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eHub

• 

  Polyvore

  Posted: November 20th, 2008, 4:00pm CET by Kim Lau

  Tags:  art and animation Social web  

  Create collage sets with images across the web. Use Polyvore's bookmarketlet tool Clipper to add images to play with, and use the editing tool to select, change and add images to any themed set, ranging from fashion creations to wedding inspiration boards. Publish the sets and share them with the community and friends. URL: Polyvore.

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  SonicSwap

  Posted: November 17th, 2008, 4:26pm CET by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Audio and music Social web  

  Put your iTunes on the internet. Lets you post your music and playlist collections on the net, and gives you and your friends access to play your music legally over the internet. URL: SonicSwap.

Man with no blog

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  Keeping Web Standards After Launch

  Posted: November 16th, 2008, 11:48am CET by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web standards  

  Now that, WA Web Week is well and truely put to bed, with Edge of the Web, WebJam9 and the WA Web Awards done and dusted; it’s now time to inject some life back into this blog.   Yes the posts have been a bit scant of late.  Sorry about that, the real world has been getting in the way.

  So you have a site that you have lovingly designed coded and integrated into your CMS of choice.   You’ve delivered it to the client, perfect.  Not a pixel, word or image out of place, following industry best practice.  A work of art, electro-prefecto.

  A few months later you review the site in passing.   It’s a complete mess, all the layout is using fonts, tables and there are pictures that are just resized 2 meg inserts. Plus what’s with this animated gif banner it now has.  It’s the classic showcase gone wrong.

  Finding an overall solution to this type of problem, as you know, isn’t that easy. Like most of the web industry issues, it just doesn’t have a one size fits all solution. However there are a range of measures you can take  that will help reduce the pain.  Now the main limiting factor on all these solutions is the client’s budget (like that’s a new aspect, eh).

  • Get Content Early

    Seems like a bit of a no brainer, but knowing all the major content layout requirements before you finish the UI design is major boon.   That way you can allow for those special cases. It’s the old 80/20 on these things, with the special cases requiring the most effort.  It can be argued when this level of UI for specific information types gathering should be done and by whom, at the low resolution of the design with the Information Architect and User Interaction Designer, or later with Front End Developer/Designer.  One thing is for sure don’t provide for this and the client will just stylise the best they can.   Mind you it’s impossible to allow for everything.

  • Involve the Client

    Remember it’s not your website, it’s the clients.  So involve them, get them putting content into the CMS way before you have even wrapped a design around it.  This allows for two things.   The client gets to play with the CMS, and you get to see the content as it comes in and allow for it in the content design (see above).   Now it’s a good idea to still determine what that content is going to be so the proposed UI can take maximum advantage of it, and don’t get too many surprises.

  • Educate

    Now you are going to have to training the  client in the use of your CMS and maybe a little bit more than just the technical basics. I’m not suggesting you get uber technical or the like with the under lying HTML. But things like the basics of what is a semantic layout (ranking headers). Basic layout methods for the relevant information types, like when to use tables, lists, definition lists, blockquote, images and the like.  In a way you are just tying to educate for the general best practices for information and report layout.

    Considering providing a style guide can help, sometimes.  Some places will use it like a bible for the layout of the web site, others will just ignore it,  your should get to know the client well enough to make this choice.

  • Trim Back the CMS

    Given all the education in the world, it may pay to trim back the functionality of your CMS rich text editor (RTE).  Taking out the font size and color changers that insert font tags.  And  then allow for the use of class selects if you can.

    I know this is asking for the impossible, but parsing and cleaning up a word document cut and pasted in the RTE wouldn’t come a miss either, even to the extend of removing font tags, extra classes and the like.

  • Web Standards, Break Them, Sometimes

    Of course if you go down the route of allowing clients to style via using classes, I will assume that you have very meaningful class names that can be easily understood for what they do by the client. Using classes like “image-aligned-right”, “text-indent-left-one-tab” or “large-highlighed-text”   Now this may not be the ideal in terms of best practice, but it’s a rule you have to break if you want clients to use classes and CSS style layouts, sometimes we have the break a few eggs.

  • Do Nothing

    In most cases people will be used to the word processing rendering model; where there are only limited number of general information types and everything else is laid out via a table.  Doing this predates the web. That’s right, MS-Word and Word Prefect have a lot to answer for (showing my age now).   Hence with these types of ingrained information display models it becomes hard to break the mold.

    So why bother, just ensure they have a sense of pride and know what looks good and not.  At the end of the day you can’t control it.  And frankly does it really matter if they get it wrong and use tables for layout within the CMS or use font tags.  This is better than misplaced header tags. Maybe over time you can educate the client into using a best practice.  But at present it’s just easier for a client to use what we would consider bad practice to layout the information, live with it, you are not to blame.

  So what do you do to avoid the digital disaster, if anything? Are there any other special things you do to ensure the client maintains to the site as you both initially envisioned?

del.icio.us/miliste

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  JQuery modal dialog Boxes | 84 Bytes

  Posted: November 16th, 2008, 11:40am CET by miliste

  Tags:  Webdesign web Design webdev programming  

  JQuery modal dialog Boxes | 84 Bytes
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  typeface.js -- Rendering text with Javascript, , and VML

  Posted: November 14th, 2008, 10:35pm CET by miliste

  Tags:  Webdesign web Design Tools webdev  

  typeface.js -- Rendering text with Javascript, , and VML
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  Transmute

  Posted: November 13th, 2008, 12:40pm CET by miliste

  Tags:  web software Tools free internet  

  Veebilehitsejate järjehoidjate muundaja

eHub

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  UserNameCheck

  Posted: November 13th, 2008, 12:36pm CET by Kim Lau

  Tags:  Search Social web  

  Wonder if your username has already been registered, or forgotten which sites you've signed up for? Enter the username you use or would like to use, and UserNameCheck will scan sites from Blogger to Zooomr (with more on the way) to see if it's registered. URL: UserNameCheck.

