Jeffrey Zeldman's Blog, page 113
February 9, 2010
A List Apart 300
Issue 300 of A List Apart for people who make websites solves password-related usability problems with a dash of JavaScript, and employs content strategy to help your site do the right thing at the right time:
by LYLE MULLICAN
Abandoning password masking as Jakob Nielsen suggests could present serious problems, undermining a user's trust by failing to meet a basic expectation. But with design patterns gleaned from offline applications, plus a dash of JavaScript, we...
February 5, 2010
Free advice: show up early
Delay happens. The train is late, the flight is cancelled, the traffic is murder. Travel is the leading edge of entropy, and entropy is the universe's final comment on the meaning of it all. If the universe is expanding and there are snow delays on Route 1, it's not your fault that you're 15 minutes late to the meeting, right?
Don't be so quick to excuse yourself. If 80% of success is just showing up, 90% is showing up early.
It's hard for the client to sympathize with your lateness when she...
February 3, 2010
Ahem
The first part of my post of 1 February was not an attack on Flash. It described a way of working with Flash that also supports users who don't have access to Flash. I've followed and advocated that approach for 10 years. It has nothing to do with Apple's recent decisions and everything to do with making content available to people and search engines.
It's how our agency and others use Flash; we've published articles on the subject in our magazine, notably Semantic Flash: Slippery When Wet by ...
February 2, 2010
Free advice: buy a dongle
There is still no Wi-Fi on the northeast corridor Amtrak trains that carry hundreds of thousands of business travelers each day. So quit whining and get a USB 3G modem. It's free with monthly service, which is tax-deductible. For the $60/month I pay Verizon, I can connect my laptop to the internet from any train, bus, boat, lounge, lobby, conference room, coffee shop, or just about any other environment to which modern business takes me.
Laying Pipe
Dan Benjamin and yours truly discuss the secret history of blogging, transitioning from freelance to agency, the story behind the web standards movement, the launch of A Book Apart and its first title, HTML5 For Web Designers by Jeremy Keith, the trajectory of content management systems, managing the growth of a design business, and more in the inaugural episode of the Pipeline.
February 1, 2010
Flash, iPad, Standards
Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don't support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer first. Additional layers of Flash UX can then be optionally added in, just as, in proper, accessible, standards-based development, JavaScript UX enhancements are added only after we verify that the site works w...
January 28, 2010
Nice Web Type For iPhone
m.nicewebtype.com is a light yet essential mobile site for people who design websites, love type, and struggle to keep up with the dizzying world of web fonts. In it, Tim Brown, author of Nice Web Type, creator of Web Font Specimen (what's that?), and latterly type manager for Typekit, curates the Design Twitterverse to share the latest insights, innovations, quips, and controversies regarding everyone's favorite new web design fetish.
Don't leave home without it.
