Thoughts on Design

CSS Menu Writer

Douglas T — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:16:51 +0000

The nice people at WebAssist.com are letting me try out their new CSS Menu Writer extension for Dreamweaver. I got a demonstration of it yesterday, and I’ve been putting it though it’s paces this morning.

It is exactly what the title would suggest, a CSS menu writer. Working through four tabbed menus, you can easily create fairly complex, and valid CSS menus. I’m very impressed with it so far. The extension works well, and is quite intuitive. The two most significant aspects I see, are that it uses no proprietary coding as far as I can see, and that I can create my own preset templates. This means that any menu I create using this should be editable by anyone with a knowledge of CSS, and that I can adapt the software to my own design style. This has the potential to be a very significant time saver for me. I’ll go into greater detail when I’ve had a few days to try it out.

IE6 bugs, defined

Douglas T — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 12:41:34 +0000

IE 6 actually had the best CSS support of any browser when it first came out… SEVEN YEARS AGO. - CSS-Tricks

Chris Coyier at CSS Tricks has written a very nice piece on IE6 CSS bugs. Anyone who’s dealt with these will appreciate this list. Anyone who’s fought with them and didn’t know what they were will appreciate them more.

How is your Shop Window?

Douglas T — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:09:59 +0000

Attitude Design has an interesting take on Home Pages and Shop Windows.

Retail shop windows carry massive lessons for home page designers. Take a high street fashion shop for example. The shop window will typically contain the following - the logo of the shop, some attractive graphics, some plastic models displaying a wide range of garments which are sold in the shop.

Now a website is slightly different but the ideas are the same. The logo will give the overall authority and brand recognition to the website as it does above a shop window.

It’s actually a good analogy. A good site homepage is a lot like a good store window. It gives you a glimpse of the content in a flattering light. Makes the viewer want to dig deeper, to go in and look around.

I’m currently working on a retail site, and I’m going to take this concept to heart. The initial design concept was very close to this idea anyway, but I’m going to step back and look at it again. Look at it as if it were a stone and mortar store, and see how the design holds up. I think it will do well, but this concept will let me further refine the design. Refinements that should directly relate to improved site statistics. What client can argue with that?

Keeping up with Design

Douglas T — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:23:59 +0000

Somebody asked me a good question today. To paraphrase, it was “what websites do you use to keep up with what’s going on in the industry?”. Here’s the list:

While I don’t write about blogging, I do follow what’s going on with that industry. It’s too much of a factor in the web design business not to.

Mostly I like to read about Art and Design. You’ll notice that a number of these these sites aren’t web or graphic design related. Web design needs to be inspired by all arts, not just other web design.

Inspiration can come from all kinds of interesting stuff.

I’m particularly fond of Search Feeds. Most people don’t realize that a lot of search engines allow you to subscribe to the search. So you can be notified of anything new on the subject of your choice.

I also subscribe to a number of Technical Feeds. While some of these sites write about things outside of design, it’s important to keep up on these too. The more I know about all aspects of my job, the better I can do my job. This might include how my computer and software work, how to improve them or how to fix them, and what’s new in the industry .

I keep track of my subscriptions with the Sage feed reader for Firefox. I have posted elsewhere about other Firefox resources I regularly use.

IE8 to display like IE8

Douglas T — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 13:57:37 +0000

Despite early announcements that IE8 would default to displaying pages as if it were IE7, Microsoft is now announcing that it will default to Standards mode. This will alleviate the need for designers to opt out, by opting in as I’ve written about before.

Microsoft Expands Support for Web Standards

Consistent with its efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web, Microsoft Corp. is now configuring the settings in Internet Explorer 8, the upcoming version of its browser, to render content - by default - using methods that give top priority to Web standards interoperability.

This is the best news I’ve heard from Microsoft in quite some time. I was really hoping this issue would be resolved before IE8 came onto the market, but I was holding little hope. They have in the past seemed more inclined to use their own proprietary standards than to “give top priority to Web standards interoperability”. I’m happy top see that that wasn’t the case here.

Opt out, by opting in?

Douglas T — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 13:46:49 +0000

A List Apart: Articles: They Shoot Browsers, Don’t They?

This is gobsmackingly audacious. Imagine a new version of Word that behaves exactly like the old version of Word unless the document it is processing contains a hidden instruction to unlock any new features. That’s what Microsoft is demanding that web developers implement. Unless you explicitly say otherwise, IE8 (and IE9 and IE10, ad infinitum) will behave exactly like IE7.

I’ve been following rumors about this feature for awhile. I thought they were going to turn out to be incorrect. It seems too audacious even for Microsoft. Forcing designers to use proprietary code in order or IE to work correctly? I can’t see how this won’t blow up in their faces in some way. It’s sure not going to earn them any good will.

Accessibility is the job

Douglas T — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 22:25:39 +0000

456 Berea Street is linking to a great discussion on accessibility.

But I am going to take this opportunity to re-inforce what I believe is the nature of our professionalism. We should make an effort to create accessible content, because it’s part of our job. And frankly, it doesn’t take much effort; it’s not difficult. - John “brothercake” Edwards

Nicely written, and to the point. Accessibility is the job. A lot of our clients and employers can miss the point. We aren’t making these sites for them. They know the content, they don’t need the site for that. We’re making the site for their clients, for whom accessibility may be an issue. When we worry about accessibility, we aren’t being picky, we’re doing our job.

Editing Your Firefox Personal Dictionary

Douglas T — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 11:16:27 +0000

We’ve all done it. You right click to correct the spelling of a word, and you add the misspelled word to your dictionary rather than correct it. Firefox makes it easy to add new words, but they don’t make it easy to remove them. Here’s how to do it.

Accessibility Evaluator

Douglas T — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:12:10 +0000

I’ve started using a great functional accessibility evaluator lately. A superb tool for testing and fixing accessibility issues on websites. A very powerful tool. Register for a free account and it gets even better.

VTTI Web-site Updated

Douglas T — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 11:44:00 +0000

The restructuring of the VTTI website is complete. They didn’t want a redesign in the traditional sense, they wanted to update and improve what they had. I’ve updated the colors and textures, as well as improving the quality of HTML and CSS. The end result is a site with a simpler color palette, and improved overall functionality. The load time is down, and the design is now consistent across browsers and platforms. As a side benefit, it’s also much easier to maintain and expand.

More screen-shots are available if you’re interested. As you can see, it ended up looking a somewhat like the Alumni Association site, but that’s not a big surprise. The goal with VTTI, like the Alumni Association, was to put together a site that met the University’s requirements, without using their templates. They both wanted a site that was identifiably Virginia Tech, but was a little unique as well. Variations on a theme, rather than an exact match.