PixelNineDesign

Dear Thunder Lizard Productions

2007-07-17T17:40:18Z

If you are not the person(s) responsible for the t-shirts at Web Design World, please forward this to the appropriate parties. If you are, however, responsible for ordering, designing, or otherwise managing the free t-shirts given out in exchange for a Conference Evaluation Form, please note the following:

The design of the t-shirt was nice. Perhaps a little understated, but nice nonetheless.
The quality of the t-shirt seems to be decent. It certainly seems to be made of a higher quality fabric than most free t-shirts.
I will never wear this t-shirt.

Why? Because I cannot fit into a medium or large t-shirt. Certainly not after it has gone through a normal washing cycle. It seems to me that a conference featuring usability and design experts would realize that not everyone wears the same size clothing. In fact, as I look around the conference (and the greater Seattle area) I see a lot of people that would NOT fit into a medium or large t-shirt. You did the upfront work: upon registration, we were asked for our desired t-shirt size. How this translated into only having medium and large shirts available on the last day is beyond me.

Maybe there were XL (or even XXL) shirts available at some point in time and you mearly underestimated the number of extra large attendees. I’m not sure what happened, but I had to give the t-shirt away.

Web Design World: Ajax Bootcamp

2007-07-09T00:06:53Z

The folks at Hinchcliffe & Company conducted an all day Ajax Bootcamp at Web Design World today. The posted pre-conference materials state:

Using a concept-to-completion format, you’ll learn how to leverage the full power of the browser to build effective RIAs in this day-long course. We’ll cover the basics of Ajax including asynchronous server communication, Dynamic HTML, and Javascript with a focus on the most popular open-source Ajax libraries and frameworks. The latest techniques and best practices for building RIAs are explored including Ajax design patterns and user interface strategies for building elegant, “user addictive” Web sites and applications.

Other than the “user addictive” nonsense, the bootcamp was quite good. It became clear the practice of hand-coding Ajax-driven web content is quickly going by the wayside. There are enough quality libraries and frameworks available in the open-source market to accomplish most tasks. Most of the discussion at the bootcamp revolved around implementing the Dojo Javascript framework. Frameworks have a tremendous amount of power and seeing this presentation has prompted me to further investigate Dreamweaver CS3 and the Spry framework.

In the end, there was a little too much emphasis on web-standards (the Dojo framework creates non-standards code anyway) and not enough time spent on best practices.

Web Design World Report

2007-07-08T04:20:52Z

I have finally settled into my hotel room at Web Design World 2007. The conference, and my beautiful hotel room, both reside in the lovely Seattle Marriott Waterfront Hotel. The hotel sits within spitting distance of the water and most of the rooms offer breathtaking views of the Mt. Ranier and Elliott Bay. The staff is friendly, the dining is first class, the rooms are spacious, the conference facilities seem to be adequate. The hotel seems to offer all of the amenities one would expect when attending a web design conference. EXCEPT FOR WIRELESS INTERNET IN THE ROOMS! Are you kidding me? There are motels in my small town that offer wireless internet. To make matters worse, the archaic ‘wall-tethered’ internet access costs $9.95 a day. Absurd.

Why did I bookmark this page?

2007-05-02T19:44:15Z

Anyone that has worked on a web development team of any size knows that documenting and managing website changes can be a nightmare. Although project management software (I love Basecamp) helps to manage the larger elements of a project, the minute details can often get over looked.

Not anymore. I recently started using mystickies.com as a collaborative website change management tool. Prior to using mystickies.com, the website change process usually involved either:

Filling out a change request form;
Sending an email; or
Printing the page and covering it with unreadable text and (ahem) sticky notes.

Sometimes it involved all three! These methods were often inefficient and timely. Now clients can leave sticky notes on their websites referring to changes that they would like to make to the site. The sitcky notes can be resized, color coded, and even tagged. What a great concept.

Getting ready to make the switch

2007-04-18T18:56:25Z

I will soon be making the switch from my trusty Dell laptop to a 15″ Mac PowerBook Pro. I am excited to have Windows and OS X on the same machine, but am getting a little nervous about changing the way I work. I will use OS X for my primary development environment and have windows installed for browser and platform testing. I am not an Apple newbie, but I have found a few bits of software that I use on a daily basis that do not appear to have a Mac equivalent:

Microsoft OneNote - I love this program…and Office 2008 for mac doesn’t seem to include it.
Microsfot Visio - I don’t really want to make the switch to OmniGraffle…I have a lot of good Visio stencils.
Xenu Link Sleuth - I will miss this program. Dearly.

Anyone have recommendations for OS X equivalent software?

