The Filter (week of July 14) 14 Jul 2006
2 comments Latest by Mitch
Interesting comments posted this week at Signal vs. Noise:
Screens Around Town: New looks for summer
Christopher Fahey 10 Jul 06
The Design Observer site you see today is different from the one from only 48 hours ago. The 2-days-ago site had the DO logo (and the big blank background) taking up about three times the space it does now. Enterprising third-party design critics redesigned the site elsewhere with a smaller branding area. DO must have seen it and taken the advice. If you click to view an internal page, you can still see the huge logo area, actually.
Kitty 12 Jul 06
As clean and subtle as the Design Observer redesign is, I’m having trouble getting past the old-school coding under the hood. Tables for layout, center and font tags - I don’t think they reflect well on a design-centered site. “Design” is more than just visual design; with all of the discussion of standards and accessibility resources and expertise out there right now, not to mention all of the sites poking fun at retrograde table-based redesigns, it’s odd that they’d go ahead with this kind of structure.
Bryan C 12 Jul 06
I think phone designers are getting really bored. There are only so many practical ways to arrange a number pad, a screen, and a few navigation buttons, and they figured out the optimal size and placement of all those things years ago. Now they’re just trying to look busy.
Phone UI doesn’t get the attention it deserves because no one but the user really experiences it, and most users don’t have any better alternatives. The day Motorola or Nokia starts running photos of their screen displays and competing on usability instead of shape of a plastic case is the day we’ll see some real progress.
My current phone (provided by my employer) is a Motorola/Nextel. The UI is one of the worst I’ve used. The special purpose buttons for the walkie-talkie feature are thoughtfully arranged, but everything else is just sort of tossed together at random under obscure menus.
brendan baldwin 14 Jul 06
If you want the ultimate mobile phone experience, you need the Wasp t12: http://www.trashbat.co.ck/t12/index.html
Sunspots: The fourth wall edition
Kevin Guilfoile 12 Jul 06
God doesn’t grant everlasting life to the good. The scriptures say that no one is good not even one. Meaning no one is good in light of God’s standard of what “good” is. This is why we, all of us, have need for a savior, namely Jesus Christ the Son of God who is a substitute for the elect. Substitute in terms of suffering God’s full wrath in our (those that have faith in Christ) place so that we are forgiven. The scriptures also say while we were yet sinners Christ died. Meaning He died for the ungodly not the “so called” good. God said He rejects the proud (those that think they are good) and gives grace to the humble. Sorry for the clarification but Christianity gets so misrepresented in these areas. Again, God saves sinners who humble themselves by repenting from sin and trusting in the righteousness of Jesus Christ to save them.
I appreciate that Shane, but you understand how the comedy there would have been considerably less efficient.
New in Basecamp: Significantly improved print layouts
elv 14 Jul 06
I’ve had mixed feedbacks on print stylesheets with some clients. While it’s a clean and simple solution, it seems sometimes they would like to print exactly what they have on their screen, and they simply can’t.
On the other hand you may really need a printable version for some complex pages.
Here again there’s no definitive answer, use what’s appropriate for your project.
Fly on the Wall: “Other people’s data is extremely boring”
meh 14 Jul 06
i thought this would interest people. PBwiki, which hosts easy to use free and for-pay wiki services, recently had some downtime (12 hours, with about 3 hours during normal business hours) due to factors beyond their control. their damage control is pretty impressive:
http://forums.pbwiki.com/viewtopic.php?t=2083
they clearly explained what happened, why, and concrete, specific actions they’ll be taking to keep it from happening again (rather than just promising “it won’t happen again, i swears it!”). they also sent out email discussing this as well to their users. they reassured users that there was never a problem with losing data, just connectivity. and they’re giving 25% increases in space to the users to make up for it, including to free accounts.
this kind of thing seems like the right way to deal with unexpected problems. the guys who run PBwiki are all recent college grads but they seem to know how to run a business better than most business owners 20 years older than they are.
2 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Mitch 19 Sep 06
Hi I am a high school student. and i have the most boring web page design class. i was just wondering how i could get passed the filters to get on game sites or whatever…just email me if you have any idea. thanks
Mitch 19 Sep 06
Hi I am a high school student. and i have the most boring web page design class. i was just wondering how i could get passed the filters to get on game sites or whatever…just email me if you have any idea. thanks