SXSW

One of the highlights of SXSW was the Mark Zuckerberg keynote. Suffice to say, it was pretty brutal, for Sarah Lacy that is. During the entire interview the crowed was not pleased with they way she seemed to interview herself and not Mark. It got so bad she decided to open it up for questions and have a “digg like mob rule”. One of the audience members asked

Other than rough interviews, what are some of the biggest challenges Facebook faces?

It got a lot worse throughout the interview, you can find more information all across the web.

BarCamp Austin III

Michael Cummings showed up shortly after with some crazy equipment to take some really awesome pictures. That ring light was amazing. As you know the theBelafonte designed the badges and the shirts… but did you see the truck design! Now that is “all sorts of awesomeness”!

See you all again for BarCampAustin4 and SXSWi 2009!

Also wanted to say thanks to Marianne (who is in fact made of awesome) for helping out with the arrangements.

See you guys at BarCampAustinIII and SXSW!

And of course Graduation when I come back! March is going to be crazy!

Oh and I killed a snake tonight.

I’d love to get some feedback on what you guys think of the new look.

I’m going to constantly be upgrading and adding new things to this theme, if I left it, it wouldn’t be a work in progress now would it?

In order to make Firefox behave a certain way for all websites that you visit you have to either edit the default user style sheet or the Firefox config file.

Mac users: navigate to {user}/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/Chrome{your user profile}
PC users: navigate to C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\chrome

and open the file userContent-examples.css and add either one of the solutions into the CSS file and save as userContent.css
Disable the border:

a {
    outline: none;
}

Tidy up the border:

a {
    overflow: hidden;
}

There is also a way to get rid of the outline border by editing the Firefox config file (keep in mind this will remove the border completely)

1. Type “about:config” in Firefox’s location bar
2. Find the string: browser.display.focus_ring_width
3. Set the value to 0

Now Firefox will behave as you want across all websites you visit. Gotta love user based style sheets.

About a month or so ago the TopSpot crew got commissioned to participate in the AIR Houston competition. The competition consisted of creating a fully accessible website for a non-profit organization in 8 hours. Our NPO was Kids Meals Houston. Essentially they are like Meals on Wheels but focus on local Harris County children that live in poverty and are hungry. These kids know what it means to be hungry and Kids Meals provides them with lunches on a daily bases. Our NPO representative Ruth, was just amazing. She provided us with everything we needed to build the site as well as moral support day of the competition. She came with Pom-Poms… yes Pom-Poms and it was really great to see her so excited about the website.

The Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) is an award-winning, Web site building competition held annually around the country by Knowbility, a place where you can learn how and why to make technology accessible to everyone – including people with disabilities. . In the competition teams compete against one another and showcase their talents with the most accessible website they can create in 8 hours, valid XHTML Strict 1.0 and CSS of course.

It all started today at 9 am at UH. We had are design sliced out and started to code away. After some FTP problems with Godaddy we decided to host it ourselves and then we had really taken off. Each of us started to code away at our sections and once the Belafonte had put it all together, we started to populate the pages with content and get rid of bugs and quirks of all the major browsers.

Quite an interesting day. It was a great learning experience for all of us and Kids Meals got a website they can be proud of. I will link to it, soon as it is migrated off the development server and on to theirs. Check out the Kids Meals Houston website now live and running. Speaking of learning I decided to give the input check boxes a width and height in ems and now they resize when the text size is increased. A simple thing yet overlooked when creating a standard website.

Our NPO rep, Ruth was just awesome. Twice and energetic as us and three times as excited, the next picture speaks for itself

Looking forward to AIR Houston 2008!

Everything on this list is obvious yet I see it happen all the time. Most of what’s on this list, everyone already knows, however people STILL feel it absolutely necessary to do. This is simply a list of things you should not do on a website. Period.

