If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Yahoo has released it’s User Interface Library for use. “The Yahoo UI Library Controls produce visual, interactive user interface elements on the page with just a few lines of code and an included CSS file. All the components in the Yahoo! User Interface Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses.”

They have also let out their design pattern library which describes the optimal solution to common problems on the web.

Keep it up Yahoo. I will be joining your camp in no time. I just don’t know if I can give up GMail quite yet.

Thanks WeBreakStuff for pointing us in the right direction.

I will be playing around with this tomorrow.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

I know I have given Technorati a lot of heat recently but they have recently added a feature I had harped on them for not having: relevance. That’s a good feature to add later in a search engine (sarcasm). Anyway, check it out.

From a design standpoint I love the implementation. I am a very big fan of slide controls as a replacement for drop down menus. They have implemented this as a means of filtering search results by ‘authority’.

We still have the worst time showing up on there.

Technorati Search: web development

technorati tags: technorati, internet, technology, search engine

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

Here’s a question for all web developers to answer. If you are a standards-based web designer/developer you try to do everything inside the bounds of these standards. We have been doing standards based web design for awhile but this is one of the first times I have come upon this issue. And my guess is it comes up for anyone doing any data intensive web applications.

While working on an application we stumbled on to a problem. For usability purposes we wanted to implement a javascript method for the handling of a specific amount of data. Doing this adds a very large file size into the project which may more may not cause speed issues. If we do not use javascript to solve the problem we are forced to post the page back every single time the user attempts to use a specific function. But, we are guaranteed that it is optimized.

We are also running into the same issue here with our blog. Since we use blogger as a platform we are stuck with their horrible commenting process. If you want to comment here you have to leave the site, post your comment, and come back. As a user I would simply choose not to leave a comment. We also had a problem where visitors would have to leave our site to even see comments. We fixed that with some conditional tags and javascript but it didn’t hurt the performance much. So we have a new dilemma of implementing a giant javascript application to handle all commenting or we can just screw it and let you guys go back and forth between websites just so we can keep the web appliation thin, clean, and neat.

I think usability outweighs accessibility in these circumstances. Even if you will lose face to the upper echelons of standards based developers you will know that the user is getting the better experience even if you had to cut corners.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

Both TJ and I are serial designers. This means that once we have completed a design of a website and we have nothing else to do, we start re-designing what we have just completed. In fact, TJ has just completed yet another revision to his site. I think the old one lasted only a couple months. Am I right TJ? This could be because of many possible factors: 1)We are constantly learning 2)We over criticize ourselves 3) We want to try something new 4) We’re bored. Regardless of the reasons we are both serial designers.

As I was thinking about TJ’s latest rebuild I thought of how much easier and faster his redesign had to have been since his move to standards-based design. A major overhaul of a website can take minutes when you have extrapolated the presentation from the content. In two minutes you can change how everyone views your site.

This is one of my favorite features of designing with standards. It’s a must for serial designers. You can easily change your look without touching the content whenever you feel like it.

Not that this is new news or anything but something that just popped in my head.

So how does a serial designer ever finish a project?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments

Since the loss of my Searchfox RSS reader I have been in the process of finding a new one. With Bloglines far behind me I have been looking for the best web-based aggregator that fits my needs. My needs include 1) the ability to manage > 150 feeds easily 2) river of news readability 3) clean, simple, efficient, and intuitive design. As of yet I have not found what I am looking for. Google Reader is not intuitive but does provide a river of news. Attensa has ‘well it’s better than bloglines’ going for it but it’s a temporary solution.

Awhile ago I had signed up for FeedLounge which was another up-and-coming rss aggregator release. Finally I got a demo (two weeks ago) as they opened up their beta. Once they announced the release (opening up) of their application I hurried over there in hopes of finding my SearchFox replacement. What did I find? I could get a three hour tour and service for $5/month.

So I replied to their email explaining how “i’m not going to pay for an rss reader.” Alex King promptly replied saying, “We know that we there are free readers out there, however FeedLounge was created to fill a space in the high-end web-based reader space that many felt was not adequately filled.” If Richard McManus is anywere near right that RSS Readers will be commoditized than paying for a feed reader has no chance.

And seriously, who does three hour tours?

FeedLounge : The Premium Web-based Feed Reader

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

• 0 Comments