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  Social Twist

  Posted: November 7th, 2008, 4:07pm CET by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Social web Widgets  

  A widget that lets site visitors share content with friends across IM, email, social networks or blogs, without leaving your site. URL: Social Twist.

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  Glue

  Posted: November 3rd, 2008, 5:01pm CET by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Browsers and surfing Social web  

  A social browser service which works automatically as you browse popular sites about books, music, movies, wines, restaurants, gadgets, stocks, actors, tv shows and other everyday things around the web. The Glue bar appears right on your current page to show you friends who looked at the same things and what they thought. URL: Glue.

del.icio.us/miliste

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  This is How You Get sIFR to Work | Design Intellection

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 8:24pm CET by miliste

  Tags:  tutorial Webdesign Design web howto  

  This is How You Get sIFR to Work | Design Intellection
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  sIFR Documentation & FAQ

  Posted: October 29th, 2008, 8:23pm CET by miliste

  Tags:  tutorial Webdesign Design web howto  

  sIFR Documentation & FAQ

del.icio.us/jimcallender

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  Web Design Inspiration

  Posted: October 26th, 2008, 2:18pm CET by jimcallender

  Tags:  web Design inspiration ideas clients  

  Web Design Inspiration

eHub

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  LifeSnapz

  Posted: October 23rd, 2008, 6:12pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Family publishing Social web  

  A free, easy and secure way for people to record and organize important events, milestones and memories in their lives for friends, family, communities. Users contribute text, photos, and video to describe these events, share them with self-designated groups (like family members, colleagues, schoolmates or youth sports teams) and explore these events using dynamic timelines, maps, and lists. URL: LifeSnapz.

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  Helium

  Posted: October 17th, 2008, 5:00pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Knowledge publishing Social web  

  Enables individuals to become published writers and citizen journalists on any number of topics. People share their opinion through writing essays that are sorted for quality through peer review. URL: Helium.

del.icio.us/miliste

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  Free Online Javascript WYSIWYG Rich Text Editor

  Posted: October 13th, 2008, 9:55pm CEST by miliste

  Tags:  texteditor wysiwyg javascript Webdesign web  

  Free Online Javascript WYSIWYG Rich Text Editor

Man with no blog

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  Time to Drop Web Standards?

  Posted: October 12th, 2008, 2:55pm CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web standards  

  Last month Molly Holzschlag lead an interesting discussion on the divided state of the web standards community on A List Apart.  Now we all know this has been happening for a while, this fragmentation of the web standards community.

  Molly is prompting people to get involve with their web standards group of their choice, in an effort bolster the community, and maybe reverse the trend.

  Okay it’s a good idea in theory; but in reality, from a personal view I’m tired of the same thing time and time again.  Take for example the Web Standards Group mailing list (we don’t have a local WSG) I’m finding the constant rehashing of topics and questions and answers a bit pointless, to the point that I’ve just lost interest.

  Other standards groups, via their mailing lists or forums, can be at times almost hostile to newcomers, or just not interested in new blood.   Frankly I just don’t have the time to be bothered trying to be heard in such an environment.

  Elephant in the Room.

  Partly I blame some of the strong personalities involved, particularly in the volunteer web standards communities such as WHATWG and WaSP.  Especially with the WHATWG I have found the dominance of any discussion by a solid clique core.  So much so that outsiders are not seen as being welcome at all.   This in itself alone does not help foster the extension of a community at a time when getting volunteers of any way shape or form are becoming hard and harder to come by  worldwide.

  From what I have observed, people have also just altered and shifted their view points, true they are still thinking of web standards in a way, but in most cases the gleam has gone from the shiny prize of standards perfection.

  What do you think, have we all just moved on, learnt it all  and have now moved on?

  The need and desire to move forward with the latest new innovation in the browser development community has lead to the implementation of early W3C draft guidelines by various vendors, in what is gearing up for an escalation.

  Bring on the Darkest Hour.

  It is this type of pressure the pushes the web community forward as well. You see the slower things move, the more we want the shiny new design toys that the browser vendors are offering, as they are building the hearts and mind of their browsers.  It’s really in a way gearing up to a war, a browser war.  A time of chaos and confusion, of  custom tags and the like.   So maybe this is the twilight before the darkest web standards hour.  So be it, it’s all a cycle, the wheel will turn.

  Maybe all this web standards and best practice is really just a waste of time.  After all what real benefits, do web standards  deliver for the general web user. Remember a site can be highly usable and accessible, but still be a web standards horror story.  So if the user experience is good, do web standards count, optimistically I would like to think, yes.   But realistically maybe that is a no.

  Sorry Mols I think it’s not looking good.  What do you think, is it time to drop web standards?

• 

  Freelancing in a Recession

  Posted: October 11th, 2008, 4:59am CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web business  

  With the financial world in extreme crisis and various government running around in what can only be described as blind panic, one would could be forgiven for joining the mass panic.   Granted that when the world economy does slide into recession that it is going to be tough generally.

  However having been through three down turns I can give a few pointers that maybe helpful in these times of crisis. Particularly for people in Australia and New Zealand:

  • Don’t Panic

    First off, stop and consider anything you are going to do with a long term view point. You know that share markets go up and down.  Remember the sun will come up tomorrow, you still have your health (well I hope you do) and you will still have the skills you had yesterday.  Yes sure this one is very severer, combined with the fact that we are no longer living in a world where there is a separate regional economies.   The world is now one large global economy.   The interesting aspect of all is that this could be the first recession of the hyperconnected age.  It will be interesting to see where people place the value of the web in household budget.

