web design
35 tips for writing for the web
During a meeting today someone said “writing for the web is easy, just use proper English!” Sadly, we all shook our heads and replied that no, writing for the web often means breaking the rules that you’ve learned through so many grammar lessons and style guides. Below are some rules for better web and interface [...]
Wireframe porn
Update: See Will Evans‘s extremely thoughtful response in the comments – there’s a method to this madness that I was unaware of when I wrote the post. Thanks Will, for calling me to task so kindly. Sketches, wireframes, and mockups are an essential part of the product development process and popular standards are beginning to [...]
Peak shift
First read about this on Dustin Curtis’s blog, which describes an experiment where a mouse trained to find food at a rectangle will choose a more rectangular rectangle if the option presents itself. Lesson: rather than look for specific patterns, animals identify a characteristic features and look for the “peak” instance. Another example is V.S. [...]
Moderating semantic HTML zealotry
I’ve recently the been letting go of my blind faith in page-wide semantic HTML. Today I found this old post from Jeff Croft describing the myth of content and presentation separation in HTML and CSS, which provides a realistic layman’s take on the situation: semantic HTML is too hard. While I agree with that sentiment [...]