Jeffrey Zeldman’s article, The vanishing personal site, brings to light what many of us have been wondering about in the back of our heads for a while now. Social networks that provide features often found in a personal website captured our fancies and stretched our virtual personas in all directions. That goes for both the knowledgeable and not so knowledgeable in web development.
The Question
It’s not really a bad thing, which Zeldman also stresses. The question is, now that you’ve scattered yourself all over the place, how are you going to put yourself back together?
Not that you need to; I’m sure not everyone would be interested in painstakingly picking up the pieces one by one and gluing them together. That’s why FriendFeed became an instant hit. But if you ask me, using another social network to put them all together does not feel good. Not one bit. I’d consider it another convenient (even organic) way to spread my own content. But that’s it. I still dream of the day I manage to tastefully put my stuff together in one place. Like these websites:
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Will Harris shares some insight on working with designers. We often read about tips for designers by designers, but not tips for clients by clients. Still, both parties should read it (and print out the PDF, too!).
Designers (and professionals in related fields) will get great gems of advice that will make them go “oh, thank goodness he said that!” because it’s so common for clients to just sit there and say “I don’t like that” without giving any real reason behind their preference. A design project (again, this can apply to other fields) is the responsibility of both the designer and the client. They have to work together.
But let me digress a little bit. One thing that struck me while reading the article was Will’s first suggestion:
Choose your designer carefully. Look at their previous work. The best designers don’t have a “signature look.” Their sites look as different as their clients do. Awards don’t necessarily mean the design worked for the client. If you’re not sure about a design, go to sites they designed and ask their clients.
Do you agree that designers with more diverse-looking projects are better than those who maintain a signature look? On the one hand, it immediately leads a client into thinking that the designer has a wider skill set and can more easily meet their requirements especially if they’re fickle.
On the other hand, clients opt for designers with a consistent style exactly because they want to emulate that look on their own projects.
I think that in general, professionals start out not knowing exactly what they want to do, and try everything out first. As they grow older they start to specialize. As time passes, you’re supposed to be more sure of yourself and should be able to hold a distinguishable reputation among your peers. This can be said not only about the styles you create, but the skills you specialize in, the clientele you work with, and so on. I wouldn’t say this is the only way to go, but it seems to be the trend.
Umbrella Today, which is a beautifully crafted site (CSS parallax effect!) that tells you whether or not you should bring an umbrella outside, does not work for me. See, it asks for a zip code—presumably limited to the United States only. But I don’t live there.
Now, I know, there are countless websites that exclude a certain demographic in every imaginable way, not just by geography. After all, on the Internet you’re free to do anything you want. But if you don’t like how something is working (or isn’t working), you’re free to blog about it as well.
Go local, be successful, then branch out
To all the developers out there: going local is a good strategy, but if you can help it, try to make your nifty little web app more accessible than just for your neighborhood.
And I’m not just talking about the one-person startups but also the bigger fish in the pond. I wonder how long it will take for Google Maps to completely and accurately cover the planet. (I don’t know if we should be excited when it does, either, but that’s a different story.)
True usability and accessibility
When we mention the term usability in terms of web development, we look at how comfortable users are in using and interacting with the interfaces that are created. Closely associated with usability is accessibility, which champions the idea of never leaving any differently-abled user out.
Doesn’t true usability and accessibility cover my dilemma with Umbrella Today, since I’m left out of its target userbase?
I do hope the makers of Umbrella Today and other people like them stop discriminating by zip code and start reaching out to other parts of the world.
Again, this is if they can help it. Because if there’s one medium that can make it possible, it should be the Web.
Here’s the conclusion that all the web gurus seem to have drawn over the past months: HTML5 is the future, and that future is slowly creeping into our midst. This article by Dave Shea is the latest proof of that. Then there are inspiration galleries and blogs dedicated to the use of HTML5 for markup, plus hardly any mention of XHTML2 anywhere else.
rel and more meaningful links
But I’m not going to get into the war between the two here; I’ll just focus on a specific development in the arena: link relations. There’s more to it than rel=stylesheet and rel=alternate. About a dozen more.
