Monday, March 31, 2003
Quote for the day.
...if you were designing for print, and knew the aspect ratio and dimensions of the target, you would meet them. It's part of designing to constraints, which any good designer knows is fundamental to solving design problems.
So, then, on the Web, where there are no such fixed dimensions, and no fixed constraints on the size of a browser window, you have to accept this as a constraint and tailor your designs to suit. Anything else isn't design, it's just a pretension to design, because you're ignoring fundamental constraints of the medium.
Steve Champeon
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
WthRemix entries public...
The WthRemix (pronounced "double-yoo-three-mix") is a contest to redesign the W3C web site using web standards. The current W3C site is already designed with standards like XHTML and CSS, but the complaint of many graphic designers is that the site is ugly. The contestant's entries went public a few weeks ago.
The problem is that most of the entries ignored one of the rules and one of the W3C's main objectives, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The other problem is that some of the designers took it upon themselves to remove most of the useful content in order to achieve a more pleasing visual layout. Low contrast text, mediocre user interface, presentational markup, aaargh...! My overall opinion of most of the entries is quite low.
However, there were a few entries that stood out and really impressed me. The "finalists", in my order of preference, are:
- Homeless Pixel (Radu Darvas)
- G2GK (Garen Keshishian)
- Kapowaz (Ben Darlow)
All three are pretty good, but I only think the Homeless Pixel remix is solid enough to win.
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Netscape DevEdge is quickly becoming my favorite technical web site. Their web standards articles are second to none and DevEdge offers other goodies like their Mozilla sidebars.
ESPN recently did a full CSS-P redesign of their homepage and is saving several terabytes of bandwidth a day because of it. That's just one of the many benefits listed in the DevEdge Interview With Mike Davidson of ESPN (Part 1). Here he explains their justification for support of web standards over that of proprietary code and obsolete 4.x version browsers.
The simple fact is that most of our 2% of users who still use Netscape 4 or Internet Explorer 4 only do so out of upgrade anxiety, naiveté, or laziness. As an influential site on the web, we want to help them overcome their inertia on this situation. In fact, we feel we are doing them a favor by getting them up to date.
Mike Davidson
Monday, March 24, 2003
Wonderful Days...
Noah sent an link to a site for another fantastic-looking anime movie. Wonderful Days combines 2D hand-drawn cell animation with 3D computer animation and live film shots of hand-crafted miniature sets. The result is an amazingly realistic view into the world of the animators imaginations. Check out the video clips available on the site. Broadband recommended.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Online versus offline friends...
Jeffrey Zeldman asked his South by Southwest audience who had gained friends online and everyone in the room raised their hand. He then asked if anyone had more online friends than offline friends. He also asked, Do your other friends read your website?
I think my balance of online versus offline friends has changed dramatically over the past several years. When I was in college, I was very involved in the local music and art scene. I was also a radio deejay so I knew a whole lot of people. I wouldn't call all of them friends, of course, but many of them were.
Since I left college, I see those friends less and less and almost none of them read my website, but I know so many more people through the internet. It's not uncommon for me to talk several times a week with someone who I've never met in person. Of course, it's even better when you get to meet those friends in person. Then, online friends just become friends.
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Ninjai...
This weekend, I watched the first ten episodes of Ninjai: The Little Ninja and I am very impressed. It's some first-rate Flash animation in a style similar to the Manga title, Ninja Scroll.
Unfortunately, the server bandwidth ran out and they are no longer hosting the full episodes. You'll have to deal with the promos for now. I have downloaded copies though... If you're fiending for an anime fix, maybe we can make an arrangement.
During the South by Southwest conference, director Robert Rodriguez gave a great analogy that I'd like to share.
On the first day of a college pottery class, the professor announced that half the class would be graded on quantity while the other half would be graded on quality. Some of the students would be required to make fifty clay pots by the end of the semester. Students who made all fifty would receive an A, those who made forty would receive a B, and so on. The other students only had to make one clay pot, but everything about it had to be perfect. The lesson lay in the fact that the highest quality pots inevitably came from the students who were to be graded on quantity. These students learned from their mistakes, and had enough practical experience that the pots they made kept getting better and better. The students who were graded on quality tended to over-think their designs, and without the practice required to gain the skill, could not produce a high quality pot.
Robert Rodriguez (loosely quoted)
In a similar vein, on several occasions I've kept myself from starting projects because I knew I didn't have the skill to do them perfectly. My excuses, particularly with Flash, tended to be that I didn't have enough experience to do everything the right way the first time. I knew how ridiculous this sounded, but I'd used that excuse with other things as well: "Oh, I can't complete that video project because I don't have the right hardware." Never again. From now on, I'll make clay pots.
