Web Archive
I’ve been a proud Firefox user since, well, it wasn’t called Firefox. For a long time, it was the clear leader in the browser market. When version 2 was too outdated to use, and version 3 was buggier than ever, I switched to my OS’s native browser—Safari.
I’ve been pretty happy with Safari for a while. It is speedy, has a great UI, and just oozes excellent typography (something that I have not ignored.) Lately it’s been forgetting my saved passwords which has been frustrating to say the least. At work I use Chrome quite a bit, and I enjoy it. Chrome is (blazingly) fast at JavaScript heavy apps that I use all the time (like Gmail or Google Reader.) I’m also digging the single input search/address bar. But with both Safari and Chrome the lack of quality add-ons is killing me, and I start longing for my trusty Firefox again.
Does anyone have some advice for a user who’s lost his path in the second iteration of the browser wars? Should I forgive Firefox for it’s crashes of old? Is it time to try something else, like Camino or Opera?
01.04.09 | # | 2 Comments
I just ran across Fray Magazine’s website this morning. The latest issue is called Geek — True Stories of People Taking Things Too Seriously. Amazing!
Be sure to check out the Storm Troopers in Love article.
Does anyone else know of any other amazing online magazines?
12.27.08 | # | Start the conversation
Does anyone know how I can set up Twitter to notify me of new @danbowling replies?
11.16.08 | # | 2 Comments
One website dares to ask the question…is graphic design art?
I don’t know about the whole field of graphics design. But I think of web design as closer to designing a car than to creating art. Websites are meant to be used, not just appreciated. Design isn’t art. Design is, well, design.
11.12.08 | # | 2 Comments
For the web nerds that read this, apparently google added the following to their robots.txt file on Halloween:
User-agent: zombies
Disallow: /brains
Via Matt Cutts.
11.12.08 | # | Start the conversation
Never, ever, badmouth a client on your blog. Read the comments to understand why.
11.09.08 | # | 2 Comments
Wise words on creating a good iphone app. I think it applies well beyond it’s intended scope.
Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience.
John Gruber’s one central, overriding guideline for iPhone UI design (via 37 Signals)
11.06.08 | # | Start the conversation
With all the talk of change in today’s campaigns, it seems prudent that I make some change of my own. I finally moved the site to my beefy VPS, and gave it a new design to boot!
I’m calling this the (con)temporary design. It’s new, it’s different, and it’s much more conducive to the type of posts that I’ve been backlogging for a while. It’s also temporary.
Why would I do a design and only leave it up for a few months? The answer is simple: it was an experiment. This site takes advantage of some advanced code that only works in a couple browsers. It degrades nicely in Firefox and Internet Explorer, so you may not even notice that Safari users get to see some extra cool typography.
Hang around, subscribe to the RSS feed, because this blog is going through it’s renaissance.
10.24.08 | # | Start the conversation
Software giant Sun Microsystems has just acquired MySQL AB (the makers of the open source database, MySQL) for a sum of 1 billion dollars in cash and debt.
I’m not sure if I should be excited or weary of this gobbling up of open source projects by large software companies (Yahoo! just acquired Zimbra, and Citrix got XenSource). In this case, I think things will turn out for the better–for everyone. Sun has a great history of providing flagship quality programs in an open manner… Java, Solaris, and now MySQL.
The MySQL blog writes of how this acquisition will be good for the community, as the developers will have access to the worlds leading Sun experts (MySQL was originally developed for the Sun platform, and it continues to drive it now). Sun has probably purchased MySQL to further its’ reach into enterprise web applications, knocking down the gate of the Oracle castle with Java running on Solaris and MySQL.
The heartwood of the internet though, is not enterprise level applications: it is the plethora of small sites that make up the fiber of the internet; most of which run on the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). What does this mean to the majority of us running all open source? Well, the answer looks pretty good there too.
