Tag: web design

Watched Fraidycat (Prototype Vid) by Kicks CondorKicks Condor from Kicks Condor

Futilely attempting to build an RSS reader that’s not at all an RSS reader.

The year of the reader continues. This is wicked awesome. I want this reader!

There are some interesting UI pieces hiding in here. I love the way things are sortable by importance. I like the sparklines for posting frequency. The color differentiation to give an idea about recency of posts is cool.

And one of the best things is that it’s not really a reader. In true Kicks fashion, it’s all just links, which means that one goes to the original site to read the content. I mentioned just yesterday the fact that some of my “identity” is lost with the CSS and details of my site being stripped within sterile readers. This sort of reader decimates that.

Of course, the verso of that is a reader that could be CSS configurable so that every site looks as busy or crazy as mango zone does in the video. Naturally, many browsers support local CSS, so I suppose I could make the New York Times look like Kicks Condor’s site, but who has the time to do all that configuration?? (Maybe one day…) Maybe some readers will have their simple chrome, but pull in not only the content, but the CSS and visual goodness along with them? The best of both worlds?

👓 A design pattern solved by subgrid | Rachel Andrew

Read A design pattern solved by subgrid by Rachel Andrew (The site of Rachel Andrew, writer, speaker and web developer)
Playing around with subgrid and finding some interesting use cases.
A nice short article and example here.

I do have to wonder about the design choice of so heavily highlighting the “Let’s keep in touch” block at the top of the page between the title and the content.

👓 Animating URLs with Javascript and Emojis | Matthew Rayfield

Read Animating URLs with Javascript and Emojis by Matthew Rayfield (matthewrayfield.com)
You can use emoji (and other graphical unicode characters) in URLs. And wow is it great. But no one seems to do it. Why? Perhaps emoji are too exotic for normie web platforms to handle? Or maybe they are avoided for fear of angering the SEO gods? Whatever the reason, the overlapping portion on the Venn diagram of "It's Possible v.s. No One Is Doing It" is where my excitement usually lies. So I decided to put a little time into the possibilities of graphical characters in URLs. Specifically, with the possibility for animating these characters by way of some Javascript.
Aaron Parecki is right, this is pretty awesome… If only this were doable on TLDs…

I can see Aaron Parecki or Marty McGuire using the timecode bits along with their audio related pages with media fragments.

RSVPed Attending Mike Monteiro: "Let's Destroy Silicon Valley"

ABOUT THE TALK

For the past couple of decades, the tech companies of Silicon Valley (and beyond) have run unchecked, causing havoc, destroying civil discourse, democracy, ruining personal relationships, running marketplaces of harassment and abuse, all to line their pockets. The very worst part is that they did it with our labor.

This isn’t a talk, this is a union meeting.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Mike Monteiro is a designer and co-founder of Mule Design in San Francisco. He's been talking about design responsibility and ethics since before you were ready to listen. He’s written three books, including the just-released Ruined by Design.

A small number of books will be available for sale, which Mike will be able to sign after the talk. Otherwise, buy the book on Amazon. But really, just buy it and read it beforehand. It will help make the world better.

Follow him on Twitter, despite his feelings about Twitter: @monteiro

This was the event that touched off my idea to read Ruined by Design and start an IndieWeb Book club to discuss it.
Acquired Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It by Mike Monteiro (Mule Books)

The world is working exactly as designed. The combustion engine which is destroying our planet’s atmosphere and rapidly making it inhospitable is working exactly as we designed it. Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they’re designed to work. And every time we “improve” their design, they get better at killing. Facebook’s privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their “real names” initiative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter’s toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it’s designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all. Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network’s interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that’s on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name. This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.If you’re a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you’re working on. You’ll learn how to present your concerns. You’ll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You’ll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You’ll learn to say NO in a way that’ll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.

book cover of Ruined by Design featuring the title and a red and black image of a mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb

Has anyone read Mike Monteiro’s new book “Ruined by Design”? Sounds very IndieWeb in flavor… (or at least anti-silo/anti-corporate)

I just noticed he’s touring with his book and will be in my backyard later this month: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mike-monteiro-lets-destroy-silicon-valley-tickets-60958127400

I love the line for it: “This isn’t a talk, this is a union meeting.”

Got a .azw version of the book for my Kindle.

👓 The ineffectiveness of lonely icons | Matt Wilcox

Read The ineffectiveness of lonely icons by Matt WilcoxMatt Wilcox (Web Developer & Tinkerer)
If your target audience is a general population, you should not be using icons alone to convey anything meaningful. By doing so, you have made assumptions that are unlikely to be appropriate to a general audience.
Hat tip Brad Frost

👓 New Year, New Website | Medium

Read New Year, New Website by Meagan Fisher (Medium)
The motivations and struggles behind redesigning my own website
Sure the cobbler’s kids may not have shoes and the plumber’s pipes are always leaky, but when you’re presenting your web development work online, it seems painfully disingenuous to host your content on social silos like Dribble and Medium. What kind of message does that send to clients?! Should they do the same?

I’m glad she’s managing to make some effort to have her own site with a game plan for moving things over.

👓 Adrian Roselli on Twitter: “I just wanted underlines on links on Mastodon, not to write a damn thesis. At least clients *want* your advice. https://t.co/7GLtTUqfjx””

Read a tweet by Adrian RoselliAdrian Roselli (Twitter)
“I just wanted underlines on links on Mastodon, not to write a damn thesis. At least clients *want* your advice. https://t.co/7GLtTUqfjx”

👓 Added underlines to links in toots by aardrian · Pull Request #9898 · tootsuite/mastodon

Read Added underlines to links in toots by aardrian · Pull Request #9898 · tootsuite/mastodon (GitHub)
Link text color is #f1ebff, surrounding text is #ffffff. They have a contrast ratio of 1.2:1. Not only is hard to see links that are so close in color to the text, they also require a pointing devi...
An insane thread to be sure. Some useful information about accessibility here, though one will need to look past a lot of fud.

👓 12 days of microblogging: custom design | Manton Reece

Read 12 days of microblogging: custom design by Manton ReeceManton Reece (manton.org)
It’s day 4 of our 12 days of microblogging series. Today we want to highlight how Micro.blog supports blog themes and what people can do to give their blog a unique design. There are 3 ways to customize your microblog: Pick from one of the default 7 themes. These themes are based on existing desig...

📺 Micro.blog custom themes | YouTube

Watched Micro.blog custom themes from YouTube

Importing and editing custom templates on Micro.blog.

I do sort of wonder if Micro.blog functionality would break if new themes don’t have the correct microformats 2 markup? I suspect it runs in conjunction with various common parsers and thus may have issues. It’s a cool thing though that this sort of customization is available now on the platform which is quickly becoming more and more flexible.

👓 The 7 Characteristics That Can Make A Link “Bad” For SEO | Search Engine Land

Read The 7 Characteristics That Can Make A Link "Bad" For SEO (Search Engine Land)
Search Engine Land is the leading industry source for daily, must-read news and in-depth analysis about search engine technology.

📺 cite and blockquote – reloaded | HTML5 Doctor

Read cite and blockquote – reloaded by Steve Faulkner (html5 Doctor)
The definitions of the blockquote and cite elements in the HTML specification have recently been updated. This article explains what the changes mean for developers.
Yes, <cite> and <blockquote> ought to be much easier and more standardized. I’ve got some crazy and extreme examples myself I’m sure. The bigger lurking trap is that cite is really a semantic thing, but the way I see it done more often implemented with CSS is as a typographic element indicating italics.

hat tip: Michael Bishop