Web design Process
A nice overview of the process:
Archive for July, 2006
Web site staffing
This article from the A List Apart site raises some good points on the issue of the number of staff required to maintain a web site. My experience is that most clients just don’t understand the number of hours it takes to build and maintain a site. And, as the guy who is responsible for defending the costs, it is easy to feel picked on. But I have found a similar myopic tendency on other publishing projects, such as a newsletter or annual brochure. These things just don’t write, edit and display themselves — as those involved in working on them know all too well.
New Mobile Gadget
I’ve been doing a fair amount of traveling lately, both with summer travel and attending a bunch of conferences/seminars. And frankly I’m getting pretty frustrated with my portable devices. Laptops are heavy, cumbersome, and run out of power too quickly — even the iBook that I borrowed from work. If you try to rely on it through an eight-hour day, plus train travel, the power only lasts at best for half of your time. So then you’re searching for an electrical outlet with all the other “mobile” people! And they really aren’t of much use without wi-fi, which despite its growth I still find hard to find in most of the places I find myself. Tablet PCs sound attractive, but they fall into the same power-hungry problem. I’ve never gotten comfortable with the small screens/small keyboards that palm-type devices offer (although I may pull out my old Palm Zire again and give it another try). And a recording device might help, but I’m just not comfortable talking to myself, especially in public. Even my iPod doesn’t seem up to the all day - no power - challenge! So for serious writing I still find the good old fashioned notebook and pen the most reliable.
New Logo
I’ve been inspired to do a total re-design of this web log. Part of the inspiration came from my two days at the An Event Apart event. Part is just that I’ve been getting tired of the design. And I’ve also wanted to dig into WordPress and really understand how to make it bend to do my page-display-bidding. I’ll be bringing out bits over the next couple of weeks.
An Event Apart Wrap-up
After trying to absorb a ton of great stuff over two info-packed days here is some of what I took away:
- Read “Attack of the Zombie Copy” on the Alistapart website
- Try to have a writing/editing budget and even a content czar for a web site project (but no one really does!)
- Web text should be brief, chunked, use subheads, appropriate, persuasive, offer a value proposition, serve users in a “find” mode, use short sentences.
- Check out Lulu.com publish on demand service
- The ALA site redesign uses 1024 pixel page width, but breaks the important stuff at 800 pixels to serve both audiences. (good idea!)
- Eric Meyer is as good in person as he is in his books — a CSS maven.
- CSS sprites give an easy way to introduce roll-over behaviors with background images.
- zefrank.com — Ze Frank is as cool now as when I saw him two years (or so) ago at FlashForward.
- Using CSS you can make table data display as a bar graph (Eric Meyer again!)
- !important is a useful CSS technique that shouldn’t be overused unless you are lazy or desperate.
- The user’s browser also has a CSS style sheet that will cause things like hyperlinks to display in the default way even if you didn’t expect this.
- microformats, with things like hCard, hCalendar, and hReview can help you do some VERY cool stuff and link browser content to other programs. I need to to a lot more reading here!
- One True Layout proves that even Eric Meyer doesn’t know everything, and doesn’t mind admitting it. (But he’s still the man!)
- Javascript is still confusing to me, and I’m not sure I’m really ready to dig into the DOM, but FireBug might help. (and one more reason to use Firefox)
- Need to add Weaving the Web to my reading list.
