Post Archive

› October 30, 2001

the study of design

A very nice site worth exploring: The Study of Design (via brainstorms & raves)

› October 29, 2001

First day

First day at new job went smoothly, I think it's going to be fun.

Old employer should be avoided at all costs by anyone looking to have web work done, not only are they incompetent from the top down - they haven't given me my vacation money *grrr*.

› October 28, 2001

Massless colorpicker

Massless has released a new colorpicker that uses no graphics and expands on the websafe limit. I'm adding this to the feature article as an update. I'm not a huge fan of little clickable squares of color, but this picker loads quickly for me and has a good response time. I'd have to give this tool a thumbs up because I'm definitely in favor of it's simplicity.

› October 27, 2001

TCUP

Simon King sent me a very nice note about the color picker feature article, then from his sig I discover a very interesting project he's created called TCUP - The Collective Unconsciousness Project. A full description of the project is available on site, but it's a flash based interface and framework for logging dreams and viewing them. I especially enjoy the instructions/illustrations that show up prior to exploring the collective - while some might argue that a better goal is to avoid needing instructions, I found them to be non-intrusive and helpful.

multi column layout

Hooray! Many thanks to glish for noticing: IHT dhtml guru John Weir has released code for the (I think) ultra usable multi column reader called sg layout. Like in IHT, a long article can be setup with a limited height and flowing into 2 or more columns - if the article is longer than the columns on the page, clicking on the last column (anywhere in the text) moves the text forward by columns, all without reloading the page. It's so much more elegant than I'm describing here.

› October 25, 2001

travel, a personal note

Well, the Win IE 6 problem remains (and I'm seeing it all the time now that I upgraded) - but I'm driving down to orlando this morning, returning tomorrow evening. I'm going to scope out caterers for our december wedding, fiance nichole will get a slew of digital pictures to look at when I return. It's only 2 days, but I'll miss nichole and of course our little zoo. And yes, if you just looked at that link, the kittie's full name is graphic interchange format...

› October 24, 2001

IE6 display problems

Andy has pointed out some display problems with this site in IE6, from his screenshot they look pretty simple to fix. I've been reluctant to upgrade from 5.5 since the largest % of browsers visiting this site in my web stats seem to be using 5.5. Of course if you're using Moz, you should be the happiest of campers.

› October 23, 2001

whoops - old author names

Whoops, I upgraded to MT 1.1 and decided to clean up old usernames not being used in the system -- but apparently the pre-mt postings no longer know who their author is...

› October 22, 2001

converting existing content to css

Shirley at Brainstorms and Ravees has published a new tutorial: converting existing content to CSS... great intro for beginners, if you're interested in CSS but haven't gotten your feet wet yet - bookmark this.

iawiki

Information architechture wiki: IAwiki (via noise between stations)

Design v2 is live

Wow, it took a long time to get here - but I've finally posted design version 2. I'm sure there are plenty of browser version bugs to work out, and there are several improvements already in mind, but for the most part it should all be working. Being that it's almost 3 am I'll postpone posting my notes about the tricks and treats of converting to moveable type and to a tabless layout for tomorrow morning. Please do check it all out, and send bugs to nsteiner@web-graphics.com. Cheers!

› October 20, 2001

CSS Pointers Group

CSS Pointers Group

web nouveau

A big list of sites that mostly use css for layout, mentioned by "shot" from the WDL list: Web Nouveau Table-less sites list-1

› October 19, 2001

rough week

Oof.Rough week, starting off by being let go from my job on monday. At least things are starting to settle a bit. Tonight I'm off with my fiance to her workplace so she can finish some signage graphics using a design program called casmate (outputs to a printer that cuts plastic) - meanwhile I can crank on the remaining template work for the new design version of this site w/ my ibook (almost done!).

Problem fixed!

Great! the mozilla problem seems to be fixed thanks to absolute positioning, which is fine to use since this is fixed width layout anyways. Even looks good in Mac IE5. Now I gotta just tweak the column widths and move on.

moz problem

So strange - there's a problem with the way moz displays the homepage header graphic... overlaying the page. It seems that the "top" style which should push the contents down below the graphic is not taking. Even weirder, it's working fine for the subpage template - and it's coded the same way for each. This seems like one of those weirdo small time problems that can be fixed easily once it's found - in fact I thought I already ran into this and fixed it. Ah well, such is the html template coding process.

› October 18, 2001

meeting brushstroke and photodude

This evening bump and I went to The Interactive Media Alliance's "Twisted Carnival" and briefly met our inviter brushstroke and we were also introduced to photodude, founder of pixelpile. If it was a tad bit less noisy perhaps we could have had more conversation, hopefully we will all meet up again.

