web & design exploration

Jamming session to start the week. :-)

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:25:55 -0800

Jamming session to start the week. :-)

Wrap up! Conference is over. Some of the speakers get together...

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:09:00 -0700

Wrap up! Conference is over. Some of the speakers get together to talk about the experience.

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

I certainly hope to join the group again next year! =)

Steve Krug and USABILITY! - It’s Not Rocket Surgery Voices...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:02:00 -0700

Steve Krug and USABILITY! - It’s Not Rocket Surgery

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

During his presentation at #VTM_WD, Steve reviewed attendees’ websites and provided his thoughts and tips.

His presentation was delightful. Funny dude! =)

Scott Jehl gives an interesting presentation on Optimizing for...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:00:00 -0700

Scott Jehl gives an interesting presentation on Optimizing for Mobile Web

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

He provided tips on how to create good mobile sites.

He talked about Progressive Enhancement for mobile web.

Stoyan Stefanov talked about "Building High Performance Websites"

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:59:00 -0700

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

I totally forgot to take his photo because I was busy taking notes! (Sorry, Stoyan!) =(

smush.it

phpied.com

@stoyanstefanov

He talked about different techniques for:

compression .JS, .CSS, images.
Flush()
And tools we can use

Coming up from Yahoo!:

YUICompressor Desktop tool that allows you to drag and drop files and will compress them, zip them, etc.

Jason CranfordTeague talks about 2010: The Year of Web...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 16:44:00 -0700

Jason CranfordTeague talks about 2010: The Year of Web Typography

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

Jason said: “Web Typography … is where the sexy is going to be in web design this year!” … Enough said. ;-)

Robert Hoekman, Jr. starts his presentation on Experiencism: How...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:53:00 -0700

Robert Hoekman, Jr. starts his presentation on Experiencism: How to be a Strategist in a World of Design Thinkers

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

Think about:

What does your organization do?
Why does your organization do that?
What does it want to put out in the world? Why does it want to achieve?
Those who know the concept have miscommunications with the people who don’t know the concepts.

Zappos, MINIS, Apple - success:

The reason that they are succeeding is because of STRATEGY!
Strategy is the motivation behind innovation.
Without strategy innovation is just a word - it has no meaning.
All the design thinking in the world will not turn your org into Zappos, MINI, Apple.

WHAT follows WHY!

Strategy:

Communicate strategy of your org to everyone in your org.
Strategy is just a plan. TARGET.
You can’t create a plan w/o having an end result.
Strategy enables decision making.
Strategy helps:
- To define what your goal is
- Measurement
- Unifies the team (we are all after the same thing)

There are FIVE phases to developing a user strategy:

Perform an audit
Discover phase
Define
Evaluate and plan
Act, React, Repeat

Website: www.rhjr.net

Paul Adams from Google talks about Designing for the Real LIfe...

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:52:00 -0700

Paul Adams from Google talks about Designing for the Real LIfe Social Network

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 2

People are now the center of the web.
Designing for different types of relationships.
Designing for strong ties is important - big influence.
Think how people are connected around your business.

Blog: www.thinkoutsidein.com/blog

Progressive Enhancement Voices That Matter Web Design Conference...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:56:00 -0700

Progressive Enhancement

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 1

Todd Parker talks about Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Building the Web That Works for Everyone

Goal: To make it work for everyone in every device.

What is Progressive Enhancement (PE)?

It’s about being inclusive - works for everyone
Always start with what works everywhere.

Tool: EnhanceJS

http://code.google.com/p/enhancejs/

More info:

http://www.filamentgroup.com

Emily Lewis explaining Practical Microformats Voices That Matter...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 17:56:00 -0700

Emily Lewis explaining Practical Microformats

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 1

Sets of HTML attributes and values that are applied to common web content - people, events, blog posts, reviews, tags - to provide more meaning
Makes content much more powerful (be searched, etc)
Community driven initiative
Designed for humans first and machines second
Building blogs to share content on the web
Smart content
Markup with more meaning

Colleen Jones finishes her presentation on Content Analysis:...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 15:07:00 -0700

Colleen Jones finishes her presentation on Content Analysis: Make Your Website Fly

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 1

Let’s not forget about content!

