Tag: Web

Categories
Technology

The Hubbub Around Google+

I really hope that every person who is praising Google right now and clamoring to get invited to join Google’s latest project has never fallen into any of these camps:

  • berates Facebook for knowing too much about us
  • laments the power Apple exerts on the web and technology companies
  • laments the size of Apple and other large companies
  • stresses privacy and ownership of content

If you have ever fallen into any of those camps you should be looking at Google’s latest offering, Google+, with increasing suspicion. This has nothing to do with how good the service will be, but more about how many people are fawning over the latest offering from Google.

I think it is safe to say that Google has taken the place of the “good guy” for many people, and maybe deservedly so. However, never lose site of the fact that Google makes money doing pretty much one thing … selling advertising. I think it is a fairly safe bet that all of the information Google will be gathering through its new Google+ service will also be to gain just that, more information on users so that their advertising can be both more effective and more lucrative. They have to make money after all, otherwise they can’t continue to offer their services.

Apple and Microsoft are both pretty straight forward, they want your money any way they can get it. That’s pretty transparent, and they say as much. Google has never been that transparent with their motivations (and neither has Facebook or Twitter or many other tech companies for that matter). A lot of time is spent on “don’t be evil”, but that’s a corporate slogan, not entirely the company’s motivation.

I hope that Google+ brings to light some good ideas, I don’t know what they could be because I haven’t used it at all, even though I probably will. However, with Google again trying to bring more of the web under its umbrella, I can’t help but fear that this could be another step toward the siloing of the web into larger and larger companies. I hope not, because losing the truly distributed web would be a damn shame.

Categories
Life Technology

An Opening for Rural Communities

Rural communities are dying, or at least that is the accepted wisdom within the mainstream media and those who live in larger cities. I’m not going to get into a pissing contest between what is better, rural or urban, but to deny that there are unique challenges facing rural communities today that they have not had to deal with in the past would be both incorrect and extremely shortsighted.

The questions should be what can we do to change things? The demographics are not going to change drastically for many reasons, but what can rural communities do to both keep those people who are currently there and maybe even grab a few from outside to bolster their ranks?

I’m going to focus on one opening where rural communities are in a unique position (I think) to take a huge step forward and encourage innovation in the technology realm: symmetrical, high-speed broadband.

I understand that there is a capital expenditure that is needed in such endeavors, but in the USA, asymmetrical broadband is the norm and is borderline criminal. People speak of the web as a publishing platform, but the current infrastructure leans HEAVILY toward only consuming. The paltry upload speeds keep people from doing two things: uploading large files and hosting their own stuff in-house.

Rural communities could turn this problem on its head by investing in networking infrastructures and then opening them up for people to use as they would like. Not only would it benefit schools, libraries, law enforcement agencies, government offices, health services and any other public services, but it would also open it up for the citizens to try to build companies in these areas because bandwidth is plentiful and affordable.

It’s time for rural communities to band together and start to think outside of agriculture and natural resources as the only viable economic activities and invest in something that can benefit everyone. Their small size would allow for cheaper roll outs, so less capital is needed to get going. Being smaller also would keep larger telcos off of your back (hopefully).

The future is quickly coming, so let’s get on board!

The Best Time to Design on the Web

I just finished a marathon. Well, it was a marathon for my mind.

Two books have recently been published and they are poised to take the web design community by storm. The first was Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson and the second Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte. If I was going to recommend just one book, I would push towards Marcotte’s book, but both of them are great and I would recommend each.

I’m not going to go into an exhaustive review of these books, but both of them have found a permanent home next to Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards, a book I still consider to be the most important book in my very short, very poor career so far. If you care about the web at all, you will read Zeldman’s book before anything else.

Back to my task at hand.

The two books I mentioned at the very beginning usher in a new era of web designer, or perhaps it is the same era, just more refined and more focused. The idea flexibility on the web has always been on a designer’s mind, even if it was how to combat that flexibility.