For example, the Google-imposed rel=nofollow will be officially added in HTML5, but the seemingly convenient rel=feed may be dropped due to browser implementation. Other interesting link relations mentioned are rel=search, which obviously points to a search page, and rel=sidebar, which refers to a document “shown in a secondary browsing context (if possible), instead of in the current browsing context.” More are being proposed here, including rel=accessiblity.
rel seems to be what plugins are to web browsers, so it’s interesting to see how they can make a markup language as extensible as possible.
rev and a less rotten web
Still related to link relations is the rev attribute, which stands for a “reverse link”. It hasn’t been as popular as its cousin rel up until microblogging boomed, and consequently, URL shorteners and the threat of link rot.
Considering just how popular Twitter is these days, particularly as a social media marketing and SEO tool where links are the mode of currency, using rev=canonical to indicate one URL is a shortened version of the other:
Google introduced rel="canonical" recently. It’s a way of pointing from an alternate URL back to the canonical URL of the current document: the relationship of the linked document to the current document is “canonical”.
If you’re linking from the canonical URL to an alternate URL (like, say, a shortened URL), you could use rev=”canonical”: the relationship of the current document to the linked document is “canonical”.
People are also advised to check long URLs at this RevCanonical app to determine whether they already contain shortened ones.
PlatformPro 1.3, the latest upgraded version of the successful PlatformPro Theme by PageLines, has finally hit the market. Packed with 20 or so new options and features, it has undergone some major changes; the most important of which are listed here:
The new Web Typography tool provides direct integration with Google’s Font API. This provides users with more than 50 font options, each with selectable weight, style, spacing etc. Custom typefaces can be previewed in live preview panes. Everything is integrated seamlessly for Google fonts, making selectors and inclusion of CSS files redundant.
PlatformPro has always included many meta options for the control of separate pages/ posts. Using the various panels was almost impossible to manage. The new MetaPanel combines all the usual CMS meta options in one panel, providing tabs for different sections worked on, thus making things more manageable.
Two new navigation options have been added. A secondary (sub) nav section allows users to select custom menues for each post/ page for sub navigation. This provides more flexibility within site architecture.
The new graphical BrandNav section, a much requested customisation option, combines the site logo/ branding with site navigation inline.
New child theme features added to the Platform API consist of template overriding (overwriting of section templates including files), custom templates (adding new drag and drop templates with files and functions) and a new hook for additional option types.
These improvements alone will certainly help to make web design a more manageable task.
Get you Platform pro license here
Today’s world revolves more and more around the internet and online business. Designing a site that will attract customers and can be easily found can make all the difference between success and failure. For someone who is new to website design, the whole process from finding the right host to figuring out how to design a website can be a daunting prospect.
Help is at hand with TBWHS – The Best Web Hosting Service.com. This excellent site offers help and advice for everything a beginner may need to know. Finding the right host for one’s site no longer needs to be the tedious task it once was. Locating and comparing advantages or disadvantages of various hosts is made much easier, as TBWHS offer informative reviews on a variety of available services – including a list of not recommended hosts
The Hostgator review, for instance, gives a comprehensive overview of Hostgator, one of the best providers available. It includes features, services provided, expected uptimes, customer service and promotional codes; as well as showing user comments and providing links to further reviews by other major review sites.
But the help does not end with finding a suitable host. TBWHS also provides a detailed guide to starting a website. This guide includes everything from finding the most suitable host to domain names, necessary software and hosts which include it in their services, site testing, how to get one’s site noticed, SEO and costs to be expected when creating a website.
Ben Terrett of Noisy Decent Graphics has written a list of things that describe what “his Internet” is like. From an encounter with a technologically-challenged executive comes an inspiring exercise to get everyone on the same page first.
…I thought it might be a nice idea to get everyone to describe ‘their internet’ at the first meeting of any new client. Like they do at school when the new kids arrive mid term. Get everyone up to the same level. That way, everyone would know the ‘level’ of everyone else and there would be no clangers later on.
