Monthly Archives

 

Opera Wishes

Modifo, in his recent 5 Wishes for Opera post, tagged me with "5 wishes on how Opera could improve". An interesting question.

  1. I wish I used Opera more. I'll work on that.
  2. I wish it was better utilized, I'm sick of designing for IE. I'll likely always be designing for IE (the lowest common denominator) but it's a wish list after all.
  3. More developer widgets. I use Firefox at work, so I use it home. The developers tools and plugins are very helpful.

I realize that's only three, but it really is quite good. Here's three reasons I do like it.

  1. The tabbed browsing is very good.
  2. Integral mouse gestures. I realized yesterday that I'd been using mouse gestures in Opera and they were working. I had to install a plugin in Firefox for that.
  3. I love the way the themes and color schemes work. I use a computer all day, a slick user interface makes using it more enjoyable.

Go check out the wish lists at Modifoo and Douglas Karr, they're both quite excellent.

Posted on Tuesday July 31, 2007
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Screen Reader 101

Victor Tsaran: Introduction to Screen Readers

"demonstrates how he uses them to explore and understand web sites, how sites are “linearized”, and how using semantic markup to build sites supports accessible navigation and usability"

This technology is often misunderstood by both designers and their clients, so I think this would be a very useful video on for just about anyone who spends time online.

Posted on Monday July 30, 2007
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Web Accessibility - Section 508

I've been doing a fair bit of 508 compliance work lately, and I recently I found a very good tutorial by Jim Thatcher on the subject. His definitions and explanations are much clearer than others I've seen.

Posted on Wednesday July 18, 2007
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Remove unwanted people

Have people you need removed? From photos that is. Here's and interesting technique for doing just that. It requires some planning when you're shotting the photos, but isn't too technically difficult. Seems to me that it would work both ways too. Need more people in a photo? Bring people from multiple photos into the same photo. Some interesting double exposure type images could be done this way too.

Posted on Monday July 16, 2007
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Design Tips

I'd consider linking to this article just because of the title, but the writing is good too. Simple Ways To Help Your Design Suck Less He has a number of good ideas, but here are a few hints.

  • Try Subtle Variations
  • Use Similar Styling For Similar Elements
  • Padding
  • Vertical Space, Grouping

Go check out the rest.

Posted on Friday July 13, 2007
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Quiet

Andy Rutledge has a fascinating article on quiet structure

Quiet structure is achieved when you de–emphasize the structural elements; the containing boxes, structural lines, bullets, structural color elements, etc… and bring a rhythmical consistency to the layout.

I've recently been involved with several projects that involved this principle, though I've never heard this described quite so well.

Posted on Tuesday July 10, 2007
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Design Guidelines

Michael Surtees has some design guidelines that you should read.

1. Keep an open mind, don’t be that expert that isn’t open to new ways of doing things.

Posted on Monday July 09, 2007
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About Classic Color Choices

Here is a website dedicated to color inspiration from the masters of painting. It clarifies master paintings down into a five color palette. A significant amount of the emotional nature of the painting is reflected in the choice of color. What do you want your work to say? Did you choose the right colors to do that? These aren't hard and fast rules of course. Just because Monet used a color palette to paint something serene, doesn't mean you can't use the same palette to show excitement. It is a good spot for inspiration however. See how someone else worked, and build upon the inspiration you find there.

h/t Basement.org

Posted on Monday July 02, 2007
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