CSS2 Reference Sidebar

Add a CSS2 Reference Sidebar! to Net6/Moz [ via scottandrew ]

Just Stop It

At the risk of counterbalancing the upbeat and open minded qualities of my last post: Dean Allen writes with a clarity and fervor that I can only admire from a distance, proven again with his Just Stop It post. Somehow just linking to it doesn't seem like enough.

› October 17, 2001

RuleSpaces

Blackbelt jones defines a method of measurement, and gives a sense of perspective: RuleSpaces: a look at the scales of experience systems - Cosmology, Urbanism, Architecture, Engineering and Physics

PocketMac

If you've got a pocket pc but like to use MacOS as your primary platform for email, scheduling, etc - you'll definitely want to check out PocketMac, which is set for release before the end of this month. Screenshots of the synching software on OS X will be released soon.

The Font Promise Land

A interesting article detailing the font handling capabilities of Mac OS X while shedding some light on OpenType and UniCode.

› October 16, 2001

"unfortunately yet not one representation"

Sometimes you can find interesting sites from your referrers. I don't know Dutch, and therefore am not sure if the site owner plans to screen capture webgraphics so: helaas nog geen afbeelding beschilebaar!

› October 15, 2001

posting here

Posting here will be a bit thin for the next couple days as I'm putting the finishing touches on a site template/design. The new design will be 2 columns (for the homepage) - I'm trashing the moreover news thing on the right, valuable linkage seems to be a minority of what's pulled into that thing. Let's see, what else - oh yes, the new templates are using moveable type instead of the current greymatter system.

› October 14, 2001

Mac IE problem fixed

Ok cool, looks like I fixed the mac IE problem.
On a personal note, I reinstituted my extended ethernet cable so I can work on the ibook more comfortably in the living room. There is still a few more steps before taking this design live. Just for my own reference, I'm listing them below:
finish design work on the header image
create sub-page header image
make little image maps for the header images
make a text based footer
put the headers and footers in the various template pages
convert the old greymatter weblog entries into moveabletype
go-live

› October 13, 2001

A Mac IE problem?

Pepe - do you see a top and left margin? There should be about 20px on the top and left but for some reason,
my copy of IE on the ibook is showing no margins - unless i "apple-R-refresh", but even then it seems very quirky
probably a small bug in my CSS... rather minor I think. Email me if you see the margins on your computer!

› October 12, 2001

chunking

The Interface Mafia - "Chunking" by Kevin O'Boyle is a must read for interface designers (via xblog).

amazon improvements to interface

Many are abuzz about the amazon interface updates. My 2 cents on the new "look inside the book" feature and the new product info tab/buttons will be posted after a bit more investigation, but are bound to be mostly positive at inital glance.

a list apart articles posted

Two fantastic article topics from A List Apart. "The flash aesthetic" and "How to succeed with urls".

› October 11, 2001

forum 2

linkdup noticed the Fourm. 2.0 flash site. The attention to detail, simplicity and interactivity of this type of design keeps me interested in the swf format. Sites that pull off this aesthetic sensibility with flash seem to be few and far between...

› October 10, 2001

new layout happening

there's a new layout happening here, things are coming together quite nicely too. There are several design details which Pepe can tweak out such as logo placement/arrangement, feature graphic design, navigation to the about/contact/legal pages, and probably a graphic treatment for the manifesto - it's taking up a lot of space as traditional text.

Along with these design adjustments, I need to style up the archive and individual entry templates for the blog.

After those things come together, I can do the greymatter transfer procedure and have everything ready for "going live". We aren't that far away really - the hard stuff of having clean code to work with is finished.

dooce distress

Dooce: Notably foolish comments directed at a graphic designer every day of her life

moveable type report

Moveable type is working great - I've messed around with the template coding, simple! makes sense and just works. This webloggie you are reading right now will be transfered over to the MT system completely in the next day or two. The excellent interface design to MT makes it's use refreshing, of course there are other reasons to use it, but I can't seem to get over the pleasant, consistent tactile simplicity. It's probably too late an hour to attempt discriptors, this pesky need-for-sleep thing keeps getting in the way.

bookmarklet on Mac Nets 6!

Powersof10.com

That's a happy suprise! the bookmarklet actually work
s cross browser like!

a test of the bookmarklet from Win

International Herald Tribune

That there is a link generated from the blogging bookmarklet. Now let's see if it works via mac...

› October 9, 2001

Here is another blog

One thing I've noticed with a little bit of use is that the tab order of the input fields and buttons on the weblog entry page is a bit wacky. In order to get from the "title" field to the main blog field one has to tab through the categories excerpt preview status save cancell comments inputs and buttons first. Oh well, minor deal, I'll probably suggest an enhancement to this which would be very simple... til then I've got a mouse.