Now the goal is to take hold of the flexibility of the internet and put the user first and foremost. Using every tool available to craft experiences that allow people to use your website on any device, anywhere, without having to compromise on the content.

The idea of “mobile first” has been going around the web for a little while, but it isn’t a dogmatic ideal to pursue. The idea behind “mobile first” is to provide focus for a design and a litmus test to drive decisions. I’m going to try and burn into my head this thought:

How does this content or feature benefit our mobile users?

That one is straight from Marcotte. It isn’t supposed to limit what you can do, but provide the start of a conversation about what is important for you to be doing. A lot of people will be asking for their “stuff” to go “somewhere”, but the focus of asking that simple questions allows for some objectivity to be put into it.

However, it doesn’t stop there. The “desktop” (read: larger-screened) experience tends to fall into the fallacy of thinking that more space automatically means that it needs to be filled with something … anything! Stop right there and forget about that entire notion.

The focus of starting with the idea of what a “mobile” site might need really just focuses on what every person needs, because you really don’t know if that “mobile” person is sitting on a train on spotty 3G or sitting on their couch with good fiber internet, so you have to make those decisions with everyone in mind.

It tends to come back to focusing on what is important. The question provides focus for decisions.

Responsive and/or adaptive web design using such techniques and tools as progressive enhancement, JavaScript, media queries, CSS3, HTML5, etc. allows for the same markup to be massaged in such a way as to present the content in a manner that is appropriate for varied screen sizes and devices. These are nothing more than tools that can be used in many ways.

The real advancement is in how we are now thinking. The embracing of the flexible nature of the web along with the focus of mobile-first development makes this the best time to design on the web.

Giving “Mobile” Users a Chance

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in observing people on their mobile devices, it’s that they’ll do anything on mobile if they have the need. Write long emails? Check. Manage complex sets of information? Check. And the list goes on. If people want to do it, they’ll do it on mobile -especially when it’s their only or most convenient option. — Luke Wroblewski

I agree with almost everything in that post, but I would make one change.

In order to allow users to do what they need, we have to give them what they need. That means that we don’t hide content from users that is needed just because they have a smaller screen. I’m not good that this and I have a lot of work to do to get better, but that’s the goal. Content should be available to all users regardless of what client they are currently using.

I use my iPhone when I am sitting on the couch at home as much as I do while I am actually on the go. When am I am “mobile” user? The line is blurred because smart phones and tablets are more personal computers than mobile, and far more personal computers than desktops and laptops have ever been.

So exciting.

Categories
Technology

My Day at MinneBar

On May 7, 2011, me and two friends (Aaron Spike and Phil Wels) headed up to the Best Buy headquarters in Bloomington, Minnesota to attend this year’s MinneBar. We were only three of the nearly 1200 people there, but I think I can safely say that we enjoyed our time.

It is hard to get all of the information contained in the talks during the day, but I’m going to briefly touch on the ones that I thought were the best for me.

HTML5, CSS3, & Mobile: Responsive Design

This was the first talk I attended and it did not disappoint. I was able to catch Mike Bollinger’s CSS3 talk during last years MinneBar, and you might consider this talk an extension of that.

If you don’t know what Responsive Design is about, I would recommend reading Ethan Marcotte’s article at A List Apart for an overview and then check out Andy Clarke’s 320 and up for some code that you can start with. If you want some inspiration, check out Media Queries for some good examples of live sites doing exactly what we would like to see.

It really boils down to using the same semantic HTML markup and using CSS with media queries and other mumbo jumbo to tailor a site for any screen resolution. It really is an exciting idea, and recent advancements in browsers has allowed this to become a reality. While Mike’s example of the upcoming TECHdotMN contributor page starts with the largest viewport and works it way down, Andy Clarke starts from the smallest viewport and adds in things as it gets larger.

The talk was great and seeing the actual code and how things are structured was really useful. The venue also had the most comfortable seats. WHOHOO!