  • Be Conservative

    Now you know that things are going to be tight.  Clients are going to be late in paying.  The cost of software, books and equipment is going to go up.   You know these are a given.  So it’s time to be a little more conservative.   Yeah that means cutting back a little on those geeky gadgets.  But trust me you may need to.   Also look at the software and hardware you are using, do you really need to move up to Adobe CS4 (for instance), maybe there is a cheaper alternative.    I know in the downturn in the early nineties I had a very close look at what software and hardware I was using and its cost.  Now one area you shouldn’t cut is education and professional development.  To do this will mean you find yourself behind the times when the recession lifts. So try and keep the conferences and networking going, even if you don’t have the latest phone.

  • Last in First Out

    As a freelancer there is the temptation to go run and hide; taking up full time employment at the first sign of a recession.  If I where you I would very strongly consider the following points before you did this. When a firm fires someone they generally look at the people that have joined recently, mainly because these people are usually not fully integrated in the team yet and they have no real emotion attachment to that person, plus the payout is usually less.   The last person in would be you.   So just consider this unless you manage to grab a government position you may just be back where you started, but with no client base.

  • Try Contracting

    If you are still thinking about bailing from freelancing then consider long term contracting. In some of the previous down turns I did from time to time take up a number of longer term contracts (1-2 years).   Now these are ideal if you can win them, as they give you a constant  cash flow.   The work maybe a little mundane, but if you are savvy you will leverage the quiet times to improve your skills or even branch into new areas.

  • Consider Post Graduate Study

    Sometimes it’s a good idea if things are really going pear shaped, and you can afford it, to go back to full time study.   Maybe do a Masters or the like.  Sure this does have the problem of the University fees bill at the end of it all.  But you will have a shiny new post graduate qualification at the end of it all, just in time for when things are on the up and up.  The secret is to pick the right subject to work on that will maintain your skill set or better yet enhance it.  Traditionally the market is very conservative when it comes out of a recession, so they tend to look for the people with the bits of paper.

  • Look Overseas

    This is very topical for  Australian and New Zealand.  Now if the exchange rate is  favourable for prospects in the UK and US, then you really should be considering looking for clients overseas as well.  Now I would also be only be considering working with teams made only of people from places with a comparative exchange rate.  So I would build the team locally to do jobs overseas.   Sure they will have a depressed market, but if your prices are half that of the local (overseas) freelancer you are bound to get some interest.

  • Web Sites are Cheap

    Developing, design or realigning a web site is a cheap form of marketing.  When times get tough the bigger ticket items in terms of marketing budget tend to fall by the wayside.   But the web is in relative terms a low budget item, so in many cases it will remain.   Also traditionally in tough economic times big business does suffer.  But it is the medium to small business, because of their agile nature, is able to survive.  Improving their web service is often a good way for these businesses to get the jump on the big end of town.

  • Get Tough

    As times get tough I would be researching any client or agency that comes to you to ensure that they have the money to pay.   If you are in the slightest bit suspect, I would be asking for 80%-90% up front. For the bigger jobs maybe a credit check is in order.   On the reverse side, cut your payment cycle down to say 14 days, this way people will stretch it to 30 days (back where it was).   I would also be very pig headed with late payers.  Ring them every day when it is late, don’t email them, ring them. Ask them when you are going to be paid.  If they say tomorrow, then tell them you will be ringing tomorrow if it hasn’t arrived. And do just that.  This works well if they have a separate accounts section, Also don’t talk to the person processing, take it to their management.  You get the gist, get tough it is your money.

  • Freelancers are not Employees

    Speaking from experience, employees are expensive when the times are tough and they are just sitting around not earning you a dollar.  But freelancers on the other hand only work when you have a project and hence are a lot cheaper.  Plus they come with all the costs up front.   This is great for a business that is finding it a little tight.   So in some ways Freelancers are preferred in times of a recession as they are generally cheaper for the speculative ups and downs of a fluctuating marketplace.

  • Australia is not the US

    Finally remember that Australia (well from my view) is not the US.   While our economy is  still part of the global share market and the rollercoaster that is associated with that.  From a private business and government view our economy is a lot more stable, and doing  very  well.   Yes times maybe be a little tough.   But we have the capacity and innovation to weather this better than any country in our region, if not the world. Let the US panic, we can just sit here with our beer be all chilled and relaxed.  We just have to think a little outside of the square.   But Isn’t that what we are good at.

  So that’s a short list of things to consider, I’m sure you have a few things that you do when times are a tough as well, why not share them.

eHub

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  My Heritage

  Posted: October 7th, 2008, 5:05pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Family Social web  

  An online network for families, and the second largest family history website. Currently available in 25 languages and home to more than 25 million family members and 260 million profiles. URL: My Heritage.

Man with no blog

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  Free the Content, Maybe Not.

  Posted: October 6th, 2008, 6:30am CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web business  

  During the two conferences I attended recently, Web Directions South and OZ-IA there was a distinct theme in some the sessions on opening up the corporate knowledge based.

  You know the score, you have bound to have heard this before.   Don’t lock the corporate information up, allow those statistics and figures, you are already presenting to the public to be readily accessed via some type of API.  Allow people to remix, mashup and represent the information.  The concept goes that it’s better to allow this via a controlled API then have people scrape and represent or misrepresent the information.  Hence you maintain control of your information using the API than the traditional scrape method.

  Just to be clear I’m not talking of community building and customer relations in an online social environment, that’s a completely different story.

  Now this is all well and good. The concept works for large corporates and government (at all levels).