According to the press release on the MySQL blog, “MySQL grew with LAMP and MySQL without LAMP at its core is simply unimaginable… Sun is a safe haven for MySQL. Sun knows Open Source, and to the extent things change, I expect Sun to add value to our community.” [emphasis in original]
Ars Tecnhica hit the take-home message perfectly: “Regardless of the underlying platform implications, Sun’s acquisition of MySQL broadly validates open-source database solutions as viable alternatives to proprietary commercial database products like those from Oracle and IBM. In the long-term, this could be a very positive development for open source on the server.”
I’m pretty sure that it will be several years before the implications start to truly surface. Perhaps it will mean a more open, accessible, web.
01.16.08 | # | Start the conversation
I love doing freelance web development; however, as with any business, I have to do quite a bit of administration that is significantly less fun, and provides substantial overhead. My philosophy is to only bill the client for the work that directly benefits them, so my personal policy is to not bill the client for a single minute of this administrative overhead–I simply absorb it into my cost of doing business.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize it’s in my best interest to develop a process (or a program) to minimize this overhead.
For starters, I use Basecamp to manage my tasks and milestones, but for a moonlighter like myself to upgrade to the $50/month plan to get time tracking as a feature is absurd, and would by no means make a positive influence to my bottom line.
Stand-alone time tracking solutions exist, and some of them are even free (for a single project), such as Tick. For $9/month you can even integrate your Tick account with Basecamp, though I have no idea if a prerequisite for the integration is the $49/month Basecamp account and I don’t plan on forking over money to find out.
To be honest, I don’t really trust my data on other companies servers. I have no control over downtime, and I can’t customize the application to fit my needs–so I’m rolling my own. This weekend I spent a few hours playing with the CodeIgniter PHP framework and I have a working time tracking application that sits on my servers, is extendable (I do have the source code, after all), and is free (as in beer that I had to make myself.)
Before I release the source to the world as an open source project I want to cinch up a few of the last loose ends, and maybe make it a little more feature rich; so I ask you: what do you want in your time tracking program?
Good suggestions will probably get incorporated into this application.
01.13.08 | # | 3 Comments
For those of you in the Missoula, Montana area, the monthly Missoula Web Discussion Group meets tonight. The meeting is held the second Tuesday of every month at 6PM at Sean Kelly’s Pub.
10.09.07 | # | 1 Comment
Sorry I haven’t been very active blogging as of late, it’s the end of summer, and working in higher ed, that means crazy busy.
Between all the printer woes and other side projects, I’ve been working heavily on the first major overhaul of the UM Admissions website since I started my position on their team. Today I finished the core of the work and sent it around the office for feedback. I hope we get all the little bugs out by the Tuesday launch.
Perhaps this weekend I’ll work on a writeup of what all went on for this project. In the meantime, why don’t you check out our universities dabbling in the YouTube craze with two characters named Josh and Noah.
08.29.07 | # | 1 Comment
Looks like Apple is releasing Safari for Windows. This will be a good thing if, and only if, the rendering engine is the same as on Mac. This is either a really great day, or a really bad day for web designers.
06.12.07 | # | Start the conversation
In large institutions, the varying audiences of the website can cause it to pull and stretch in ways that can make the web staff cringe. Site navigation suffers most in this continuous battle to please the on-campus constituents at the risk of alienating your external audiences. Most colleges and universities have moved over to a faceted navigation, allowing prospective students easy access to admissions and residential life while still providing effective information to the news media, donors, alumni and current students. But all is not well with the staff and faculty jump-pages in most instances.
Staff and faculty usually have very strict data silos, and are often quite demanding of having information at their fingertips matching their department’s organization. These users won’t touch your jump pages because they are too generic and don’t meet their needs. Perhaps a universal portal system could take care of this, personalizing the content for the individual; however, these systems are costly and time consuming to build and tailor to faculty and staff needs in a day where student services are the only items on the budgetary menu. The answer is simple: create static department portal page (aka a Poor Man’s Portal).