Friday, March 14, 2003
The Gordian Knot of customer service.
I called a Health Insurance company today with whom I previously had coverage. Unsurprisingly, I got quite lost in the automated help system. Several times I ended up on the same menu and got the feeling that that I was in some kind of dynamically recursive loop. It had the illusion of progress, but with no real gain. Some choices would auto-forward me to another number and some would tell me phone numbers to call myself. Calling these numbers would inevitably lead to another automated system. *sigh*
During the mindless choice listings, I thought about accessibility again and hung up. There are certain laws in the ADA that require equal access for everyone, including those who can't use a touch-tone phone. I redialed the number and stayed my hand. After passing the first menu (Number one for English; numero dos para Español.), I resisted the urge to press any buttons, and was subjected to about six or seven different menus, all of which I had heard before. After about twenty seconds or so of inactivity, each menu would forward me on to the next. Finally, I reached a menu that forwarded back to itself. I thought I had hit a wall with an infinite loop, but after repeating three times, the last menu passed me to a human. And it only took about 5 minutes.
The lady I talked to was really surprised to hear from me. She even said, "I don't know how you got this number, but you need to call..." and proceeded to give me the same number that I had dialed. Apparently, I had found the bug in the system that let me through. I was no longer doomed to wait (as long) on hold. She was quite unwilling to help me so I called the number again and came right back to her. After that she gave me a different number to call. The new number put me in an infinite loop. *sigh*
I started thinking that designing one of these systems would be a lucrative business. Not for the benefit of the customer, but for the benefit of the company. And you have to know your audience... Insurance companies make money by accepting plan payments. They do not make money by helping customers and they do not make money by paying for the services they claim to. Of course, they couldn't get away without paying anything, but certain hazy claims might get lost in the bureaucracy, such as a automated phone system. Also, most people (Americans anyway) are locked into whatever coverage plan is provided by their place of employment so insurance giants have no need for service as a customer retention tool. It would not benefit a bank to have a phone system like this, because the customers would just come into the local branch and close their accounts. However, designing a dynamically-changing, overly-intricate, nightmare of a phone system would save insurance companies money. I envision it would be something like the Gordian Knot (with no beginning or end), but with programming logic to lead users away if they started getting too close to the holy grail of "To speak to a Customer Service Representative, press zero"...
The embarassment factor...
Visit the Macromedia web site, and download the latest Flash plugin they suggest. Then go back to the homepage and try to access their "Accessibility" link without using your mouse. For shame... I expect they'll move it to the top soon.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Let's see...
This past Friday through Tuesday was the SXSW Interactive conference here in Austin. It was great to see a lot more accessibility and web standards panels this year, though they shortened them all to an hour a piece instead of last year's 1.5 hours. One panelist of note were accessibility author Joe Clark, who asked me if I had extra-wide feet right around the time I took this photo of Joe. Not sure what that means... Josh Ulm and Joshua Davis had more great advice on Flash projects; Macromedia's Bob Regan discussed accessibility features specifically new to Flash MX; and CSS gurus Eric Meyer and Tantek Çelik had a great panel with Zeldman. More later...
Unrelated, but on the political front, it appears that Senior wants Junior to play by the rules. At least that's encouraging.
South by Southwest Interactive
Wow... It's been a long four days. More soon... Once I'm rested.
Thursday, March 06, 2003
HackBot
HotBot's redesign contest looks pretty interesting. I wouldn't mind winning a new TV or an iPod.
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
Good news...
My sister got accepted to grad school in architecture at the University of Texas so she might be coming to live in Austin. She's waiting on word from some other schools before making her decision. Congratulations, Catherine!
Also, a site I worked on with the Austin FreeNet volunteer team was submitted to the Texas Interactive Media (TIM) Achievement Awards and apparently it was "chosen to be recognized for achievement in Information/Reference". I'm not really sure what that means though. It kinda sounds like an award and it kinda sounds like a consolation award.
The site was built as part of last year's AIR competition and, when we delivered it, was validating as XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS 2.0, and was Level Triple-A compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The site was also 100% bi-lingual in English and Spanish. When I checked it this week, it was no longer validating and the Spanish half was removed, but I think that could be fixed with a few small content updates. Maybe I'll get a chance to fluff it before the awards ceremony. You can check the current site at http://www.austinschools.org/lanier/.
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Designs in the news...
Since nothing much of note is going on with me lately, I'll pass on a couple of links to some articles that caught my eye this week.
