existdissolve.com
the singularity of being and nothingness
On Becoming a Better Web Designer, Part Third
May 12th
As I dive deeper into web design, the more I realize how critically important it is to learn from others. By this, I'm not simply talking about using others' advice for coding best practices, nor even about-gasp!-stealing code.
What I mean by "learning from others" is to begin to develop a perspective of others' work that truly values and prizes their talents.
After all, let's be serious: web designers are a conceited bunch. We like to roll out designs and have others laud us with praises about how cool the site looks, how well it functions, whatever. But what do we do when we look at others' work?
I know my first reaction is to critique. "Well," I think to myself, "if I had designed this site (imagine me puffing a giant pipe while wearing a hideously ostentatious robe), I would have done this…" Or, "This site could be SO much better if only they had done that ['that' being understood as what I would have done, obviously]." Am I right? I know I am, because I am one of the most self-deprecating web designers out there, and I do it constantly.
However, this is a tremendously difficult way to function. Not only it More >
Quick Link: Flex Skin Design Extensions for CS3
May 12th
Honestly, I haven't done anything in Flex for a while (and I loathe that fact daily). Nonetheless, I ran across a pretty cool thing today. Flex 3 now has skin design extensions for CS3. This allows designers to create skins in Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks (yawn) and Flash, and then import them straight into Flex 3 using the skin import tool.
I think this is a very important development-Flex is awesome, but difficult to skin out of the box. These extensions should help make an already killer development framework infinitely more sexy, which is really all that matters (of course!).
So enough of this. Grab the extensions, and also check out Flex 3 if you haven't already.
Google Reader: An Essential Tool for the Web Designer
May 6th
I wish I could express how critical Google Reader is to my web design process. How does an RSS feed reader aid my web design, you ask?
I'll tell you!
There are approximately 13.25 billion CSS design galleries currently on the world-wide interblog. In my experience, each gallery updates their gallery with approximately 5-8 new designs every 3 days. So, in the course of 3 days there are 60+ billion websites featured on design galleries, give or take a handful.
Obviously, I kid, but the truth is not far off. There are a lot of CSS design galleries out there, and they are constantly adding new sites every day. Morever, there are hundreds of really talented designers out there that have incredibly creative ideas about good web design.
Now let's be honest: creative web design is never done is isolation. I personally find a lot of great inspiration from others, and attempt to distill the best of what I see into my own designs.
So where does Google Reader fit into this? Well, imagine trying to follow each of these sites (I currently follow over 108 galleries, and design-related blogs). Live bookmarks is unthinkable. Visiting each site would be an absolute nightmare. So I need More >
Cool Ways to Extend Twitter
May 5th
Okay, so I've been getting into Twitter quite a bit lately. I like being able to just post random stuff for people to read that does not require the length of a blog nor the time investment of an IM.
During my experience with Twitter, I've come across some pretty cool ways to extend it that make it easier and a lot more interesting to use.
The first, and most important, is Snitter. Snitter is a desktop client for Twitter that allows you to do pretty much everything you'd do in Twitter, but from the convenience of your desktop. Currently, it has a cap of a certain number of actions per day, but I think that will change as they upgrade their servers and web services. Definitely worth checking out.
The second is Twitty Tunes. This plugin for Firefox and FoxyTunes (you are using Firefox, right???) lets you post any song that is being played straight to Twitter. Additionally, you can use it to post web pages that you are browsing.
Finally, a new site has launched-twistori-which is a pretty interesting experiment with Twitter keywords. This application simply scrapes Twitter for all posts that contain certain keywords (like 'love, hate, believe, etc.') and displays More >
Yet Another Way to Waste My Time…!
May 4th
A while back (probably 3 months, or so), I ran across moshimonsters.com through an online design gallery. At that time, the site was nothing but a landing page, so I paid little attention-other than appreciating the shiny-ness of the design.
Today, this site popped up again on another design gallery, but this time the full application was live. Needless to say, I neglected other responsibilities and dove right in.
Moshi Monsters is an online "monster pet" game. Each person gets to create their own monster, name it, decorate the monster's house, etc. Pretty standard stuff. Oh, and there's the obligatory "games" that help you earn points towards buying food, furniture, and booze for your Moshi Monster.
I've done a million of these before, and have quickly lost interest. What is unique about MM, however, is that it has brought the "digital pet" genre into the Web 2.0 world. Not only can you network with your friends that have their own Moshi's, but the game also integrates nicely with Facebook (and other social networking applications) to extend the experience beyond the confines of the moshimonsters.com site. Plus, the site itself is very enjoyable as it is very professionally animated, and contains alot of fun easter-eggish More >
First Crack at WordPress
May 3rd
So normally I REALLLY prefer custom development to canned solutions. Sure, the pre-built software peices are nice in that they provide out-of-the-box solutions: but the problem is that the solution is not always very useful. End soap-box.