What do I mean when I say static department portal page? It’s simple, create a basic HTML document that can be housed on a web sever or file share that points to exactly what members in a data silo need. Have them set it as their homepage, so any time they need answers they just pull up a web browser.
The information desk, or admissions office is an ideal candidate for such a simple solution. Every day the staff and student workers answer phone calls with highly creative questions about diverse facets of the institutions policies, people, and programs. One of these static departmental portal homepages in an admissions office could offer a quick redirect to Residential Life room rates, the Registrars Office policy on in-state residency, and scholarships for minorities.
With a couple questions to the staff, and 10 minutes of a web developer’s time, an entire department can have in place a portal that is just as functional as one that would cost many thousands of dollars to implement, and you could even include an email/Citrix/SharePoint login form too. For a 10 minute job, this will save tons of time for those on the front line while providing faster and better support to your students-talk about a return on investment.
If it meets the needs of a large portion of your staff, it could serve as a messaging platform (perhaps most useful with work-study students, who aren’t on the office distribution list.)
I’ll be implementing this type of a project for my admissions office some time soon. I’ll post a follow-up after I see how well it actually works.
05.14.07 | # | Start the conversation
According to the latest UseIt AlertBox, it’s better to use “23″ than “twenty-three” to catch users’ eyes when they scan Web pages for facts.
Tips from the article when writing for the Web:
- Write numbers with digits, not letters (23, not twenty-three).
- Use numerals even when the number is the first word in a sentence or bullet point.
- Use numerals for big numbers up to one billon:
- 2,000,000 is better than two million.
- Two trillion is better than 2,000,000,000,000 because most people can’t interpret that many zeros.
- As a compromise, you can often use numerals for the significant digits and write out the magnitude as a word. For example, write 24 billion (not twenty-four billion or 24,000,000,000).
- Spell out numbers that don’t represent specific facts.
Just another reminder that writing for the web is so different than the print writing we were all taught. Thanks for another great insight that can help all our users Jacob!
04.16.07 | # | Start the conversation
Last night was the first monthly meeting of the Missoula Web Discussion Group, and I had a great time. Several of my colleagues from The University showed up, and we seem to have been invaded by the staff at Modwest (who are a great bunch!) All in all, I think about 12 people showed up.
If you missed the meeting, we are doing it every month on the second Tuesday at 6 P.M. in the basement of Sean Kelly’s (Missoula, MT.)
04.11.07 | # | 3 Comments
Today is
Annual CSS Naked Day. As I did last year, I have removed all my CSS files from the design so you can appreciate the pure bliss of simple HTML markup. The old, crappy, design will be back tomorrow. Maybe some day soon it will get updated, I hope.
04.05.07 | # | Start the conversation
Web 2.0, and my industry in general, has been nicely summarized in a single, short, video. If you only watch one video today on the web, let this be it.
The video is a response to the YouTube Web 2.0 video.
02.05.07 | # | 1 Comment
It would seem that spammers are getting even more tricky. Today I noticed my first trackback spam.
I guess when I upgrade Wordpress and apply a new theme (long over due) I won’t allow trackbacks to be posted in the comments. Such a shame, spammers are really ruining the internet in every possible way.
02.04.07 | # | 5 Comments
I don’t know about you, but when I am testing a website I sometimes find it difficult to find every kind of user that will be using it to test with and get feedback. This is especially true in my field of Higher Education, where the prospective students simply are too young to be in my circle… I usually have to make do with some work study students (whose opinions have helped me greatly).
The types of users I have trouble with are the disabled ones. Not so much the blind users, as I can easily test my designs using a screen reader myself. But the colorblind user isn’t something that I traditionally could test myself, or go back to some theory that I learned back while reading A List Apart. That all changed when I found a great site called the “Colorblind Web Page Filter.” It is truly a resource I can’t be as effective with without.
One thing that I will add as a tip on this is that you can test an image of your design prior to building it (or sending it as a proof too). If only I could find a way to make designing for cognitive disorders so easy.
01.23.07 | # | Start the conversation
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