Aaron Gustafson (@aarongustafson), author of Adaptive Web Design (the clearest, most beautiful explanation of progressive enhancement I’ve ever read) and nearly a dozen brilliant A List Apart articles, has been a technical editor at A List Apart for six exciting and formative years.

Daniel Mall (@danielmall) has written three great ALA articles and served as A List Apart technical editor almost as long as Aaron.

Both gentlemen have had a profound and lasting impact on the nature and quality of A List Apart’s content. With the publication of today’s ALA issue, both gentlemen move on.

Aaron is the founder of Web Standards Sherpa (“journeying towards best web practices”) and Easy Designs LLC; co-founder of Retreats 4 Geeks; and manager of The Web Standards Project.

Dan is a former interactive designer for Happy Cog’s Philadelphia studio, former design director at Big Spaceship in Brooklyn, co-founder of Typedia and swfIR, and singer/keyboard player for contemporary-Christian band Four24. I can’t tell you what he is doing next — he has sworn me to secrecy — but trust me, it will be awesome.

Over a long career marked by extraordinary collaborators, Aaron and Dan are two of the smartest, and most talented people I’ve had the pleasure to work with. They are also friends. This isn’t goodbye, fellas.

JOINING US today as technical editor is Mat Marquis (@wilto). He marks his entrance into A List Apart’s world via this morning’s stunning article, Responsive Images: How They Almost Worked and What We Need.

Mat is a designer-slash-developer working at Filament Group in Boston. Mat is a member of the jQuery Mobile team, an active member of the open source community, and enjoys a complicated relationship with the now-defunct HTML5 “dialog” tag.

Welcome, Wilto!

LET YOUR NERD FLAG FLY! Now there is a Flickr group for A Book Apart readers. Come one, come all. Share beauty shots of your A Book Apart collection. Share unboxing photos. Share pictures of your fine self interacting with our awesome books. If you love reading our brief books for people who make websites, we want to see and hear from you.

Flickr: The A Book Apart Pool.

Meeting of the Minds: Ethan Marcotte and AEA attendee discuss the wonders of CSS3. Photo by the incomparable Jim Heid.

THE SHOW IS OVER, but the memories, write-ups, demos, and links remain. Enjoy!

An Event Apart Boston 2011 group photo pool

Speakers, attendees, parties, and the wonders of Boston, captured by those who were there.

What Every Designer Should Know (a)

Jeremy Keith quite effectively live-blogs my opening keynote on the particular opportunities of Now in the field of web design, and the skills every designer needs to capitalize on the moment and make great things.

The Password Anti-Pattern

Related to my talk: Jeremy Keith’s original write-up on a notorious but all-too-common practice. If your boss or client tells you to design this pattern, just say no. Design that does not serve users does not serve business.

What Every Designer Should Know (b)

“In his opening keynote … Jeffrey Zeldman talked about the skills and opportunities that should be top of mind for everyone designing on the Web today.” Luke Wroblewski’s write-up.

Whitney Hess: Design Principles — The Philosophy of UX

“As a consultant, [Whitney] spends a lot of time talking about UX and inevitably, the talk turns to deliverables and process but really we should be establishing a philosophy about how to treat people, in the same way that visual design is about establishing a philosophy about how make an impact. Visual design has principles to achieve that: contrast, emphasis, balance, proportion, rhythm, movement, texture, harmony and unity.” In this talk, Whitney proposed a set of 10 principles for UX design.

Veerle Pieters: The Experimental Zone

Live blogging by Jeremy Keith. Veerle, a noted graphic and interaction designer from Belgium, shared her process for discovering design through iteration and experimentation.

Luke Wroblewski: Mobile Web Design Moves

Luke’s live awesomeness cannot be captured in dead written words, but Mr Keith does a splendid job of quickly sketching many of the leading ideas in this key AEA 2011 talk.