Moveable Type

Moveable Type installed and running very smooth, (not yet activated here on this homepage). Slammed at work, but anxious to play more later. Installed fast, probably faster than Greymatter, ease of template coding is next at bat, looks a bit pearly-snarlish tho. More reports tonight.

Interesting

If you are a fan of the Infinite Mind on Public Broadcasting, you may remember this episode. It deals with sensory overlap. Something a few people experience. One person I know is very close to me. She sees colors in numbers. Not randomly either. Every number has a specific correlating color. 4 is orange, 7 is blue. The linked article goes on further, citing an example of a person who sees music as a grey sausage filling up their car. Pass the saurkraut!

Trying a post from work

I should really be working, I wanted to try the MT posting from NT IE5.5 at work. Looks real nicey.

Another day of testing

I sure am testing, there's not a lot to say, except - maybe that I need to start using ipsum lorem here, till I get things just right.

test001

Hello there...

› October 8, 2001

first fullscale moveable type release today

The personal publishing system moveable type, will have it's first full scale release today: T minus 6 hours and counting

› October 6, 2001

link color

One of the design challenges with this website is the ratio of links to text and the amount of jump off spots from the homepage. Chad has made this dilemma into clear verbiage: I'm having a link color dilemma (see post from 10.5.01).Link color is also the term I didn't have handy after leaving Tufte's workshop with a bad taste in my mouth - along with his other extensive over sites of the hypertext media, he expressed a favoritism towards sites with nearly 100% link color.

macromedia free seminars

Enter your state and a month to see what free seminars are available from Macromedia. Here in Atlanta there's a free "Web Accessibility Seminar" on November 28th.

› October 5, 2001

A long time ago, in

A long time ago, in an economy far away, there was a dream. That dream was that HTML would be used to convey the semantics of information. It's likely that many of the readers of this site are particularly guilty of subverting the semantics of html with visual stylings, but there really hasn't been much fruitful uses for semantic markup -- at least in the brand name browsers.

Mozilla has changed this with the inclusion of support for the LINK tag. Check out this site with a nightly from this week or the upcoming 9.5 release, and you'll find next and previous links in the toolbar while browsing search results.


For this site, the link tag offers a common way of representing navigational choices in the toolbar. This is particularly ideal for search engines, given the match of first, next, and previous. Other key uses for the web at large are site specific home page links (reclaim the upper lefthand space of your homepage!), and the presentation of meta information like author. Other attributes are a bit stuff, oriented torward book / research paper style information organization. Still, it's a very good thing and should eventually help search engines understand your content.

Oh, if you're feeling guilty about your subversion of the ideals of the web with evil bold and font tags, check out our CSS resources.

› October 4, 2001

photoshop tennis this friday

Friday Afternoon Photoshop Tennis is getting cranked back up. Live tomorrow. Mark Arcenal from Caffe Mocha is facing JD Hooge of Fourm. It should be a fine match. 11am SF, 1pm Chicago, 2pm NYC, 7pm London with commentary by Rosecrans of The Morning News.

setpixel

setpixel.com - overlooked concepts in director

Optimoz

mozdev.org - optimoz: gestures/screenshots

404

404 haiku

› October 3, 2001

browser upgrades

inflight correction has some valuable thoughts to share about old browser upgrade notices.

web redesign book

Interesting new book: Web Redesign, includes several download-ables like this client spec sheet. (this is via usableweb)

moveable type is an alternative

moveable type is an alternative to greymatter with a bit more to offer. Link thanks to elegant hack.

Color combinations that work

Color combinations that work

› October 2, 2001

youngpup

Lots of fantastic interface widgets and goodies at youngpup.net, best yet - comprehensive documentation is provided.

The Interface Mafia

The Interface Mafia will likely be added as a resource site worth revisiting.

google tabs

oh no! Google added tab navigation. Thank goodness they've maintained their uncluttered feel, I just wish something more interesting/innovative than tabs would appear on a major web site's navigation design. I suppose I shouldn't complain, tabs seem to make a lot of sense and are freindly to use.

› October 1, 2001

designer's responsibility to understand/be interested in usability

Join the discussion re:the designer's responsibility to understand/be interested in usability @ eleganthack: "do designers hate themselves? how about us?"

Got Mozilla?

Got Mozilla? If so, searches of web-graphics.com collection are easily accessible in the location bar. Add this link as a bookmark and you'll be able to type "wbg design inspiration" in the location bar and get lots of goodness. Our collection is a bit aged, but we're workin on it.


For more mozilla keyword bookmarks, or more details on how to use them, visit the lab at surfmind.com.