Splash pages. If I have to choose high or low bandwidth before entering your website you’ve failed. This is 2007. There is no need for splash pages anymore… personally I don’t think there ever was. From an SEO standpoint having a splash page can be very hurtful towards your rankings. Search engine spiders will index your splash page instead of your home page and usually a splash page consist of flash or some other form of media such as a picture. The only actual text content on a traditional splash page is the “skip intro” link. Users with dial up or even slow broadband will become frustrated after waiting for your page to load up only to find its a splash page and no actual content is on there. You want to make it easy as possible for users to navigate your website, and you want them to do as little work as possible. Having them wait for a splash page and then click “continue” goes against this principle.

On going music. Unless you have a couple of hit albums there is no reason you should be playing music on your website. I’m usually listening to my own music when I’m on the computer, the last thing I need is for your website to add its own soundtrack. Music on a site is usually done wrong in the first place. Why is your song restarting each time I go to a new page or refresh the current one? If you’re going to do something unpleasing at least learn how to do it right so its not that much more unpleasant. Again users on a low bandwidth connection and search engine spiders will come across your site and leave. This is an age of instant gratification especially on the Internet. If you really really want music because it just happens to be your favorite song of the week, please allow the user to stop the song, and don’t do it on page load.

Multiple video formats on the web are irrelevant in 2007. How many of you ACTUALLY have real player installed? C’mon don’t be shy now… ok 3 of you. Good. How many of you have flash player installed? Oh everyone who’s ever watched a video on YouTube. Hmmm does that tell you something? Flash has become the default player for delivering video on the web, stop using Real Player, or window media player. Stick with what works best.

JavaScript Links. C’mon people enough I cant stress enough what year it is… If I can’t right click and open in a new tab/window you’ve failed. This is a huge usability flaw. Like most web savvy users, I user Firefox, and if I can’t use its built in tab feature then that’s almost as bad as…

You resizing the user’s browser how DARE YOU! I am browsing your website with the settings I want. Resizing the users browser is a huge flaw. First of all you don’t need to be doing any more. Who uses 640×480 even 800×600 is out the door. 1024×768 should give you PLENTY of room to design your website without having to launch external content in a new resized browser window. At least put up some sort of notice that says, “This link will resize your browser” I wonder how many would actually click then… that alone should tell you something.

This will be an on going list. Stay tuned for more!

• Content Strategy and Web Design – Keith RobinsonFor many Web professionals content can be the hardest part of the job

Currently Sitting in on

• Psychology of Color – Doris Brown A look into how color affects the way people use our Websites
  • Color doesn’t change, attitude changes, become more aware of your environment
  • colors and trends don’t sell alone, consider consumers response to color, demographics
  • Signs of impending color changes
    • Fashion industry
    • Entertainment industry
    • Museum collections
    • Economic issues
    • Sociological issues
    • Environmental issues
  • Colors through the decades
    • 1960s – vibrant colors
    • 1970s – more earth colors
    • 1980s – started using vibrant colors again
    • 1990s – iMac furbies Southpark minimalism
    • 2000s – non-vibrant, grays, dull colors
  • Current color trend
    • Red – (chili pepper red)
  • Color Calibration
    • Different tools used to calibrate monitors in order to achieve correct color through all mediums

Currently sitting in on

• The Contextual Web – Nick Finck On the emerging Internet, context is everything
  • Four aspects of context in web design
    • User
      • Define the user
      • Who is the user?
      • What are their challenges
      • What are their needs?
    • Task
      • What exactly is the task?
      • Who is involved?
    • Environment
      • What tye of environment is it?
      • What about the business environment?
      • Social environments
    • Technology
      • What type of technology will be involved
      • What are the technical limitations
      • How does the user interact with these technologies

Currently sitting in on

• Managing Web Design – Michael Lopp Often managing the design process is harder than the design itself
  • Design is making decisions, decision based on the Pitch
  • The perfect development process that never happens
    • Design
    • Develop
    • Deploy
  • Costs of skipping design is high, too much backtracking is involved
  • Design Process
    • “Imagination is more important than knowledge” – Albert Einstein
    • Constraints are your ally (deadlines)
    • Details matter
  • Soaking
    • Active Soak
      • Ask dumb questions
      • Pitch a stranger your idea
      • write it down, throw it away, write it down again
    • Passive Soak
      • Stop thinking, sleep on it
      • Great ideas emerge from random connections that a rational person would never consider
  • Brainstorm Guidelines
    • Controlled chaos
    • Discussion to find decisions
    • Gathering every bright idea you can
    • The nuttier, the better
  • Meeting Guidelines
    • Enough time for everyone to soak
    • Visible, touchable results
    • Is it real?
    • Directly maps back to brainstorm
    • Key: little victories
  • Who to invite?
    • Who are your detail czars?
    • Visuals
    • Architectural
    • Cultural
    • Practice
    • Who is the decision maker?