See also: funky dance moves with Luke Wroblewski, a very short video I captured as Luke led the crowd in the opening moves of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Ethan Marcotte: The Responsive Designer’s Workflow (a)

“The next talk here at An Event Apart in Boston is one I’ve really, really, really been looking forward to: it’s a presentation by my hero Ethan Marcotte.”

Ethan Marcotte: The Responsive Designer’s Workflow (b)

Ethan’s amazing talk—a key aspect of design in 2011 and AEA session of note—as captured by the great Luke Wroblewski.

An Event Apart: The Secret Lives of Links—Jared Spool

“In his presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jared Spool detailed the importance and role of links on Web pages.” No writer can capture Jared Spool’s engaging personality or the quips that produce raucous laughter throughout his sessions, but Luke does an outstanding job of noting the primary ideas Jared shares in this riveting and highly useful UX session.

An Event Apart: All Our Yesterdays—Jeremy Keith

Luke W: “In his All Our Yesterdays presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jeremy Keith outlined the problem of digital preservation on the Web and provided some strategies for taking a long term view of our Web pages.”

Although it is hard to pick highlights among such great speakers and topics, this talk was a highlight for me. As in, it blew my mind. Several people said it should be a TED talk.

An Event Apart: From Idea to Interface—Aarron Walter

Luke: “In his Idea to Interface presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Aarron Walter encouraged Web designers and developers to tackle their personal projects by walking through examples and ways to jump in. Here are my notes from his talk.”

Links and Resources from “From Idea to Interface”

Compiled by the speaker, links include Design Personas Template and Example, the story behind the illustrations in the presentation created by Mike Rhode, Dribble, Huffduffer, Sketchboards, Mustache for inserting data into your prototypes, Keynote Kung Fu, Mocking Bird, Yahoo Design Patterns, MailChimp Design Pattern Library, Object Oriented CSS by Nicole Sullivan and more!

An Event Apart: CSS3 Animations—Andy Clarke

“In his Smoke Gets In Your Eyes presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Andy Clarke showcased what is possible with CSS3 animations using transitions and transforms in the WebKit browser.” Write-up by the legendary Luke Wroblewski.

Madmanimation

The “Mad Men” opening titles re-created entirely in CSS3 animation. (Currently requires Webkit browser, e.g. Safari, Chrome.)

CSS3 Animation List

Anthony Calzadilla, a key collaborator on the Mad Men CSS3 animation, showcases his works.

Box Shadow Curl

Pure CSS3 box-shadow page curl effect. Mentioned during Ethan Marcotte’s Day 3 session on exploring CSS3.

Multiple CSS Transition Durations

Fascinating article by Anton Peck (who attended the show). Proposed: a solution to a key problem with CSS transitions. (“Even now, my main issue with transitions is that they use the same time-length value for the inbound effect as they do the outbound. For example, when you create a transition on an image with a 1-second duration, you get that length of time for both mousing over, and mousing away from the object. This type of behavior should be avoided, for the sake of the end-user!”)

Everything You Wanted to Know About CSS3 Gradients

Ethan Marcotte: “Hello. I am here to discuss CSS3 gradients. Because, let’s face it, what the web really needed was more gradients.”

Ultimate CSS3 Gradient Generator

Like it says.

Linear Gradients Generator

By the incomparable John Allsopp.

These sessions were not captured

Some of our best talks were not captured by note-takers, at least not to my knowledge. They include:

1. Eric Meyer: CSS Anarchist’s Cookbook
2. Mark Boulton: Outing the Mind: Designing Layouts That Think for You
3. Jeff Veen: Disaster, DNA, and the Fathomless Depth of the Web

It’s possible that the special nature of these presentations made them impossible to capture in session notes. (You had to be there.)

There are also no notes on the two half-day workshop sessions, “Understand HTML5 With Jeremy Keith,” and “Explore CSS3 With Ethan Marcotte.”

What have I missed?