Website Redesign: The Genesis Group

2007-03-30T15:28:43Z

The Genesis Group website was relaunched today. This was a complete visual makeover and IA streamline project. I am very happy with the site and some of the coding features I used, including:

sIFR 3.0 Worked like a charm. much easier to tweak than previous versions
Nifty Corners I know, there are a lot of other methods for applying rounded corners to a site. I like this one best. For now.

Comments and questions, as always, are appreciated.

Bye-bye Bloglines - Hello Google Reader

2006-12-24T05:04:51Z

After months of waiting for new features and better plugins, I am ending my relationship with Bloglines. It’s not as though I have been disappointed in Bloglines. I have often recommended it to colleagues, friends, and complete strangers. I find it to be a completely capable feed reader.

I have been very busy lately and haven’t been able to keep up on my blog subscriptions. When I could I would check into my Bloglines account, only to be interrupted and taken away to another website. Upon returning to Bloglines, I would have to start over…often times forgetting where I had left off. Herein lies the one simple feature that has forced me to change feed readers: Google Reader saves my state. It allows me to pick up where I left off. This is very important to me.

Now if I can only get the good folks at google to allow me to search within my subscriptions…

Lock, Stock, and Barrel part Deux

2006-11-28T17:41:58Z

It seems that new stock photography sites are cropping up again. Links to stock photo sites are passed along to me all the time. usually the sites are defunct by the time I pull them up.

37signals releases free book

2006-11-06T20:31:53Z

37signals have made Getting Real available online for free. It is in HTML format, but you can still buy a PDF. This excellent book covers how to build successful web applications the “smarter, faster, easier way”. They even throw in a short chapter on interface design. A must must read.

TopStyle Pro, the Winnebago of CSS editors

2006-10-20T21:46:01Z

CSS is the new black.

Actually, it is the new #000. Unless you have been under a web design boulder for the last few years, you should have noticed that slicing and dicing images and cramming everything into a table is quickly emerging as the predominant skill set among underemployed web designers.

Tables are becoming a thing of the past. CSS is quickly becoming the standard for both typographical and layout control in websites. As browsers support more and more CSS properties, designers are more and more inclined to use CSS to its fullest intent. Why are they making the switch to CSS? Sites designed with CSS are generally more accessible, more flexible, and more usable than their table-based counterparts.

But this isn’t about the virtues of Cascading Style Sheets. It is about making the switch with as little headache as possible. Obtaining a ticket for the CSS bandwagon comes at a price. Designing a website without tables, or even using CSS for text effects or typographical control can often be a daunting task. First there is actually learning the syntax for CSS. Then, there is predicting how your CSS will behave in various browsers. Not to mention breaking all of the bad habits developed while using tables for layout and design.

Enter TopStyle

TopStyle is to CSS what Dreamweaver is to html. TopStyle is a fully-featured CSS editor developed by Nick Bradbury. Sound familiar? He should. He developed a very famous HTML editor known as HomeSite. There are two versions of TopStyle, a free ‘lite’ version and a pro version with many perks for advanced CSS design.

TopStyle Lite is a free download with no equal. It has all of the standard features found in the CSS editors built into other programs–code hints, color-coding, style inspectors, etc. In addition to these features, TopStyle Lite adds a live preview of the entire style sheet, tight integration with Dreamweaver, and alphabetized class lists. One great feature is the ability to choose harmonious and complimentary colors from TopStyle’s ingenious Color Picker dialog box. As you choose colors for properties in your CSS, TopStyle auto-magically suggests harmonious and complimentary colors that would work with your current color selection. All of this, and much more, for the low price of nothing.

TopStyle Pro

TopStyle Pro, available for $79.95, is the Winnebago of CSS editors. It seems to have every conceivable option ever needed in a CSS editor. It even has a deep-freezer. In addition to all of the features found in the grossly under-priced TopStyle Lite, TopStyle Pro includes built in W3C validators, a Bobby checker, and a browser checker that displays browser support for any given CSS property. TopStyle Pro also includes a handy Selector Wizard that is extremely helpful for complex CSS. (I.e. contextual, child, sibling, and other advanced selectors). As if that wasn’t enough, one can find CSS tutorials and a powerful CSS Color Palette editor.

In fact, with all of the features included with TopStyle Pro, one can easily get lost. Fortunately, all of the panels and toolbars are customizable to fit the needs of any particular designer. So whether you are new to CSS and trying to get a grip on all of it’s intricacies, or a CSS veteran looking for an easier way to push those intricacies to the limit, TopStyle Lite and TopStyle Pro are definitely a must have in your designers toolbox.

TopStyle is available at http://www.bradsoft.com/topstyle/