Nielsen says “write original articles based on deep thought and research” while Scoble says “link a lot.” Each has its place. They represent two different ways of meeting the world: knowledge mode and connected mode. At different times and in different circumstances, you’ll probably choose one or the other — though the web makes connected […]
November 5, 2006 – 4:34 pm
Sometimes I don’t know how we get there from here. There being that place where nondevelopers can build what they want on the web without having to hire expensive but too often incompetent web technologists. Here being the place where smart people spend time and money and brain cycles and still don’t achieve what they […]
I have a couple projects on my plate that call for more than a personal publishing platform like WordPress, so I’m evaluating open-source web content management systems. This white paper from Seth Gottlieb of Optaros is invaluable in getting oriented in that space.
These are the basic requirements for the first project, a community website with […]
I picked the fspring WordPress theme by Fredrik Fahlstad for its beauty, not its function. The two main problems I’ve discovered so far with this theme are (1) it’s not very legible, especially on a Mac or for readers without super-sharp vision and (2) the font size is set to an absolute pixel value. So […]
I’m late to this particular usability party, but I just realized in converting to WordPress that permalinks are part of the user interface of a website. It didn’t initially seem problematic to me to mindlessly stick “.html” as the suffix to every WordPress permalink so as to get a little backward compatibility with my Blogger […]
February 28, 2006 – 5:00 pm
God, Maui is beautiful, isn’t it? I took this picture on Keawakapu Beach at midday yesterday when I decided to go to the beach instead of writing a blog post. In one month I am moving with my husband, three kids, and dog to Denver. My priorities now are making a smooth transition for my […]
February 18, 2006 – 7:50 pm
A couple weeks ago—a lifetime, in blog time—I noted an article by 37 Signals’ Jason Fried claiming that functional specifications were no longer necessary or desirable:
Functional specifications documents lead to an illusion of agreement. A bunch of people agreeing on paragraphs of text is not real agreement. Everyone is reading the same thing, but they’re […]
January 11, 2006 – 2:12 pm
Ah, the beauty of styling web pages with Cascading Style Sheets. But it brings such pain. I was banging my head against my monitor again today, trying to put together two simple pages. After three hours of that I wiped my tears away, blew my nose, and returned to blogging.
These are the things that bother […]
December 11, 2005 – 4:43 pm
I’ve often wondered how people get those cute little icons next to their URLs in the Mozilla address box. Now I know. All you need to do is create a little 16×16 icon, transform it into .ico format, and add one line to the head of your HTML files.
Here’s the dance/remix version:
1. Use your favorite […]
December 9, 2005 – 2:01 pm
I’m loving reading the experts predict what’s going to happen with web design and development in 2006. The comments on those posts offer additional insight, like this from Aaron K. commenting on 37Signals’ derivative post:
I predict (and hope) that 2006 will be the year that businesses realize that you don’t need hundreds of useless pages […]