Attendees and followers, below please add the URLs of related educational links, write-ups, and tools I’ve missed here. Thanks!

Untitled

BIG WEB SHOW EPISODE 32 is now online for your listening and viewing pleasure. Mandy Brown (Typekit, A Book Apart) joins Dan Benjamin and me to
discuss the value of customer support, the present and future of type on the web, font choice on reader platforms, what traditional print publishers can learn from the new breed of web-based print publishers, why you’ve got to write, and why the future belongs to editors.

Dan and I thank all of you for listening, watching, and contributing your questions and comments in the chat room during the live sessions. You’ve made our little show worthwhile. We promise more thought-provoking questions and more great guests in 2011.

Join us Thursday, 6 January 2011 at 1:00 PM Eastern for the live recording of Episode 33, as Dan and I talk with Dana Chisnell, co-author, Handbook of Usability Testing Second Edition (Wiley, 2008) about her election design usability project for the US Government, plus usable security, researching social interactions mediated by technology, whether UX is a female ghetto, and lots more.

GARY VAYNERCHUK is our guest on Episode #26 of The Big Web Show, taped live before an internet audience at 1:00 PM ET Thursday 4 November at live.5by5.tv. Gary is the creator of Wine Library TV, the author of the New York Times bestselling book Crush It!, and the co-founder with his brother AJ of VaynerMedia, a boutique agency that works with personal brands, consumer brands, and startups.

The Big Web Show (“Everything Web That Matters”) is recorded live in front of an internet audience every Thursday at 1:00 PM ET on live.5by5.tv. Edited episodes can be watched afterwards, often within hours of recording, via iTunes (audio feed | video feed) and the web. Subscribe and enjoy!

The show’s over but the photos linger on. An Event Apart Minneapolis was two days of nonstop brilliance and inspiration. In an environment more than one attendee likened to a “TED of web design,” a dozen of the most exciting speakers and visionaries in our industry explained why this moment in web design is like no other.

If you were there, relive the memories; if you couldn’t attend, steal a glance at some of what you missed: An Event Apart Minneapolis: the photo pool at Flickr.

Next up: An Event Apart DC and San Diego. These shows will not be streamed, simulcast, or repackaged in DVD format. To experience them, you must attend. Tickets are first-come, first-served, and every show this year has sold out. Forewarned is forearmed; we’d love to turn you on.

Photo: Jared Mehle.

Today at 1:00 PM EDT, join Dan Benjamin and me live as we interview designer, developer, author, lecturer, and bon vivant Ethan Marcotte (bio | blog | Twitter) for Episode 9 of The Big Web Show.

Ethan is the author of an upcoming A Book Apart treatise on responsive web design; my co-author on Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition; and the co-author with Dan Cederholm of Handcrafted CSS: More Bulletproof Web Design.

Join us for a lively discussion as we talk about designing and coding for the likes of the Sundance Film Festival and New York Magazine, and the joys of responsive web design, working remotely, and swearing profusely on Twitter. We may even get Ethan’s take on Microsoft’s dazzling new IE9.

As always, watch and participate in the live broadcast by tuning to live.5by5.tv at the appointed time.

A few hours after the taping, the permanent, edited video and audio podcast will be available for your bliss at 5by5.tv/bigwebshow/9 and via the iTunes Store (iTunes audio feed | iTunes video feed).

The Big Web Show is a weekly video podcast on Everything Web That Matters, co-hosted by 5×5 network founder Dan Benjamin and yours truly.

M.I.A. Takes to the Streets: a slide show at NYTimes.com.

Photos: Ryan McGinley for The New York Times.

The final cut of The Big Web Show “Episode 4: Content Strategy,” recorded in front of a live internet audience earlier today, is now online for your viewing pleasure.

Hosted, as always, by Dan Benjamin and me, this episode features Kristina Halvorson, CEO, Brain Traffic and author, Content Strategy for the Web (New Riders, 2010); and Erin Kissane, content strategist, Happy Cog, and author, Incisive.nu. It’s 60 minutes of insights to die for! Brainpower like you’ve never! Don’t miss it.