Currently sitting in on

• Pile it on with CSS – Jonathan Snook Taking a look at the power and flexibility of positioning techniques
  • Stop laying out your website with tables
  • Box model
  • Phark Technique
  • When something is set ‘postion: static’ you can not change the z-index

Currently sitting in on

• Real World Accessibility – Derek Featherstone Get the scoop on creating accessible Websites from one of the world’s top experts.
  • Small accessibility problems might be a large problem for those who have a disability
  • Having standard search on the advance search page can be a major accessibility error
    • (He’s dancing on stage now)

Next up is the long drive home.

It was great meeting all these new and interesting people. Looking forward to WJS 2008 (Just not at the Adam’s Mark).

• The Dawning of the Age of Experience – Jared Spool A look at how experience design is changing the Web
  • Eliminate major redesigns break design challenge into small chunks
  • Heavy emphasis on feedback mechanism collect as much information as possible
  • get everyone involved decisions make things happen
  • Successful Experience design integrate the user and the business

Currently sitting in on the

• Design Panel – A Common Thread-Bryan Veloso, James Craig, Rob Jones, Dan Rubin Inside the Minds of Top Designers
  • (they’re hiring… looking for a .net programmer, with java experience and sql database experience, with light system admin knowledge starting at $12.00 an hour! w00t!)

Currently sitting in on

• Measure Twice, Code Once – Rob Jones How to use web statistics and analytics to get better results from your site.
  • Hes talking about analytics and how javascript based analytics collect data
  • Javascript solutions are very popular today, easy to add to your site, power data collection capabilities
  • Useful Links
    • Occam’s Razor’s blog
    • Fireclick > free analysis on how your site is doing compared to a whole
    • Compete > shows statics of companies
    • SeoMOZ

Currently Standing at the Microsoft Booth watching the latest unreleased videos about Halo 3 on the massive Dell XPS 20″ laptop desktop

Currently sitting in on

• Typography: Beyond the Font – Jeff Croft How to produce web typography that doesn’t suck
  • The Elements of Typographic Style
  • Jeff Croft suggest resting all the tags to 0
    
  • Type size refers to the em square not the character size
  • In CSS, the em square is sized using font-size
  • Sizing Text
    
    • Relative sizing reefers to percents and ems (these sizes are relative to the parent element)
    • the 62.5% trick is setting your body to be 62.5% that way you can manage your ems in a 10base setting
    • Absolute sizes are just that, absolute. Downsize is they can not resize thus making them not accessible
  • Color
    • Contrast between color is crucial
    • Instead of using black on white use gray on white or white on gray
  • Tools
    • Character entity references
    • Smartypants
    • Typogrify – gets rid of Widows, quote marks, apostrophes, etc, warps initial quotes, adjacent caps, and ampersands with classes for styling.
    • sIFR – use flash in order to create better typographical headings
  • Tricks
    • -9000px < gotta love it.

Currently sitting in on

• The Broken World – Molly Holzschlag Solving the Browser Problem Once and For All
  • Differences between different browsers such as IE 6 and 7, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari

Currently sitting in on

• Kissing Cousins: Classic Design and Web Design – Chris Bernard What we’ve learned and can apply from a history of design
  • Compression of classical design and web design
  • Chris is going over different art movements through 1900 till present day
  • Gestalt theory

End of day one… I’ll add more content to this posting later.

1st SIGGRAPH
2nd BarCamp Houston
3rd Webmaster Jam Session