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Gmail server error (25 January 2007)
Wow, that’s the first time I see that.
Another reason to stay wary of something that’s been live for two years with a “BETA” in its logo.Colour combinations (23 January 2007)
Second Mark Boulton link the same day: like everybody, I always suffer when it’s time to choose colours for a design, so colour references are always a good thing.
Whitespace (23 January 2007)
I’m sure some people take it for granted, but every once in a while I need to be reminded of basic design things like whitespace. Great article.
Top Firefox 2 config tweaks (19 January 2007)
A few good things to learn about tweaking Firefox (thanks Odin).
Resolutions and display width (19 January 2007)
The numbers clearly show that monitor sizes and resolutions are getting bigger. The most common interpretation of that is more and more people have bigger displays. But an equally valid interpretation of the numbers is the range of displays is bigger than ever. It’s a subtle but important distinction. One interpretation focuses solely on the size of the highest numbers; the other interpretation focuses on the range of all the numbers.
Never forget that: screen width is no indication of (…)iPhone: Not touchy feely (17 January 2007)
We’ve thought for so many years that tactile feedback was necessary. Very good point from 37signals, to follow because it is interesting: with no touch feedback, how will interfaces evolve? Will it simply work?
Photographic Palettes (5 January 2007)
Definitely worth keeping in mind: how to come up with clever colour palettes based on select photographs. (Via Mezzoblue)
The false fight between fun and business (5 January 2007)
I can’t believe I missed this post — lucky the good people at 37Signals have year-end reruns!
I’m with a team where working is fun, so I can relate to that. And yes, we’re part of a very big corporation. So much for employees versus self-employed.Firefox 2.0 and Access Keys: cure worse than disease (22 November 2006)
Gez Lemon points out quite rightly that the new accesskey combination in Firefox is broken. A promising outlook would be to follow Opera’s example: enable the user to choose their own accesskey combo.
Reference typography books (21 November 2006)
Roger Johansson shares an excellent list of typography books. I’m saving the URL here for future reference.
A kid and his secret friend, thanks Michal (9 November 2006)
My friend Michal is a very gifted artist, and I’ve loved what she does for a few years now. I had never linked back to her gallery and now— it’s done: Michal’s gallery. It’s fresh and intelligent, as you’ll see if you look at this image I’ve pointed out of the lot.
Tackling automatic field focus usability issues (6 November 2006)
I’ve been bothered with that for a long time.
Also, I’ve been bothered with automatic field focus per se for a long time. From a theoretical/accessible point of view, it’s very unsettling. I wish I had time to develop the idea.
In the meantime go read Chris’s article.Closing the gap between list items in IE (3 November 2006)
Mark Newhouse in Taming Lists had a solution for closing the gap for list items which is a side effect of the way he declares the padding, width etc of his a elements. I’ve used it in a recent project and found very tiring (and a bit old-schoolish) to have to explicitly set widths on links. I prefer Roger’s method and will try it out.
Top CSS Tips (3 November 2006)
Jonathan Snook’s CSS tips list makes sense, mostly, and I should comment on it, but it’s the morning so I can’t bother —I really can’t write this early. I just can say that I do recognize myself in half of this list already (Via Roger Johansson who writes his own list of comments.)
Five Simple Steps to designing with colour (2 November 2006)
Start with no colour... it may sound like a joke but it isn’t. As always the “Five simple steps”, this time for colour, by Mark Boulton are a great read.
How not to fix HTML (31 October 2006)
Joe Clark has some serious grievances towards the way things are driven, either by the W3C or the WHAT-WG, and I can relate to that. He’s got some good points, like this one:
This is a classic problem in HTML development: The people doing the work are geeks with computer-science interests who do not understand, for example, newspapers, or screenplays, or, really, print publishing in general.
And this is one of the reasons why I like spip: the only CMS that thinks in editorial terms, (…)Uncanny Valley (31 October 2006)
One never ceases to learn. (Via A photo by Martin, entirely unrelated)
If You Pick One Color, Pick Them All (30 October 2006)
It will never be repeated enough: Always specify a background colour.
Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article... (25 October 2006)
Every time you do a presentation you wonder how to grab your audience. Here’s the trick. A must-read by Kathy Sierra. (Via I can’t remember who)
Creativity: Find the flaw (20 October 2006)
Here’s my little contribution to Molly’s Creativity Jam Session. My office is my living room, so I just got up from my computer, turned around with my eyes closed, opened them and looked for a flaw in the range of my vision. And there were the CDs right in front of me.