Today I began my first-ever implementation of a site design to WordPress. I've used WordPress for blogging before, but I've never really messed with it from a design standpoint.
My initial impression is that it's okay. Just as with Blogger and other similar services, the plugging in of functionality is sensible enough (although Blogger's tag-based version seems a bit more intuitive…). There are fifteen-billion functions available for getting dates, user scopes, etc. So that's all fine and good.
I guess my biggest objection-and this is true of all software like this-is that styling the default WordPress widgets is a PAIN. There's a lot of un-classed generated code that one has to wade through to get down to very mundane-yet extremely design-important elements like <a> tags. What's more is that these default plugins appear to live outside of the "themes" that one can build. So if one is not interested in traversing several levels of inheritance just to apply a different color to a "Most Recent More >
On Becoming a Better Web Designer, Part Deux
Apr 28th
A month ago, or so, I reflected upon my journey toward becoming a better web designer. In that post, I dwelled mostly upon time-saving practices such as creating organized folder structures, labeling Illustrator layers, etc.
Another point, however, was about avoiding becoming completely consumed with solving specific problems as they are encountered. I noted that although there are some problems that have to be solved before progress can be made, the vast majority of hang-ups can be saved for later when a fresher perspective (or possibly a new bit of learning gained through doing other things) might make the answer more clear.
I think this is a gigantically important point, and I want to expand upon it, but from a different direction. In my first post, I was talking mostly about code-but what about actual concept development?
When it comes down to it, good design is-on a high level-of course about the user. A good design must facilitate an easy-to-use and a rewarding and enjoyable experience. While a lot of this occurs in layout, how users interact with code, etc., there is also an important part that small details play in contributing to a successful visit.
It is these details, after all, that More >
Spry's Rating Widget
Apr 16th
For a new project I'm working on, I will need a mechanism for users to vote on certain pieces of content. Now it turns out that there are a billion and one ways of doing this, with an additional billion sets of frameworks. I was quite overwhelmed by the number of choices, so I've been putting it off for a while now.
Yet fortuitously, a couple days ago I was browsing the Spry docs and noticed two very promising words: Rating Widget.
Surely this cannot be what I'm looking for, could it? Ah but it was!
Recently, Spry updated its growing library of widgets to include a standard "star" rating system. Like it's other widgets, the rating widget comes with a single css file and a single javascript file. And also like other Spry widgets, it is completely simple to implement.
Assuming you have referenced the css and javascript files correctly, here's all it takes to set up a star rating system:
<span id="myrating" class="ratingContainer"> <span class="ratingButton"></span> <span class="ratingButton"></span> <span class="ratingButton"></span> <span class="ratingButton"></span> <span class="ratingButton"></span> <input type="text" id="ratingValue" name="dynamic_rate"/> <span class="ratingRatedMsg">Thanks for voting !</span> </span>
It's so simple it's almost laughable. But it gets much better. Like More >
Unobtrusive JavaScript…Duh!
Apr 15th
As I develop more applications that leverage JavaScript-both for data manipulation AND for superfluous effects-the more I come to realize the inexpressible need for finding as many shortcuts as possible. Without exception, as my JavaScript becomes more involved, so the complexity increases exponentially. To remedy this, I've started relying on frameworks such as Adobe's Spry, mooTools, jQuery, etc. to make my life easier for everything from element selection to major effects processing.
However, probably the biggest time-saver is making a concerted effort to make my JavaScript unobtrusive. What is this, you say? Well, by no means does it have a solidified meaning. However, a few principles are core to any definition.
The first is the idea of abstracting the functionality of JavaScript (be it data handling or effect processing) from the design layer on which the functionality is placed. In short, this means that the HTML markup of a site (and its corresponding CSS) should not be dependent on the functionality of JavaScript; rather, the functionality of JavaScript should be "pluggable" into the markup that it finds.
Now of course, this is all-too-idealistic. There is never a scenario in which markup and functionality are mutually ambivalent towards one another. However, the More >
Big Thanks to Everyone!
Apr 5th
This post will be short and sweet: In the week since the relaunch of singularityconcepts.com, I have been inundated with incredibly encouraging responses from an unbelievable number of people. The reaction to the new design has been overwhelming, and I am very humbled by the kind words that people have shared with me, as well as the design galleries that have featured my design.
Because I want to especially thank the design galleries that have featured this design, I want to include links to each gallery that gave kudos to the relaunch of singularityconcepts.com. All of these galleries feature extremely talented designers, and I am incredibly humbled to even be mentioned. Please take some time and check them out.
CSS Mania
Most Inspired
The Best Designs
CSS Hive
CSSclip
Most Inspired Blog - Weekly Top Standards
Ala Brasil
CSS Rand
Web Design File
CSS Based
Monkeyfied