Ban Helvetica Part 2: How to Pair Fonts

Typography is one of the huge weaknesses in my web design/development toolkit and this talk was a good introduction to how one designer chooses fonts that work together in different ways. It is a highly subjective topic, but he added some objectivity to it in order to provide a framework to work from.

Here are the four steps:

  1. pick a font (any font)
  2. REALLY look at it (REALLY BIG)
  3. complement and contrast
  4. pick fonts based on observed attributes

The four parts of a font that he (Garrick van Buren) observed were:

  • serifs
  • contrast
  • shape
  • terminals

That’s it. You look at the four parts of a font, look at what would be similar and what would be different and then start choosing fonts based on those attributes. You want to choose a font face based on whether it complements or contrasts with your chosen font.

That might be the main thing I took away: choose fonts for a reason. Be deliberate in your choices and have reasons outside of “they just look right together.”

Overall, a great talk that had way 10 minutes of information and then many examples of how he does it. Sometimes it is the simplest things that you take away.

Pseudo Elements for Fun and Profit!

his one was right after lunch, so I was in a little bit of a food coma at the time, but Chris Coyier did an awesome job of showing us how awesome pseudo elements can be for hammering out designs in CSS. It really is remarkable what you can do with just CSS, and it was the inspiration for me to hammer out my CSS calendar icon today at work.

Nothing like an icon written entire in code that will be easy to update on the homepage. Awesome sauce.

Chris is a great speaker and I hope I can catch him again in the future. Remember, pseudo elements are a part of CSS 2.1, so if someone isn’t implementing them, they can’t use the CSS3 excuse!

Color Theory & Consumption: A Matter of Life & Death?

This one was a last-minute change for me, and I’m glad I went. John Mindiola III was an awesome speaker, very engaging and very funny talking about a very serious subject.

He started (and most of his presentation) revolved around what design is used for in order to sell things to consumers. Most of the time it is trying to sell something that maybe a consumer doesn’t need, or maybe shouldn’t want. He used chips as an example, blue M&Ms and many other junk food things.

He then brought up baby carrots and their website and campaign to try and get them into more places and more kids eating them. It was all very eye-opening, even for someone like me who tries to work my way through the advertising. It really is all around us.

Finally, the main gist (I think) of the entire talk was to get us to think. Here is my (poor) paraphrase:

What is we spent as much time trying to sell things that are good to people as we do trying to sell things that are considered bad?

That’s a terrible paraphrase (he said it far more profoundly), but it brings an ethical tilt to the job of a designer when often they might just be asked to make something look pretty to get people to buy something … anything!

The Missing Web Curriculum: What Every Web Professional Should Have Learned

Jeff Lin took the time to talk about what he sees as the missing parts of the current curriculum for web professionals. He kept it broad for a reason so that he could bring in anyone who even touches the web (which could include producers of content along with coders and designers).

He’s currently working through a curriculum change at the college where he teaches and he gave an overview of how they are handling that. Basically, they are moving to a more generic curriculum so that they have the opportunity to catch all of the current technologies without having to go back and redo the entire curriculum every year.

He is an advocate of learning how to actually markup in HTML and CSS, which is HUGE in my book.

However, the rest of the time was mainly spent with discussions going on in the group. Sadly, most of it revolved around people defending the current higher education model of education and trying to fix it or mold programs into what they perceived as beneficial. While that might work in some cases, I think that the web and technology in general (NOT things like computer science necessarily or design generics) do not lend themselves to the “ivory towered” approach of higher education and that starting from scratch and building something new might be both more beneficial and more economical.

Overall, a good presentation with even better discussion.

Closing Comments

The whole day was great and I enjoyed the whole thing. I’m looking forward to getting back again next year to learn some more. Last year I went to many of the startup/business sessions and this year I spent most of my time at the design sessions. Who knows what I’ll visit next year.