Category Archives: Web Design

Set My Firefox

FirefoxIn spite of my continued enthusiasm for OmniWeb, I’ve found myself using the 1.0 Preview release of Firefox more and more often. I spend about half my day in each browser, and it makes me wish that I had a system-level utility that would intercept every link I click on to let me decide whether to send it to OmniWeb or Firefox. Surely, somebody has already whipped up something like that, and I’m missing it, right?

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Building the New This

Subtraction LogoOkay, so fifteen months later, I’ve begun a major redesign for Subtraction.com. I’m pretty satisfied with the progress, though I admit it’s going slow enough that I’ll be surprised if it’s all done by Halloween. The new overhaul will maintain essentially the same information architecture that you see here from a site and page perspective, but I’ve made some usability improvements so that it will be easier to read, which has become increasingly important to me as I get older — I’ve started that inevitable old codger’s shift away from a young designer’s fascination with teeny, tiny text.

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Citizen Daddy

Citizen ChangeA few weeks ago I mentioned that Behavior helped Sean “P. Diddy” Combs launch Citizen Change, his voter registration initiative with an extensive, Flash-based multimedia show that accompanied his press conference. Today, I’m happy to say that we’ve just re-launched CitizenChange.com too. It just went live, like, this morning — after a ton of blood, sweat and tears from our design team (I wasn’t a part of it, but it was easy to see that those folks worked their tails off, and with terrific results). Go check it out.

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No One Likes a Cheat

I’m cheating a little bit this evening, because I had written most of this post before I headed off to dinner and then to the movies to see Michael Mann’s “Collateral” (a review to follow soon) — so I’ve back-dated this a bit. Please don’t sue me. In any event, I wanted to say thanks to the very nice response that’s come over the transom to my post from Monday, “New Boxes, Same Arrows.” I really hadn’t expected it, but I was more than happy to see incoming links from the nice folks at Mezzoblue, Airbag and Waxy.org. The traffic and kind comments are very much appreciated.

Chris FaheyAlso, I wanted to correct one point on which I feel that I’ve been unduly clear or on which I’ve been unintentionally misleading: these comps aren’t mine, at least not in their entirety — they were a joint effort. I’m a hundred percent sure that there wouldn’t have been an entry at all without the help of my good friend and Behavior co-founder, Chris Fahey, who provided at least half the brainpower that went into the comps… and really, I think the brains are what makes them. It was also his idea to enter the contest in the first place… so he’s really the one responsible for that fourteen-hour working stretch of my life that I’ll never get back. Thanks, Chris.

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IE, That Is

Internet ExplorerInternet Explorer users: you have my pity, first, for using the worst modern browser available on the market today, and my apologies, second, for insufficiently ensuring that all of my posts render properly in your browser of choice. It appears that some of the div classes I’ve been using to include illustrations, which render competently in Safari, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, Opera and OmniWeb, refuse to show up in Microsoft Internet Explorer, for some reason. I guess it’s a measure of how few of the visitors to my site use IE that no one has complained to me until today. On the other hand, it might speak more loudly to the size of my audience… and not necessarily in a flattering way. Heh. At any rate, I think I’ve fixed most of those entries (they don’t look perfect, but they work) so the 95% of Web users who were staying away from Subtraction.com due to Internet Explorer incompatibilities — y’all come back now, hear?

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New Boxes, Same Arrows

Boxes and ArrowsWell-respected online information architecture magazine Boxes and Arrows announced an open redesign contest last month, the deadline for which was extended until just this morning. I found this out last Friday, when my Behavior colleague, Chris Fahey, suggested that we try to put together a submission.

Initially, I resisted the idea of taking part in this, mostly because of all the work that it was going to involve. The I.A. documents they provided were appropriately high-level for an audience of devoted, would-be contestants ready to finesse every little detail for themselves. For me, on the other hand, they were sufficiently lacking in detail that I knew it would take me a huge chunk of my weekend to sift through all the brain challenges required to get a coherent set of comprehensives designed.

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Ecto Plurbius Unum

EctoAlways late to the party, I finally took out some time last night to install the various libraries on my server that make it possible for me to run ecto, the desktop weblog editor and management program. It’s nice, very slick and I can see why it’s gained such a devoted following among advanced weblog authors; it sports some features — like its very handy Upload Manager — that vastly simplify working with Movable Type. Already it looks well worth its US$17.95 price tag, in spite of the fact that its globe icon is so generic I sometimes find myself staring at my Dock, not able to focus enough to identify it.

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Flirtations with Fame

Two minor flirtations with fame today, one for me and one for my four-legged companion.

First, the prolific Mike Rundle has posted an interview with me at Business Logs, in which you can learn more about my secret origins, recent Web standards stirrings at Behavior and the future of weblogs as we know them (caveat emptor). Combined with a dollar bill, the answers I give to Mike’s questions may not get you more than a cup of coffee, but it’s still worth poking around the Business Logs Web site, where they’re trying to use weblogs to bring real business benefits to the organizations that are forward-thinking enough to capitalize on this still-evolving medium.

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What I Did on My Vacation from Blogging

Wow, what a bust the last week turned out to be, at least for blogging. I took the Amtrak train to Washington, D.C. very early on Monday morning for a meeting with a new client. Even the unreserved coach cars now feature electrical outlets, so I was able to plug in and get some work done on the way down and the way back — compared to flying, the simplicity and convenience of traveling by Amtrak is almost a luxury. Our client visit went well, and I managed to find some time to meet up with some old friends, so in spite of actually dreading the long day, I had a pretty good time.

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