Archive for the ‘WWW’ Category
Thursday, September 22nd, 2005
Echoing the rebirth of thought in web design, I read (along with much of the rest of the design blogosphere apparently) an interesting if somewhat controversial postulate in web design: “Embrace the scroll”
A Brief History
For those not privy to the discussion, after the initial revolution in web design when pages/sites went from LOOOOOOONG pages of default font/Times text on a gray background to intricate and fairly short delicate table-based layouts with complicated grids of sliced images, the web-design gold standard had changed significantly. This was helped in no small part by companies like Studio Archetype, founded and lead by Clement Mok (which was then gobbled up by Sapient) who specialized and revolutionized the web with terse, tight,and intricate designs (read more about him here
or see examples 1, 2, 3). Preaching the same discourse was Roger Black, now at Danilo Black despite the fact his designs step beyond minimalist to seemingly near nonfunctionality (see DaniloBlack.com to see just what I’m talking about.) His book Web Sites that Work
is an interesting and provacative read, and he singularly points at an example of a long homepage of CNN.com as readable only by “mad dogs and Englishman”. Obviously the advancement of the web, coupled with browser enhacements, CSS, the stylistic tendency of blogs, and the general large quantity of information have lead to a resurgence/Renaissance in the “It’s Okay If We Scroll” style of web design.
In My Humble Opinion
… both philosophies are correct. After all, scrolling has become one of, if not the premier, and most commonplace accepted design standards. A grandma who just figured out how to look at pics of her spoiled grand kids in the bathtub knows how to scroll more than she knows what her AOL software/browser is actually connecting to. Scrolling is in and it isn’t going anywhere for the time being. But dammit, leave it some overkill-tendancied and tasteless designers to over exploit it and have us downloading 12,980,675 pixel-tall web pages. There’s a happy medium, even though it’s a gray area, that designers should respect. People don’t mind scrolling, but keep it within reason.
Having said that, read through some of the buzz on the web. I was drawn into the discussion at Dan Cederholm’s site and his own home is a perfect example of tastefully limiting just how much a user needs to scroll - his post on scolling can be found here
Some more worth reading:
http://designforcommunity.com/essay6.html
http://www.powazek.com/2005/09/000537.html
http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/footers_are_the_new_sidebars.php
Posted in Design, Elvgren, General, Taft, WWW, Wordpress | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, September 20th, 2005
In case you haven’t read around the web yet, that not-so-oft mentioned other web browser is now free and is, at the very least worth, a download and a run. I am, of course, talking about Opera, so go download it.
Your thoughts on the Opera interface would be appreciated as comments, there are things I like but sure as hell a lot of things I don’t (which I’ll post up here shortly). It is still a worthy exercise to use and test the browser on various websites and thus I recommend it.
Go, go, go, go… before they change their mind
Opera, www, browsers
Posted in Blogging, Design, General, WWW | No Comments »
Monday, September 12th, 2005
No matter what most of us think or say, the Kubrick theme and its relevance to Wordpress can’t be easily ignored. Due credit to Michael, over at his site Binary Bonsai, who has elevated the blogging artform hand-in-hand with Wordpress. Kubrick’s second revision known as K2, is no-less important and just as clean, elegant, interesting, and inspiring as its original namesake.
K2 represents much of the future of what Wordpress might become. It’s temporarily being switched as the default theme on this weblog for the purpose of testing, debugging, and just general fleshing out of the future of both Elvgren and Taft (as well as enjoyment of the look and feel it provides). I have to hand credit to both Michael and Chris (who designed much of the K2 backend einterface with Wordpress) for all their effort, as they not only prove to be design avatars but innovators providing one of the best foundations for innovating in the Wordpress community.
Enough kissing ass! Check out the theme, pass along any design recommendations, and any good sightings of blog design or features you might want to see in both Elvgren and Taft.
Kubrick, K2, Taft, Elvgren, Wordpress, Wordpress Themes, design
Posted in Design, Elvgren, General, Taft, WWW, Wordpress | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 30th, 2005
NOTE: I found this text on another Wordpress blog entitled GoogleTutor.com - it’s definitely worth checking out and bookmarking. I have reprinted the article below, just in case their site goes down as it really is wonderfully useful.
We’ve all got a little voyeurism in us. That’s why the recent article, Clearing Google Search History to Maintain Your Privacy sent my visitor counts off the charts 
. In this article, I’m going to show you how to create search queries that will list the contents of unprotected directories on the internet. You’ll be able to play the music files, watch the videos, look at photos and more. I have to say, it’s really addicting.
(more…)
Posted in Design, General, WWW, Wordpress | 4 Comments »
Friday, August 5th, 2005
This may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on the internet. I take no credit other than passing on a link to a documentation of a seemingly bizarre translation and subtitle job done by movie pirates on this last installment of Star Wars. We all know Anakin turned because of “dreamses” [sic]
Without further ado, I present:
Backstroke Of The West
http://americaninlebanon.blogspot.com/2005/07/backstroke-of-west.html
For further enlightenment, feel free to check out Engrish.com
Star Wars, translation, pirated movies, Engrish
Posted in Entertainment, General, WWW | No Comments »