  Sure Not for Profits can be involved in this type of Open Data as well, spreading their various reports etc as base API, allowing better visualisation and mashups with their data by themselves or a third party.

  Small Business?

  But what of medium to small business.  Is this model of Open Data applicable to them as well.

  Consider a small business, is there any information that can really be published outside of the sales catalogue that can be truly released to the public without damaging the longer term viability of the business.  Open Data seems in a way in direct conflict with the core of any small business’s operation.  You don’t really want to display and hand over your corporate data to your competitors do you.

  So is the idea a waste of time for this segment of the business community.   Well no not really;  you don’t want to put all your information out there granted.  But you can take advantage of the information from other sources that have an open API and mashup that with say your product catalogue.

  For example if you are selling or renting properties, Google maps is a good example of centralised visualisation point.  You display your properties on the Google maps, fine that bit is easy, we have all seen this.   Next you could also display the nearby bus stops, schools, pizza shops, local geo tagged photos, and so on.   Thinking about this example aren’t we just bringing the old GIS maps with their multiple layers of spacial informaiton to the web.

  Stepping it up

  But it doesn’t stop there, a cluey small business could leverage these open data sources with their APIs to mashup the data to present a new slant on existing information, now I’m not saying that this representation should in turn be made public, no far from it. But it will present a new way of looking at a target market for sure. The pivotal point here is the availability of the Open Data via an API.

  So is this yet another way that small business can cheaply get the drop on the big corporates?

• 

  Goodbye IE6

  Posted: October 5th, 2008, 6:22am CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web Design  

  For the last few months I have noted on average across my clients sites that IE6 has now slipped to below 40%.   Okay this is just a magical number.   But for me it has great significance.   This is the tipping point  for an aging browser on the decline.  At this point it goes from the pixel perfect section on the browser compliance matrix to the section major resemblance.  This is the grey zone between perfection and the old fall back graceful degradation.

  What does this mean. Well basically anything in IE6 will not be rendered exactly the same as in the other major browsers (IE7, Firefox, Safari*).   All the visuals will be there.   It’s just little things like minor visual features, layered pngs or some JavaScript functionality will just not be catered for.   Sure I’m still using progressive enhancement with a Hijax overlay to produce a graceful degradation.

  Overall IE6 is just slipping away into the old browser bin.   You may say, but others have been doing this for a while.   Yes true, but from  a business realism view point I have had to wait until IE6 was well the truely on the downward spiral.  Sadly this has taken a while.

  Interestingly I have been designing sites of late that are pushing the visual representation and functional ability of IE6 anyway.   So maybe subconsciously I have been making this move for a while.  This doesn’t mean I forgetting about IE6.  But it does mean that I’m not focusing on the finer visual representation of my designs in IE6.

  It’s not that I hate IE6, well some days I do, it is the bane of my design existence, but it did bring some support for CSS1, DOM, iframes, improved XMLHttpRequest and some SMIL support.  Also remember IE6 was the quirks mode browser degrading the render to IE5.5.   IE6 was the sandbox for many a DHTML project in it’s day, and it served us well for the time.

  But let’s remember it was released August 2001 after all it’s  28 internet years old, time for us to move on I think design wise.  Not that 28 is old… oh just forget the age thing and more on…

  * - okay I know FireFox and Safari are not major browsers, but they are my design starting point so they stay, understand.

eHub

• 

  Tusavvy

  Posted: October 3rd, 2008, 5:49pm CEST by Matthew Murphy

  Tags:  Search Social web  

  Search the social web. Tusavvy is a search engine that searches the shared wisdom of the social web. Search results show how many related posts, suggest additional tags, and allow you to save items for later. In public beta. You must create a free account to save search items. URL: Tusavvy.

• 

  thesixtyone

  Posted: October 1st, 2008, 6:09pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Audio and music Social web  

  A community for people who love new music. Sign up to earn reputation for rating and recommending good music, bookmark songs and create personalized radio with your favorite artists, discover music with friends or follow others with similar tastes. URL: thesixtyone.

del.icio.us/miliste

• 

  IE 6 Blocker Script - CSS-Tricks

  Posted: September 21st, 2008, 10:22pm CEST by miliste

  Tags:  tutorial Webdesign Design web CSS  

  IE 6 Blocker Script - CSS-Tricks

Man with no blog

• 

  Round 3 - Back flip on a Back flip - Hell’s on the Boil

  Posted: August 31st, 2008, 8:28am CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web standards  

  You know a few months back Microsoft floored the web industry by doing a back flip on its previous decision to include a X-UA-Compatible Meta switch with Internet Explorer 8.

  What a difference 6 months makes.  Now Microsoft are back to their old tricks.  So what have they done, well it seems now that Internet Explorer 8 will not be defaulting to rendering in complete standards compliant mode that Microsoft promised.

  What Microsoft have promised is a compatibility view which allows the user to switch from IE8 rendering to IE7 rendering if the page is not forced (via code insert) into IE8 rendering mode.  So what this means is if you have a standards compliant page that IE8 will place an icon on the tool bar, to tell you that you can shift the rendering to the IE 7 engine if you like.

  That Icon

  It’s not that you have an icon (shown to the right), that I’m concerned about. It’s that the icon is representing a negative outcome.  A broken image, a sign that something is wrong, when it most cases there will be nothing wrong.  As Ben Buchanan explains in detail, this creates a fault premise that the user needs to fix something when there is no reason to.  Mind you Johnanon Snook doesn’t think it’s really an issue.   I wonder if there has been a series of tests done on the perception of what people think this icon will do.  Iconography is always a user interface minefield.

  Now why have a broken page represented in the icon at all. Why not something to do with switching. Something that has a positive slant not a negative one. To the right is a quick idea. The broken one for me is just too negative.

