Current Interview: Design is Kinky
6 September, 2000
[2:30 pm]
Glish understands what you know and we know, but traditional media and built-to-sell dotcoms do not. (If you missed it, see also I See Dancing Beans, our tale of the POV Top 100 at Mappa Mundi.)
[2 pm]
While we're on the subject of dropping boulders in the path of your would-be audience, Nublog concisely explains the legal decision in favor of one blind man versus the multi-million dollar Sydney Olympics website. ("Accessibility is real, not theoretical, it's inexpensive, ... it's easy to do, and if you don't do it, someone may order you to.") Nublog's approach to multimedia accessibility is equally thought-provoking.
::: MrFrench's woes, which started this thread, seem to be resolving themselves. Most of the site is actually working again, and you can now view MrFrench's funky clip art and typefaces.
[1:15 am]
MrFrench is having trouble with his backend. MrFrench.com offers designers a fabulous (!) collection of pop-cultural images, elements, and typefaces. Or so the ads say. At the moment, MrFrench serves JRunProxyServerHandler errors and non-functional forms pages.
We're not busting on MrFrench per se. We do wish companies would think before banishing fail-safe, accessible technology from every single page of their sites. For pity's sake, at least the CONTACT page should work, even if the database goes down. Especially if the database goes down. We wish MrFrench a speedy recovery, though of course we can't contact him to say so.
5 September, 2000
[7:45 pm]
XML scares most designers. RSS, a popular format for syndicating web content, tries to bring the power of XML to "mortal human beings." Dave Winer wants your input on how RSS should evolve, and he's put up a survey to find out what you think. ::: After pondering serious stuff like that, relax with Fishbucket (requires Flash).
::: In keeping with the theme of yesterday's Glamorous Life entry, we visited Flak Magazine because Flak reviewed our Ad Graveyard. We stayed because Flak turns out to be a well-written, non-profit indie zine. (Plus, let's face it, those menu bar effects are sweet.) Flak even managed to score a John Waters interview. We like.
Apparently the Graveyard also made today's Yahoo! Daily Net Buzz as well as something called Sportsjones. Rounding out the ego bolstering (in keeping with yesterday's theme), Prol sent us this zeldman.com review from 'Smallzine' (Netherlands). Translation c/o Prol again.
On a related tangent, ethmar.com has fun lampooning the incestuous cross-linking of design sites and weblogs. And Stay Awake polishes our whistle.
4 September, 2000
[7 pm]
Me, Glorious Me! My Glamorous Life, Part 6.
[2 am]
Sites often look worse in Linux than on other platforms, because Linux lacks scalable TrueType fonts. These Microsoft web fonts, carefully designed to render well onscreen, will enhance any Linux user's experience of typography on the web. (Translation: pages will look better and be easier to read.)
::: We felt sad about shutting down the old Mac Daddy pages, so we updated one of them: Mac Tools for Web Designers, such as it is, is back online. Also refreshed: Mr Jenkins's Last Martini and the Guest Book.
::: The k10k relaunch has been delayed until 11 September.
3 September, 2000
[12:30 pm]
PageSpinner 3, now in beta, will fully support XHTML and HTML 4.01 syntax checking. PageSpinner is a low-cost shareware HTML editor for Mac OS that we've always preferred to BBEdit.
[4 am]
Our Guest Book is once again operational, and the design has been somewhat streamlined. Highlight: reactions to our HTMHell column on Style vs. Design.
::: Outside: Malamud and Webchick on patents. ::: Designers may or may not read, but they certainly do write. ::: Redesigned: Sylloge (check the
hover effects on FORM elements!) and Metacubed (view source for dementia; Uncle Joe is the Zappa of the web). New blog from an old friend: Webstream debuts.
2 September, 2000
[5:45 pm]
As noted in Steal These Graphics, we've taken down the Disturbing Patterns collection and the Mac Daddy pages until we have time to rework them. They're just too old, too ugly, and too patched-together from 1990s-era code. Kinda like Netscape 4. We managed to refresh the Desktop Pictures page, at any rate. The pictures are fairly cheesy (embarrassingly so), but the kids seem to like 'em that way. ::: Ugly Bugly tells a sordid tale o' type. (Control freak warning: small popup window.)
::: Outside: Dave Winer's What Would Shakespeare Think? argues that lack of simplicity is delaying the progress and acceptance of XML. Interestingly, the piece is two years old. ::: Atomic spies! Bomb shelter bombshells! Relive those childhood memories of potential nuclear holocaust at conelrad.com. (Link and review at Astounding Websites.)
1 September, 2000
[12:15 pm]
In this week's A List Apart, for people who make websites: BEYOND THE BROWSER. The Internet is not the World Wide Web. So what exactly lies beyond the browser? Eisenberg fearlessly predicts technologies to watch. ::: Chapter Five of "Taking Your Talent to the Web" (all 2.2 MB of it) has just left the building.
31 August, 2000
[6 pm]
Happy birthday, Mr President: My Glamorous Life, Part 5 tells all about our encounter with a visual V.I.P.
[5 pm]
Heather Champ, who creates some of the cleanest typographic layouts on the web, is interviewed by Speech Therapy. (Heather: "Someone might look at harrumph! and think 'design, what design?'" Not us.) ::: A fool is blithely ripping off the design and concept of Astounding Websites, along with artwork by fantasy illustrator Boris Vallejo. ::: For something decidedly more original, if you're Flash-equipped and you like your multimedia artwork on the bizarre side, check Simian.
[3 am]
We're hip deep in Chapter Five. (For those who noticed that Chapter Nine went out last week, it's called shooting out of sequence.) ::: Another strange, poetic gem for Mr Jenkins. ::: In other people's news, it's called R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Webchick on the theft epidemic.
::: God bless Matt Haughey. Thanks to Matt's generosity, the old Furbo Filters site is now available at furbo.metafilter.com, and will soon be available at furbo-filters.com. For reasons unknown, the Furbo site disappeared earlier this week, as you may recall. Matt instantly offered his hosting services. What a guy!
Furbo Filters offered the first (1997) third-party solution for fully controlling web color inside Photoshop. If you have Photoshop 5.5, you probably don't need the Furbo Webmaster pack, but you might like the Designer Pack for nifty chrome effects. And, of course, if you have an older version of Photoshop, or a different image editor, the Webmaster pack could be very helpful to you.
It's a funky old site, and we haven't updated it, except to change the copyright each year. Interesting as one of the first (1997) sites to try to use CSS, with mixed results. The logo and related graphics appall us now. Whether we're getting better or just getting different, we can't say.
Thank you again, Mr Haughey.
30 August, 2000
[6 pm]
Designer lunch, East Village, NYC.
