Ali Ali describes the design process behind the forthcoming revision to A Feed Apart, the official Twitter aggregator for An Event Apart. Read about it now, experience it very, very soon.

Filed under: A List Apart, An Event Apart, Applications, Community, Design, Web Design, conferences

10 Responses to “A Feed Apart preview”

1. 
   Yoosuf said on 30 April 2010 at 10:37 am:

   its stunning, what will be the creative apart name, you are such a genus jeffry!

2. 
   Kristofer Layon said on 30 April 2010 at 10:55 am:

   Congrats, and thanks for this fabulous extra A(n)…Apart service! Also, very happy to see AEA Minneapolis featured in the screenshot. Presumably, your other event locations won’t necessarily merit being covered in such a first class way. =)

   {KIDDING!}

3. 
   Auré said on 30 April 2010 at 11:53 am:

   Can’t wait to see this new design online… I have followed the redesign process on Dribbble and it was amazing.. really really good work.

4. 
   Theo said on 30 April 2010 at 2:06 pm:

   AAAAhhhhhh… ALA what else ?

5. 
   Chris Hester said on 1 May 2010 at 3:20 pm:

   One thing I’ve never understood about all these related sites – what does the term “A Something Apart” actually mean? Is it saying the “something”, be it a List, an Event, or in this case a Feed, is set apart from the rest, ie: it is special? Or superior? I’m guessing as it just doesn’t seem to make sense to my confused mind. Enlighten me someone! (Oh, and the AFA design looks great!)

6. 
   Jeffrey Zeldman said on 1 May 2010 at 7:16 pm:

   One thing I’ve never understood about all these related sites – what does the term “A Something Apart” actually mean?

   Years ago, when the world was young, practitioners of the emerging art of web design shared knowledge and information chiefly via mailing lists—a means of creating group discussions via email. (Email was sent to all list subscribers via software like Majordomo and Listserv.)

   These lists were great for sharing ideas. They were lightweight (email is just text) and portable and anyone who subscribed could participate. “Experts” rubbed shoulders with “beginners” and there was a general atmosphere of excitement and a willingness to help others.

   But lists also suffered from problems we still see in Internet discussions today: spam, rants, off-topic comments, flamebait (comments trolls post, not to facilitate genuine discussion, but to piss off other list members), etc.

   A gent named Brian Platz and I decided to create a mailing list for web designers that we thought could avoid spam, rants, off-topic comments, flamebait, etc.—hence, A LIST APART—by holding all submitted comments in a queue, and then editing the best of them together to make a daily email “magazine” of sorts. By manually removing unhelpful and off-topic comments, and by carefully curating related (and helpful) comments, we were able to create a list that was genuinely helpful. As a result, we soon had 16,000 subscribers. (Nothing by today’s standards, but it was a much smaller Internet back in those days.)

   A web magazine based on the A LIST APART mailing list was the next logical step, and A List Apart still flourishes all these years later, thanks to a wonderful community of writers and readers and the hard work of our editors, producers, and creative staff.

   A LIST APART has become a well-known brand on the web. Not well-known by everybody (like Google and Facebook) but well known by people who make websites.

   Thus when Eric Meyer and I decided to create a web conference, it was natural name that conference An Event Apart.

   And so on.

   Does that help? :)

7. 
   Chris Hester said on 2 May 2010 at 3:22 pm:

   Jeffrey, thanks for the wonderful (and lengthy!) reply. However, fascinating as it was, you described the history of A List Apart. (I remember it myself on the web before the last redesign – there was a superb forum that user waferbaby was going to redo, which sadly never happened. The posts on the forum were a great help. I even still have a small screenshot of the old design.) Anyway…

   The question I was asking may seem too obvious to ask, but it remains thus: what does the phrase “a list apart” mean? I now get the list part – thanks! – but not the last word. If it was “A Top List” or “A List For Web Coders” it would be clear. Is it part of a longer phrase I haven’t heard before? Or should it make instant sense and I just don’t get it?

   Over to you…

8. 
   Marco Raaphorst said on 3 May 2010 at 10:30 am:

   looks great even for a Dutchguy like me

9. 
   Jeffrey Zeldman said on 3 May 2010 at 2:30 pm:

   Chris:

   It was a list *apart* from the rest because it sought to avoid problems the others had. (Strictly speaking, not all the other lists had these problems. Steve Champeon’s Webdesign-L was an incredible list, and a fool who dared spam it soon learned better. But that’s another story.)

   The word “apart” was used to denote standing apart from the crowd, being different from the rest.

   SIgnal to noise is a problem on most mailing lists, but this is A List Apart.

   It also rather nicely alluded to Godard’s stylish 1960s new-wave film, “Bande A Part.” So there was that. (Quentin Tarantino also alluded to the Godard film by naming his film company “Band Apart.” I’m sure that was in my mind as well when naming the mailing list.)

10. 
    Chris Hester said on 4 May 2010 at 3:47 pm:

    Thanks for that Jeffrey! It really is a fascinating history. Methinks I should link to your first reply to my comment on my website, for anyone wanting to know the history of A List Apart.

    As for the origin of my website’s name Design Detector, I was listening to Power Windows by Rush. Stuck for a name for days, I found inspiration with track 7, “Emotion Detector”.

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