  And We Come Full Circle

  So if we want to ensure we don’t have the “Compatibility View”, we have to put in a meta tag (from Microsoft):

  The best way to ensure users have a great experience with your website, and thus don’t have to use the Compatibility View feature at all, is to test your site using Internet Explorer 8 and update it as necessary. In the event that a user selects Compatibility View for your site, you can “bring them back” to your desired layout mode via use of the version targeting <META> tag / HTTP header. A new content value, ‘IE=EmulateIE8’, rounds out the list of supported values and assists in this particular scenario.

  Now isn’t this a little like where we started. Sometimes it’s 2 steps forward, 3 steps back.

  They Win, Again

  If you have an Intranet, you can automatically render in IE7 mode, or elect to have any URL always rendered as IE7 for your corporate SOE. This will be beyond most users, but that’s not who it’s aimed at.  It’s for the Enterprise, this is just a case of the corporate intranet winning again.   As Hakon Lie points out  what Microsoft is playing the numbers game the Enterprise PC numbers are higher so the Enterprise gets what it wants.

  I expect if the web design and developer community cry foul again that Microsoft will flip flop back the other way.  creditability for Microsoft on this issue is wearing a little thin.

  At least the development of IE8 has been “interesting”.

• 

  Getting Real With Design

  Posted: August 24th, 2008, 1:17pm CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web Design  

  You ever read a blog post from someone on the top of their game, especially in the design arena and think, yeah that’s great, but I work in the real world, clients will laugh at that idea.

  Take for example the presentation  Jason Santa Maria gave  at the recent An Event Apart San Francisco (see Jeremy Keith’s post, which is what I’m going off third hand). Jason suggests that we start making web sites tell a story.

  I can see where he is coming from.  It’s a good idea, design wise, get the web site to progress and tell the story, via the design aspect alone focusing on the core deliverable.

  If you are selling cars you link the experience of selecting the car with a series of visuals on the discovery and exploring of the car features, leading finally to contentment and satisfaction.   Or if you are fostering community involvement and acceptance, you could project a tale of community inquiry, knowledge exchange and then acceptance.  Like a series of micro designed flip books working off the emotive state of the visuals.

  Okay now that is great in theory, but unless you have a high profile client I’m pretty sure it’s just not going to impress them.   Remember all they want is the corporate web site within x days, not some piece of pie in the sky arty design (I’m being a little hard here). The board room is usually very conservative.

  Lost Reality

  I’m not saying the idea’s bad overall, it’s just that lately time and time again I seem to be running into a-list (hate the term)  people in the web design community that are putting forward ideas that frankly will only work if you have large budget to play with.  It seems they are losing touch with the reality of the industry, of what we in the trenches are dealing with day to day.

  Now let’s get a little real,  we all don’t have large design budgets to play with.  We all know that we regularly run into clients that try and take over the design process and will demand, beyond your recommendations,  that flashing banner,  dynamic hover menu or some other horror.

  Sure you can put your foot down and remind them why it’s  bad idea. Yes they will disagree with your user research, even the user testing. If they want the menu labels a certain way then frankly the CEO will override all your recommendations. Why, because it’s their site not yours.

  If they still disagree they will implement it with or without you, the latter infers you will get no repeat business. Do this too many times and you will be out of business.

  Reality Bites

  At the end of the day the top end of town may be recommending all these cool ideas and the hard core implementation of best practice.

  But let’s be a little real, gauge the client,  if they aren’t going to accept it, then the critical thing is to give them  what they want within best practice, and then over time educate them as to the correct ways of web design leveraging accessibility and usability. 

  The more clients you educate over time the better it’s for the entire industry. 

del.icio.us/miliste

• 

  SQL Buddy - Web based MySQL administration

  Posted: August 17th, 2008, 11:55pm CEST by miliste

  Tags:  webdev Webdesign web Tools tool  

  SQL Buddy - Web based MySQL administration
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  Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator

  Posted: August 16th, 2008, 9:48pm CEST by miliste

  Tags:  webdev Webdesign Web2.0 web Tools  

  Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator
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  HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, and Articles | HTML Dog

  Posted: August 16th, 2008, 9:48pm CEST by miliste

  Tags:  xhtml webdev Webdesign Web2.0 web  

  HTML and CSS Tutorials, References, and Articles | HTML Dog

eHub

• 

  Livemocha

  Posted: August 15th, 2008, 2:20pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  eLearning Social web  

  An online language learning site with free instructional exercises, user-generated tips and flashcards, and a social community of native speakers who help one another to learn a new language. URL: Livemocha.

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• 

  25 Awesome tutorials for web designers

  Posted: August 13th, 2008, 12:22am CEST by jimcallender

  Tags:  tutorials web designers  

  25 Awesome tutorials for web designers
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  W3C out with Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

  Posted: August 4th, 2008, 5:22pm CEST by jimcallender

  Tags:  W3C Mobile web Best Practices  

  W3C out with Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0

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• 

  Shadowbox.js Media Viewer

  Posted: August 4th, 2008, 12:32pm CEST by miliste

  Tags:  webdev Webdesign Web2.0 web Tools  

  Shadowbox.js Media Viewer

eHub

• 

  emPivot

  Posted: August 1st, 2008, 5:00pm CEST by Matthew Murphy

  Tags:  Environment and Outdoors Social web  

  A video sharing site with a green theme, emPivot is a mashup of the words "empower" and "pivot." It's a site about empowering people to make informed decisions. Despite a slick interface, strong search and aggregator features (powered by Blinx), and a sharing community, emPivot claims to be in public beta. URL: emPivot.

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  Pattern Tap

  Posted: July 28th, 2008, 5:15pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Designing Social web  

  Collections and inspiration for interface design patterns. Browse, signup, organize your own sets. URL: Pattern Tap.

