David John Mead

Slick future visions from Microsoft

Tonight I headed over to Office Labs from Microsoft. There you’ll get a glimpse into some of the “What If?” things being considered by going to the Envisioning section.

I particulary like the Productivity Future Vision video, which builds on the surface technology currently being played with-taking it the next step with ’smart paper’ (near the end of the video).

One thing I can’t get into is the whole false ‘perspective’ thing. I’m not sure why folders have to stack in 3D when the rest of the display shown work so well ‘flat’.

Technorati tags: future, vision, microsoft

Brad Colbow on how “not making the logo bigger”…

Lean Dog opened the doors to their office (which is really a boat) to the CWSA tonight, letting us hear Brad Colbow’s presentation titled “Don’t make the logo bigger! Happiness for you and your clients”.

Giving us a whirlwind tour through his early steps in web design, which included some of his first concepts, Brad then stepped us through some of the pointers he’s picked up along the way.

“Design should never say ‘Look at me’. It should always say ‘Look at this’”.
David Craib

Sharing stories that we’ve all had to stumble through from time to time, like the ever changing background color and lack of content or client direction, Brad then laid out some tips that he’s gained by confronting the problems head-on.  These have now helped his freelance career, securing work for Starbucks, NationBuilder, and working with Jeremy Keith on an upcoming project.

It was a great presentation, and gave me a chance to meet up with some familiar faces in a cool space, exactly the kind of thing that the CWSA excels at. Brad also writes and draws an online comic strip called ‘The Brads‘.

Technorati tags: bradcolbow, presentation, cwsa, web, design, freelance, cleveland, ohio, july

How do you solve a problem like IE6?

A recent article on Ajaxian.com looked at Digg’s survey about IE6 use.  I think it really just validates what we already know, which is…

• Most IE6 users are at work and cannot upgrade
• Some user just don’t care to upgrade

So how should you address this?  The one solution that I personally feel most comfortable with is Andy Clarke’s Universal IE6 stylesheet.  This lets the visitor access all the content as well as releasing the designer/developer from a spiraling descent into madness, trying to make pages look the same. I’ve recently added it to my freelance site.

One IE6 solution I cannot get behind is proposed at http://ie6update.com/.  This displays a bar designed to mimic IE’s own information bar.  When the user clicks on it they get directed to the IE download page.  This is so open to misuse and, even with the best intentions, still smacks of trickery.

As to that old chestnut of ’supporting IE6′, well I’m not Microsoft, so I don’t have to “support” anything they make. Same goes for supporting Apple, Mozilla, or Opera products.  What I do have to do however, is make sure that any visitor, using any method, can access information and perform transactions on a site I’ve built.

Should it look graphically the same for a seven year old browser as it does for the latest & greatest? No. Should it prevent the seven year old browser from entrance? Certainly not.

So here’s to IE6 slowly going away but, in the meantime, lets not make the visitors who have no choice in using it feel alienated.

Technorati tags: ie6, css, solution, support, web, design

HTML5 is not a big deal, really.

I’ve always been a big proponent of web standards.  Use semantic markup and validate your code are two things I always adhere too.

That’s why, I guess, I’m none too engaged by the wailing and gnashing of teeth around the current HTML5/XHTML2 conversation taking place across the web at the moment. Because whatever flavour of mark-up you use, you should always do those two things and there are still a ton of developers who don’t.

I switched from HTML4 to XHTML some time ago because I felt it gave me the structure I wanted in my coding.  It was virtually always served using a text/html MIME type so it was pretty much HTML4, but with XML syntax.  It just seemed cleaner and more structured and helped hone my trade.

There are still very few websites out there that are using XHTML properly (with an application/xhtml+xml MIME type) compared to the thousands of sites created by WYSIWYG tools that are barely proper HTML, let alone semantic or validated.  I would rather concentrate on cleaning those up and educating developers to code sematically and validate their code correctly going forward, before lameting XHTML2, which seemed on a hiding to nowhere from the get go.

The next freelance web site I build will probably be in HTML4, just to brush up. All subsequent ones will be HTML5.

Jeremy Keith has a great post outling the basics you need to know, as does Jeffrey Zeldman.  Both posts have links to various other sources if you want to dig deeper.

Technorati tags: html5, xhtml2, standards, web

More to mobile than cell phones

With the iPhone and other “smart” phones, access to the web is now easier than ever.  They have pretty much hijacked the term “mobile web” in the public perception, so it was great to hear a talk by Dan Young (of DXY Solutions) at NEOUPA in June covering some of the myriad of different mobile projects they are connected with.

“10 years ago no one thought of dropping their landlines”

Dan passed around his very own Apple Newton, which pretty much set the stage for where we are now with mobile.  He also outlined the differences they see with today’s devices.

He pointed out that laptops are portable and generally, if its a work one, people don’t mind sharing them to check email.  Phones are mobile, and very personal, even if its company owned.  People seem to have a reluctance to share PDA’s and phones.

A lot of the work Dan is involved in use mobile devices other than phones.  These are the units that you see UPS or Meter Maids use.  They have a lot of different considerations such as:

• Environment – Sun glare, extreme cold or heat, dust or rain
• Size – Too small could sour the experience
• Dexterity – Can they use it one-handed? Do they wear gloves?
• Connection – Support isn’t always at hand
• OS – Java/J2ME, Blackberry, WinMobile, Symbian, Android etc.

Dan stepped through a little of their process. Screen flows help a lot to build the logic that a users follows (there’s no help on a cell phone). Having focus groups and watching the users handle and interact with both the device and the software, helps them make changes on-the-fly and re-test very quickly.  These sessions have also made them aware that users will “mask their fear” of the device initially, so when working with companies to provide these type of solutions they make sure employees are comfortable.  They have to also be cognizant that every touch (calls, back light use, etc.) drains the battery.

It was an interesting look into a still developing arena, from a local company heavily involved.

Technorati tags: dxysolutions, danyoung, mobile, small, devices, design, ui, neoupa