Page speed and load times are the foundation for a positive user experience on the web. Let’s face it, if your page fails to load in time, all the effort put towards information architecture, content strategy and interaction design will be for naught. During my formative front-end coding days, I did a fair bit of assuming that as Internet connections transitioned from dial-up to DSL I’d be able to make compromises. Piling sprite-less PNGs upon redundant CSS upon tons of HTTP requests became commonplace,… Read More
I’ve been meaning to post a quick thank you to Gene Crawford and the rest of the fellas at unmatchedstyle.com for a while. They recently had me on one of their designer chat sessions to talk about Paravel and ye olde blog. It’s always an honor to see some of the bits & bytes we’ve worked on covered on their site, and this was no exception. After the session, I had the opportunity to talk with Gene further about what UMS is all about… Read More
If building a multi-million dollar social media site was easy, I’d be typing this from the deck of my anti-matter powered yacht… in orbit. Just about everyone I know in the web design & development game has fielded an RFP for a social networking site buildout. While sometimes a real budget and scalable plan are at the core, it’s usually someone who’s seen a site like Twitter or YouTube and wants to replicate its success with an astronomically low budget and a ‘build it… Read More
A pet peeve of mine is seeing blog comments or tweets neigh-saying innovative strides in web development. I see the issue of cross-browser compatibility to be completely separate from forward thinking experimentation. This is about progress, which is essential to our industry. It’s like saying, “Those compact discs sound amazing, but they won’t fit in my tape deck.” As a cathartic design exercise, I made a cute little graphic illustrating my feelings on the subject. This may actually spark an entire series wherein I… Read More
In web design there are very few absolutes. There are multiple ways to markup pages, limitless directions a design can take and no single right or wrong way to run a business. The knowledge and skills we posses today will be outdated tomorrow and if there’s one universal truth, I’d say it’s that to be a web designer is to accept change. We’ve got to be problem solvers, critical thinkers and open to being influenced by the ever-evolving industry around us. Similar to absolutely… Read More
I never liked the sloppy, bland look of oatmeal as a kid. Having adults hype it to me as a heart-healthy food “that’ll keep you regular” didn’t make me want to try it any more. A few winters ago, while eating cold cereal my wife sat down next to me, warming her hands with a cinnamon besprinkled bowl of oats. With a covetous glance I asked, “So, is that stuff any good?” Why the hell hadn’t I tried this stuff before? This was just… Read More
