Spend the day with authors Dan Cederholm and Ethan Marcotte in this unique, one-day workshop." See workshop details.
I came across this (Design Challenge - Summer 09) a few weeks ago and sketched out a few ideas not really sure if I would end up submitting something. The Design Challenge is described as "Reinventing Tabs in the Browser - How can we create, navigate and manage multiple web sites within the same browser instance?" I spent the last few nights turning the sketches into a mockup and creating a quick video to explain the idea and functionality. Overall I'm happy with the end result given the time I put into it. The deadline is today (6/21) and I'm hoping to spend some time looking at the other entries over the next week.
See my sketches and mockup, video and a showcase of all entries.
The co-inventor of sIFR reviews Typekit - a new (summer 2009) option for displaying type on the web. Pros - More type options. Cons - Lack of info around cost and usage rules. Only time will tell if this lives up to the hype. Read the full review.
Nick Finck's process (slides from the Puget Sound SIGCHI) for creating wireframes and related deliverables. I'm extremely grateful to be able to view all 94 slides.
A collection of web design related articles condensed into short summaries and sorted by do's and don'ts and rated by level of technical difficulty. (via boagworld)
Through a comparison of CNN.com and USA Today.com Andy Rutledge gives clear examples to support his hierarchy and layout theory. Rutledge defines quiet structure as "when you de–emphasize the structural elements..." which results in "... the overall clarity of presentation is greatly enhanced."
Can traditional design principles (The golden ration and rule of thirds), that are based on a fixed area, be applied to the variable dimensions of web design? Jason Santamaria has decided to "embrace the fluid nature of the web and let go of that kind of control." Read the full article.
I'm not sure if boiling down good website design into 10 things is possible or if it gives a realistic picture. Maybe "10 Things to Consider When Designing a Website" would have been a better title. Regardless of the title there are a few good points in "10 Ways to Design a Good Web Site".
Help! I can't stop reading. Interesting data and beautifully crafted survey results web pages including tables and charts. A few examples:
Job title - Developer 27.8%, Web Designer 12.7%, Designer 8.4%
Relevance of education - Not at all 19.1%, A little 29.3%, Some 35.2%
Prevalence of blogging - Yes 71.9%, No 28.1%