Man with no blog

• 

  The Upside of Freelancing

  Posted: July 26th, 2008, 12:46pm CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web business  

  Following on from the Downside of Freelancing post, for every downside there is an upside, the flipside of the coin  As you would expect the upside of freelancing out weighs the negative aspects, or you would hope so.

  That said sometimes the benefits that I’ve outlining below will appear to be mostly on the positive side, but not to put a negative spin on them, some can have a few little traps if you don’t watch out for them.

  This can put a dampener on your  freelancing lifestyle.  But as with anything this does depend on your personality and expectations.

  • Flexible Hours

    Say you want to go catch up with some colleagues for coffee tomorrow morning but your boss is riding you to finish that urgent job.  So you end up with no chance to sneak out for that quick cuppa, even at lunch time.  As a freelancer, you could have taken that break.

    As a Freelancer you are in control of the project schedule. You decide when and where the work gets done.  The only bottom line is the delivery to the client concerned.

    If you are not a morning person and prefer to work afternoons and into the evening; no problem you can. Or for example, you determine that you only need to work 3 hours a day to cover all your costs (including salary), then fine you can do that.

    That said there is a trap here. As a freelancer you can get tied up with  production schedules, delivery timetables and the like.  This results in  you working just like you would have under some tyrannical boss.

  • No Boss

    Like with the flexible hours, you are in control.

    There is no one riding you to do a project their way (well besides the client),  no one questioning your decisions.  There is no one there you have to explain to why you are doing things the way you are.  You have the total control of the project.

    You also get to all make the financial decisions too, you choose what you are going to spend your money on.

    Is there a trap here. Yeap sure is.  You really don’t have anyone to mentor with or to pull you up for any number of reasons (instinct, experience to lack of understanding). Someone to make you question, is this the best way of doing things.

    Sure you maybe able to find a business mentor, and maybe a career mentor for some aspect of your skill set.  But you’re going to find it hard pressed to find someone that is completely across all your skill sets.

  • Office Politics, What Politics

    You don’t have to put up with the whining 40ish loser in accounts, or the know-it-all receptionist who is determined to single-handed remap the companies strategic direction. No need to worry about offending that tech in IT who is dating the CEO’s daughter.  Remember all those annoying things that you just can’t be bothered with around the office, well being a freelancer you don’t get any of that.

    You work usually alone.  And even when you are on-site, you are usually left alone like most contractors.   The flipside to this benefit is you can get isolated. So if you are an extremely people oriented  person, maybe freelancing is not for you.  Then again you can build relationships with the people around you while avoiding the politics.

  • Choice of Work

    When you are working for someone else you don’t really have much choice on the projects or the work you will be doing week in week out.  You may have to work, for example, with an out-dated CMS re-skinning old templates.

    As a freelancer you can avoid all that, you get to pick the variety of the work and the intensity.   If you want to work on wireframing and greyline prototypes one week and the graphic design the next, you can. That’s assuming you have the work coming in.

    This has the added advantages of the work not becoming boring and allowing you to enforce or expand your skill set as you require.

    However as you build your portfolio of clients and feeder agencies you will find it hard and harder to say no to some.  You may from time to time have to take stock and be honest with yourself and fire a few clients that are not in your best interests.  Remember as a freelancer you are only as good as your last project.   But also remember you are in control of your own fate not the client.  It’s important to stay focused on why you took up freelancing in the first place.

  • Small is the New Big

    Being a small (well micro in some people’s view) business you can be more agile in terms of business direction than the larger firms. You can change your focus or skill set as required.  Want to focus on a php framework  development one week and SEO the next, you can (assuming you have the skills).

    Okay you don’t have twenty designers and coders like the big guys.  But you can give a personalised approach to the client.  The person the client is taking to is not just another project manger, it’s you, the person at the heart of the development of the project as well.  This allows you to deliver a very much no nonsense approach to the whole project.

    Then there is the marketing angle.  On the web, you can represent yourself, warning on misrepresentation aside, as being as big or small that you want, the web is the ultimate leveler with respect to this.

    Also being small means many firms are willing to work with you as they don’t see you an a competitive threat, but rather  as a resource.

  • Repeat Business

    I have found that over the years as you polish your skills you will find that people wanting to keep you as a part of their pool of business support professionals.  This is good at first, as you want the repeat business.  But after a while you will get other businesses wanting you to join forces with them.  This would put you back almost in a pseudo salaried styled employment position again.

    From time to time clients will even suggest you join them or they’ll move on.  It’s a hard call, but at this point I always recall why I’m freelancing in the first place.

  • Client Relations

    It’s interesting as a freelancer you tend to work closer with your clients.  Either building up a relationship over an extended period or from a shorter intensive period while your are virtually living in their pockets for a project.

    In general this has lots of benefits, the client usually goes from seeing you as just the web contractor to their own web professional or even a trusted friend. Why does this tend to happen. Mainly it’s because of your focus. You are not representing anyone but yourself, so you tend to be just yourself, and not less removed, or a little standoffish as if it’s just another client the company has sent you to. Well when it’s just you involved in a project you tend to take it all personally. Yeah I know in business your aren’t meant to take it personally, but when you are intensely involved on the usual tight freelance schedule, it just can’t be helped. Mind you that can be a good thing.

  • Money

    Okay it maybe a given, but it has to be stated, as the freelancer once you are established and have a steady stream of clients and agency work then you should be making more money that someone with a stable 9-5 job.  The sticking point here is that you still have to allow for income tax, superannuation, sick and holiday leave and insurances.  So remember that when you are setting your rates.  The money is nice, but then are you really doing this for the money.