A friend’s young son had just used the toilet and wiped himself for the first time.

She congratulated him on being a big boy.

To which he replied:

“Mother. Surely you don’t expect me to do this for the rest of my life.”

Ian Corey in the hundred-year-old elevator at Nuthouse Hardware. Via flickr.com. Posted via web from Does This Zeldman Make My Posterous Look Fat?

The Amanda Project is the story of Amanda Valentino, told through an interactive website and book series for readers aged 13 & up. On the website, readers are invited to become a part of the story as they help the main characters search for Amanda.

The writing-focused social media network is designed and written as if by characters from the Amanda novels, and encourages readers to enter the novel’s world by joining the search for Amanda, following clues and reading passages that exist only online, and ultimately helping to shape the course of the Amanda narrative across eight novels. (The first Amanda novel—Invisible I, written by Melissa Kantor—comes out 22 September.)

The site developed over a year of intense creative collaboration between Happy Cog and Fourth Story Media, a book publisher and new media company spearheaded by publishing whiz Lisa Holton. Prior to starting Fourth Story, Lisa was was President, Scholastic Trade Publishing and Book Fairs; managed the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; and oversaw development of The 39 Clues. Before that she spent nearly a decade developing numerous bestselling, franchise-launching series at Disney.

Happy Cog‘s New York office developed this project. The team:

• Aaron Gustafson, front-end development (blog, articles, Twitter)
• Liz, Danzico, user experience (blog, MFA program, Twitter)
• Matthew Goldenberg, project management
• Whitney Hess, user experience (blog, Twitter)
• Erin Kissane, content strategy (articles, blog, Twitter)
• Kelly McCarthy, project manager
• Jason Santa Maria, design (website, Twitter)
• Jeffrey Zeldman, creative director

Equally vital to the project’s success were Fourth Story’s leaders and partners, including:

• Lorraine Shanley, Principal Advisor
• Ariel Aberg-Riger (website, Twitter), Creative Development & Marketing Manager
• JillEllyn Riley, Editorial Director
• Dale Robbins, Creative Director
• David Stack, Director, Digital Partnerships
• Melissa Kantor, Writer
• Peter Silsbee, Writer
• Polly Kanevsky, Art Director
• Sam Gerstenzang, Technology Consultant

Today’s launch is not the end of our relationship with Fourth Story Media. The Amanda Project will continue to evolve, and Happy Cog will remain an active partner in its direction and growth. We thank our brilliant collaborators and congratulate them on today’s milestone.

Read more

• Blissbat.net: The Amanda Project Wants You

[tags]amanda, amandaproject, theamandaproject, TAP, happycog, design, webdesign, contentstrategy, userexperience, publishing, books, aarongustafson, lizdanzico, erinkissane, whitneyhess, mattgoldenberg, kellymccarthy, jasonsantamaria, jeffreyzeldman, lisaholton, dalerobbins, davidstack, JillEllynRiley, ArielAberg-Riger[/tags]

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

[tags]DouglasBowman, Google, design[/tags]

A veteran strategist and instructor, user experience director Kevin Hoffman creates compelling online experiences via patient research and sparkling creative insight. Prior to joining Happy Cog, he spent more than a decade building sites, developing strategies, and leading projects for colleges and universities in Baltimore. Kevin joins our Philadelphia office; we are thrilled to have him.

Co-inventor of a patented search tool for American Express, user experience consultant Whitney Hess has a bachelor’s in writing, a master’s in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon, and ten years’ experience making complex sites work beautifully. Her work for the New York office of Happy Cog will soon bear public fruit; we are delighted to have her on our team.

Welcome, Kevin and Whitney.

[tags]Whitney Hess, Kevin Hoffman, UX, userexperience, happycog, talent[/tags]