Do content analysis to understand content needs.

Analyzing content: Four key components:

Audit
Goal
Users
Ecosystem

You’re getting started with content and your website:

What are the content processes?
Who provides feedback?
Who are the people involved?

Get your website off the ground:

What content do you have?
Is it good quality?
Does it work for your goals and users?
How does your ecosystem affect it?

Ordering Disorder by Khoi Vinh Voices That Matter Web Design...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 14:23:00 -0700

Ordering Disorder by Khoi Vinh

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 1

Khoi Vinh gets ready to talk about Ordering Disorder at Voices That Matter Web Design conference in San Francisco.

Very interesting presentation about bringing design knowledge for print to online with grids.

“The grids suggest that we have the fidelity of print, but of course we can’t.”

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference - Monday - Lunch Just...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:48:00 -0700

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference - Monday - Lunch

Just finished lunch at the Mission Bay Conference Center in beautiful San Francisco. LOVED the dessert! =D

Next presentation:

“Ordering Disorder” by Khoi Vinh.

Denise Jacobs talks about It’s Business Time: Giving User...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:31:00 -0700

Denise Jacobs talks about It’s Business Time: Giving User Experience Love With CS33

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 1

She replaces Dan Cederholm

The slide shown in the photo is for “Let’s Get It On with CSS3” in case you are wondering. :)

She talked about amongst other things:

Progressive Enhancement
Graceful Degradation

CSS3 Resources:

http://delicious.com/denisejacobs/css3resources

Tantek Celik talks about HTML5 Voices That Matter Web Design...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:17:00 -0700

Tantek Celik talks about HTML5

Voices That Matter Web Design Conference 2010 - Day 1

Excellent presentation! Wish it had been longer!

HTML5 consists of four areas:

Practical upgrade to HTML4/XHTML
New forms capabilities
Native multimedia (vector graphics, SVG, etc)
Core of the open web app platform

Jesse James Garrett speaks about “The Elements of User...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 09:20:00 -0700

Jesse James Garrett speaks about “The Elements of User Experience”

Simple Planes diagram: http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/…simpleplanes.pdf

The Elements of User Experience (original diagram): http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf

Monday Morning Up early enjoying the New York Times and a cup of...

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 07:55:00 -0700

Monday Morning

Up early enjoying the New York Times and a cup of coffee. Mmm! :)

Sunday Night I like my bed at the hotel I’m staying for...

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 22:05:00 -0700

Sunday Night

I like my bed at the hotel I’m staying for the Voices That Matter Web Design conference in S.F. :)

How to show link images aka image thumbnails on Facebook

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:14:42 -0700

Enter the following code on the <head> tag:

<link rel=”image_src”
      type=”image/jpeg”
      href=”http://www.domain.com/path/icon-facebook.jpg” />

The image dimensions:
From Facebook’s Wiki page:

“The thumbnail’s width AND height must be at least 50 pixels, and cannot exceed 130x110 pixels. The ratio of both height divided by width and width divided by height (w / h, h / w) cannot exceed 3.0. For example, an image of 126x39 pixels will not be displayed, as the ratio of width divided by height is greater than 3.0 (126 / 39 = 3.23). Images will be resized proportionally. “

Testing:
If you have already tested the thumbnail on Facebook via sharing a link, you *might* not see the new image since Facebook caches the images. You can try any of the following solutions:

Example 1:
You tried:
http://www.mypage.com/mypage/
Try this:
http://www.mypage.com/mypage/index.html

Example 2:
You tried:
http://www.mypage.com/mystuff.aspx
Try this:
http://www.mypage.com/mystuff.aspx?a=b

“The Web is an adventure I step into everyday”

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:08:00 -0700

“The Web is an adventure I step into everyday”