It's been quite a few months since I've been really inspired to do something. The last time I was truly inspired was after watching The Social Network: the film about the origins of Facebook. It's a tale about a man and some friends who was driven to create a service that everyone on campus, and eventually the world, would use.
Over the last few days I attended the Future of Web Design conference in central London. It was a great two days meeting some of my peers and heroes of web design. Here's my notes from day 1 including talks from Aaron Walters, Mike Kus, Rachel Andrew, Robin Christopherson, Daniel Rhatihgan, Sarah Parmenter, Dan Rubin, Matt Gifford and Aral Balkan.
Sketchnotes User Experience User Interfaces Web Design Web Standards
Over the last few days I attended the Future of Web Design conference in central London. It was a great two days meeting some of my peers and heroes of web design. Here's my notes from Day 2, featuring Ethan Marcotte, [Femi Adesina](<a href=), Josh Clark, Bruce Lawson, Martin Beeby (from #LWSIE the day before), Elliot Jay Stocks, Sarah B Nelson and once again, Josh Clark!
Sketchnotes Usability User Experience User Interfaces Web Design
Simple premise: web sites are designed for the screen, they are meant to be viewed through a computer and that’s about it. Still, most people want to print out a web site at some point and your design probably won’t look very good. Print media strips out all backgrounds and forces a page width so large fixed width sites simply won’t print all their detail.
In the early days of the Internet, web sites were for gathering and displaying information. In its 20 year history, this hasn't changed much! At some point on a site you have to enter your details or what information you're searching for. So, it makes sense that the thing I spend most of my time doing is creating forms!
I've just come across this brilliant CSS 3 technique from Ajaxian on how to do web animations. This produces a great iPhone-esque technique by simply writing 6 lines of code!
Entering data into a web site is possibly the most common task that is performed. In my time designing and developing sites, I’ve seen good forms and I’ve seen bad forms. The biggest sin with these forms has always been error messages. Web sites are designed to communicate a message. Whether it’s the day’s news or that a friend is having a party, the message must be clear an unmistakable. With errors, correct placement, styling and reference are essential. I’m going to show you how not to do it, and then best practice error messages.
Recently, I've been asked a lot of questions about CSS and my commitment to it. I'm a purist when it comes to the web. I firmly believe that the only way to create a web site is to use standards-compliant CSS that is cross-compatible with all major browsers. Javascript should only be used as a progressive enhancement technique and should certainly not be relied upon (yes, I'm looking at you ASP .NET). Most of my colleagues regard this stance as noble, but somewhat stupid in the "real world", where it's not always getting it done "right", it's just getting it done. Why is CSS considered such a black art?
Good morning folks.
I've been having some fun today. Apart from not getting out of bed to earn my keep (aren't laptops great) I've been playing with techniques from the book "CSS Mastery" by Budd, Moll and Collison. This playtime will form the Genesys Consulting website, which will go online when I'm done with it.