  This wraps up this two part article, so what do you see as the benefits of freelancing. Given that benefits are a very subjective thing, there are bound to be few that I have missed.

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• 

  50 Resources For Incredible Web Design

  Posted: July 22nd, 2008, 11:53pm CEST by jimcallender

  Tags:  Resources web Design  

  50 Resources For Incredible Web Design

eHub

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  RecipeGnome

  Posted: July 15th, 2008, 5:01pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Food and drink Social web  

  An online community for recipes. Submit your own recipes or vote/comment on other people's recipes. Only the best recipes make it to the front page. URL: RecipeGnome.

Man with no blog

• 

  The Downside to Freelancing

  Posted: July 14th, 2008, 3:00am CEST by Gary Barber

  Tags:  web business  

  Over the years I have been freelancing in the web industry it has been peppered with it’s good and bad times, when you look back on these times you can see a distinct pattern of things that are good and bad aspects of the freelance lifestyle. Okay this is not going to have every solution to freelancing, but at least you get another view point and a few ideas.  Now I’m not discouraging people from taking up freelancing, far from it. It]s just a very good idea if you are considering getting into freelancing that you understand the full implications of what you are taking on.  This is the first of a two part article.

  To that end here are the downsides to freelancing that doesn’t get talked about much, I little like the elephant in the room, the downside, the things that can and do go wrong, with a few solutions.

  • Cash Flow

    This can be a problem with any small business.  Constant bad debtors, clients trying to extend the  line of credit to the nth degree.  Every freelancer encounters this.  It becomes a little more personal and critical when there is just you bringing in the money.

    But it is more that just bad debits, with freelance work it can be hard to get steady work in your specialisation on a constant basis.  You will either have a feast or a famine.  Then there is the knowledge that you may not have any work lined up at all at the end of the next gig.  To say this can be stressful is an understatement.

    Now this is fine when you are young and have very little responsibilities. However as you get older, and you have a family to support the importance of a stable cash flow becomes increasingly important.  How do you achieve this.

    Mainly it’s about relationships.  You need to setup relationships with various primary sources of work.  Be that top end web design firms or marketing and design agencies, you need to have enough contacts that can allow you to take any overflow they have from time or have constant working partnership where they use your specialised skill set.

  • Isolation

    Freelancers often work alone, sometimes from home,  there is no team, no workmates to fall back on, no one to have that chat with around the water cooler or over coffee.  This means that in industries with a high amount of automation and electronic communication, like the web industry, it can be weeks sometimes before you get to see someone face to face.

    You are kidding yourself if you don’t think this a major issue, after all we are social beings.   With a normal 9 to 5 job you would be encountering and chatting with a large range of people everyday, even if  this is just your immediate team.  Being a freelancer you don’t tend to have this luxury.  Sure you may have your family, partner,  and the like,  but this is what the other “normal” people have as well.

    So how do you overcome the loneliness, the isolation, and stop the freelance cabin fever.  Well it’s basically a matter of getting out and about.  If you have a laptop, go check out the local coffee shops, find the ones with best freelancing facilities (as Miles Burke discusses).  Maybe go find your local co-working space,  this will allow you to work along side like freelancers from maybe even different industries.  Ensure you get to all the social or networking events you can.  Get out to the gym or your favorite social sport. Contact your old friends, freelancing colleagues and go for a coffee, just get out of the office/studio  and see people, interact, talk.

    Some online services like Twitter, Plurk and FriendFeed may help give you a water cooler conversation, but at the end of the day, it’s just a stop gap measure, stop living in the freelance cave, go talk to people, as a freelance you have to make the effort, even schedule it.

  • Business Appearance

    Very often as a freelancer when you are pitching for a project you will be going against other firms that may have a large resource base.

    So it can be a big temptation to give a false impression that you too have large resource base behind you.  Now if you do this you will get caught out, plain and simple.  Clients will end up sending you work to the point that you are totally overloaded.   This is not going to make life very pleasant, we can’t all work 18 hours days on constant basis and still produce top quality work.

    So how do you handle grabbing that ideal contract, or plum gig.  Well don’t lie.  Keep it simple, keep it honest.  There is nothing wrong with telling people you are the principle consultant and that you have a group of sub contractors you can use as required.  This is where you use your contacts, your fellow freelancers and other colleagues to genuinely support your bid.

  • Finding Leads

    By now you will be starting to see that a lot of these issues are interrelated, this one is no exception.  Finding new leads, clients or people to partner with can be an issue at times.

    In a way  a lot of the low cost marketing ideas that can be applied to small business can also be applied to freelancers as well. The usual solutions such as business and peer networking, web promotion can be applied, depending on the market segment you are looking at.

    However where a small business can be promoting the “business” you are really only promoting yourself and your skill set.  This means that there can be an added benefit here doing a lot more self promotion.   Basically this entails getting your name out among your peers and the agencies you want to partner with.

    Ensuring that they know who you are, and that they can depend on you.  Make sure that you promote your skill set and ensure people know that you are the local (for example)  SEO, usability, CSS or Ruby guru to call on.  It all comes down to building your reputation.  You can do this a number of ways, blogs, talks, forums, volunteering.  The most important aspect is word of mouth, you have to ensure that your work you do is always top notch.

    Now there is another aspect, it’s your presentation, you want to make it very clear that your are freelancing and are not out to steal clients or build your business off the back of the people you are partnering with. Yes this is hard call, it’s a bit of a juggling act.

  • Separation from Work

    The separation of work from personal life can be a problem, especially if you work from a home office.  If you have been a freelancing even for just a short time you will know exactly what I’m talking about.  It’s just so easy to drift back into the office, to check email, maybe a feed, or to just finish of the project. This is effectively taking time away from the people you love and care for, family and friends.