The list is not only informative, it’s also prescriptive (in a sort of passive-agressive way!). It addresses the little things clients don’t really take into consideration when they describe what they want for their websites. But the thing is, you’re the expert, so grab the opportunity to teach what thoughtful and usable design is. Some of my personal favorites from the list:
- Not using Flash for anything other than videos
- Giving simplicty and clarity top priority
- Not reinventing the wheel
You may not agree with everything on Ben’s list, but the idea is not just to yell at your client for “not getting it”, but to explain why you’re doing “it” that way. It strengthens the relationship you have with your client, and ensures clear communication pathways in between.
Do you want an online presence? Build a website. If you want online attention, then you need online media buying. Consider online media buying as the Internet version of running ads on the traditional media—TV, radio, and prints. The purpose is the same; only that the representations and methods are not.
Designing an online ad also starts with framing the perfect strategy. It’s done by establishing the ad’s goal and finding the correct online demographics to reach that goal. And then, the perfect ad will be created. It should be something that will generate favorable results from the targeted niche.Tracking success rate must also be set up while the ad campaign is on going. It’s not solely based on sales, though. Success is based on the website traffic and sales conversion.
But it doesn’t end there.
Since there are thousands of similar businesses out there that are doing the same strategy, it is highly necessary to continuously refine the ad campaign. The more frequent the analysis is done, the better because the online world is a fast-paced environment. Great changes could happen in a blink of an eye. So the planned ad campaign should be checked regularly to see if it’s still giving the expected result. Otherwise, changes on it should take place immediately.
While it’s true that having a website is not enough, the website will still be the landing page of every online ad campaign. That is why Web design/development and online media buying need each other to attain the established goal.
Drawn.ca has posted 2 interesting sources of atypical imagery which, I realized, can be great design inspiration:
First, Dogfoose uses close-up images of produce in his illustrations. The sample below uses broccoli as treetops for a kids magazine illustration:
What an amusing way to channel the miniature look (achieved through tilt-shift photography) for infographics purposes! Is this is a subliminal technique to get children to eat their veggies? Or just a quirky case of nonsequitur?
It doesn’t matter if these questions get answered or not; what matters it that these questions were asked because of the design.
Next, we have Dark Roasted Blend’s otherworldly microscopic images. This one’s from the Olympus BioScapes competition, a photo of Drosophila larva eye neurons:
We’ve gotten so comfortable with tiled textures, but why not take an asymmetrical, unpredictable image as a cornerstone for your design concept?
Why not make trends like photographic backgrounds your own and experiment in unchartered waters? These unusual sources should be a good starting point.
Although we’re now in this transitional stage of shedding off old browsers and web technologies that have been stumbling blocks to creating innovative new websites, there’s still confusion and fear that needs to be quelled. (Some people just can’t get excited that easily.)
Jeremy Keith’s article, Misunderstanding markup, seems like the ideal anchor at this point. First, it points out the differences between XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1, and XHTML 2:
- XHTML 1.0 = HTML4 with XHTML syntax
- XHTML 1.1 = XHTML 1.0 with the requirement that documents should be served with the XML MIME type
- XHTML 2 = a whole new specification that has little in common with XHTML 1.0/1.1/HTML 4
- XHTML has two types: pages that are actually served using the
application/xhtml+xml MIME type; and pages that are actually served using the text/html MIME type but follow XHTML syntax.
Confusion? Fixed.
Second and more importantly, it emphasizes what the triumph of HTML5 means for XHTML:
- You can still use XHTML syntax on HTML5 documents; it’s flexible enough and backwards-compatible (unlike XHTML2) that way. You can also go back to old coding conventions like uppercase tag names, optional quoting of attributes, and the absence of trailing slashes, and that’s okay too.
- In fact, you can serve HTML5 documents as
application/xhtml+xml and you get an XHTML document, affectionately called XHTML5. At this point, only XHTML2 is dead.
- Still scared about taking the plunge to HTML5? It’s as easy as replacing that long-winded strict, transitional, or (gasp) frameset DOCTYPE declaration to
<!DOCTYPE html>.
Once you learn items 1 and 2, the third item is all you’ll need to focus on from now on. It’s a comforting message that if you think catching up to HTML5 will be difficult, rest assured that it’s not as scary as it looks.
Fear? Fixed.
Let’s move on, shall we?
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