    Yes, I know at times we all have to do this.  But at the end of the day if you are constantly working 16-18 hour days, 7 days a week,  you really have to ask yourself why are you working on this mad burnout cycle.  Some of this overload relates to the multiple roles problem (see below), however the rest is just destroying the love for reasons  you started freelancing in the first place.

    The best way I have found to separate work and family life is to physically separate them.  Have a physically separate office / studio that is purpose build (or refitted) as a work place. That’s all it is used for, when you are in that room you are effectively at work, removed from all distractions.  It’s a matter of discipline I find, you walk out of the room on Friday night and don’t go back in till Monday, okay you will break that rule from time to time, but at least try to stay away from weekend work.

    Now for that weekend, plan in advance, set yourself non-work related tasks or just things you want to get done, this will help keep you out of the office.

    Sure you want to go online during the weekend, maybe read a few feeds etc. Fine, then get a laptop (the eeepc is just $500) use this as your non-work connection to the web, you can check your feeds, non work email, blog away, and stay in the usually social network loop. That said make it clear to your friends and family that if your are on the laptop out of the office you are open game to be interrupted.

  • No Work, No Pay, No Play

    This is often an aspect that people forget.  It’s a distinct difference between a freelancer and small business.  With a small business you will often have a few employees that can at least generate some income while you are not around.

    Being a freelancer you don’t have that luxury,  like being a contractor, if you get sick or on a holiday,  no income is being generated.  This basically means that you have to allow  a percentage of your income over the year that can be put a side for a holiday or for times when you get sick.

    I have found over the years it’s best to ensure that everyone knows, that’s clients, and agencies you are working for  when you are going to be away, and if you can be contacted at all during this period. Be this for a conference or holiday. Nothing worse than having to patch a web site over a PDA via a 28k modem line in some beautiful exotic location, you are stressing and working half blind while the people around you are all having fun.

    Getting sick is also a  problem.  It does happen, I’m not condoning drugging yourself up and trying to work through it, we have all done that from time to time.  But sometime you just have admit you are human and take the time to recover.  A better solution would be don’t get sick in the first place.  Maintain your fitness levels, eat well, try not to stress out too much, in fact let’s reduce that stress.  Get that flu shot, yes it does work, others will be laid out for a week, where as you may only get a fever for an afternoon.

    Also consider getting income protection insurance, get a policy that has only a few days wait period, so if you are off for a week, you are covered.  Yes it costs but when you need it you will be very grateful.

  • Multiple Roles

    Freelancing is no different to any small business, you are going to find yourself doing everything from the accounts, admin, marketing, sales to the things you love.  Now I’ll assume that you are a gun and have a very professional attitude to your loved production work.   It’s the other things that frankly we all tend to hate or do badly.

    However with freelancing you have to be at least capable of wearing multiple hats, it’s kind of expected that you are multi-talented.   Often you will find that those spare hours in the evening or on the weekend get taken up with these unpaid duties. So why do it?

    This brings me to an interesting point.  When you first start out, doing everything maybe a good idea. However you will get to a point where you are in fact burning your billable hours doing admin, accounts or some such.   Well maybe you should be contacting that aspect of your work out to some other freelancer and free yourself up.  We all have an element of our work we dislike, this I believe is the element you should be outsourcing.

  So is that a complete list of the downside of freelancing or have you encountered other issues?

del.icio.us/jimcallender

• 

  Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers

  Posted: July 8th, 2008, 11:28pm CEST by jimcallender

  Tags:  Cheatsheets developers frontend web  

  Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers
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  Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

  Posted: July 2nd, 2008, 12:26pm CEST by jimcallender

  Tags:  Analytics web  

  Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

eHub

• 

  iWidgets

  Posted: June 25th, 2008, 5:07pm CEST by Matthew Murphy

  Tags:  Advertising Social web Widgets  

  Create custom widgets for your website or your brand with iWidget. Using their online wizard, you can easily create widgets that your website visitors or customers can add to their iGoogle start page, Facebook profile, or their own blog. Your widget is customizable by your users so that it fits right in with their design. iWidgets only charges for promotion. Other services are free. URL: iWidgets.

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  ScrnShots

  Posted: June 20th, 2008, 5:04pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Designing Social web  

  A community to upload, tag and share your screenshots. URL: ScrnShots.

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  meOwns

  Posted: June 18th, 2008, 5:02pm CEST by Cesar Castro

  Tags:  Organizing and cataloging Social web  

  Allows you to showcase the things you own, anything from accordions to zombie movies, on your website, blog or even Facebook. URL: meOwns.

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  Neeetz

  Posted: June 14th, 2008, 1:00am CEST by Matthew Murphy

  Tags:  publishing Social web  

  Create your own social network. Neetz gives you the best elements of online tools and puts them all in one place for you to use in creating your own Neetz Net Space. You can blog, share pictures and multimedia, and join other Net Spaces. Use your Net Space to connect with family, promote your business, or create a community around something you love. URL: Neeetz.

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  Similarr

  Posted: June 5th, 2008, 5:13pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  Search Social web  

  You can use similarr as a classic search engine to search the web. Results from web searching are placed on the left side of the page. The right side of the page is used for placing comments, questions or issues related to your search query. Other people who will later search the same query will be able to read and answer to your topic. URL: Similarr.

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  Chatterous

  Posted: June 4th, 2008, 5:01pm CEST by Emily Chang

  Tags:  IM messaging chat Social web  

  Group chat combining the web, im, email and your phone. Use your existing IM, email and phone to chat. Once you create a group, you can chat with your friends through IM, email or your phone. You don't need to use the website. Your friends don't need to sign up to chat with you. They can reply right on their IM, email or phone. URL: Chatterous.

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