Recently in design + web Category

The lovely folk at Environments for Humans are hosting the 2nd Annual Responsive Web Design (online) Summit April 16-18, 2013.

The great thing about the E4H online summits is that one can attend and participate in the summit from anywhere were you have a data connection - home, office, coffee shop, car, mountain, desert, the ISS, wherever.

Yes, there is a the traditional presenter presents with slides, but the best part - speaking from experience as a presenter and as an attendee - there is a real time chat that the attendees can use to ask questions, comment on the presentation, and otherwise interact with the group, which then gives the presenter an opportunity to interact back.

I love this style, as it makes the presentation into a more of a meet up or workshop conversation amongst peers around the ideas in the presentation rather than Lone Speaker on Podium speaking Truth to Audience.

I will be presenting at 9am (CT) on Wed April 17, 2013 on "Mobile Development on a Shoestring Connection".

Please come join me, a whole slew of great speakers and topics, and fellow designers & developers, whether you are currently working in Responsive Web Design or Mobile or are RWD/Mobile curious, for the RWD Summit next week. It will be good, stimulating, and great way to get up to date on a wide range of ideas in the RWD and mobile spaces.

Use '20JEN' when registering to get 20% off an individual or meeting room ticket!

Look forward to next week at the RWD Summit!

Jenifer Hanen - A Minimalist's Guide to the Mobile Web - BDConf, April 2012 from Breaking Development on Vimeo.

Thurs 08.30.12 - The nice folks at Breaking Development have published the video with slides from my presentation at BDConf April 2012 in Orlando.

If you say to yourself "I must know more about designing and developing for the mobile web and beyond the desktop", then get yourself on down to the Breaking Development Dallas coming up in a few weeks - September 24-26, 2012!

Tues 04.17.12 - Yesterday I was quite wrapped up in the nerves of presenting, today I took notes during the Breaking Development Orlando sessions and I have added in the presentations slide embeds as the various speakers have shared them.

My two favorite BDConf presentations from Monday the 16th was Guy Podjarny's "Performance Implications of Mobile Design" and Stephen Hay's "Responsive Design Workflow":

Per my usual, my notes are a paraphrase of what is being said during the presentation and what is on the slides, anything is quotes is a quote from the speaker rather than a paraphrase. The notes plus presentation slides can be found after the jump.

Mon 04.16.12 - Here are the slides from my presentation on "A Minimalist's Guide to the Mobile Web" from Breaking Development Orlando.

Here is the official description of the talk for the BDConf website: "Designing and developing for mobile devices can be overwhelming in the sheer amount of factors to consider. Questions of where get started or how to retool for fast and lovely mobile sites can send one screaming for the supposed safety of Webkit before running and hiding under an iOS rock. But such fear and trembling is unnecessary and we can go forth in confidence with the minimalist's guide on data sipping as a legitimate lifestyle, serving responsive images, how to strip that code, and do I really need all this Javascript?"

A video the presentation will be available soon on the BDConf Vimeo channel.

If you are a mobile or web design and/or developer who really would love to attend a great one track, intimate conference on the mobile web, Breaking Development Dallas will held in September 2012.

This August, while speaking at the Mobile Javascript Summit, I came out in my presentation as Appnostic, stating that the mobile world is too young for us to get set in dogma on the subject of mobile web vs. mobile native apps but instead we need to be pioneering on all fronts of mobile development and creation. I don't care if one is creating/developing a mobile native app, a hybrid app, or a web app / site, what really matters is that the human who owns the mobile has a good to great user experience, accomplishment of tasks, and an element of delight. Let's create, design, and develop in a way that delights the mobile user and moves all of us forward.

Much of the web only for mobile rhetoric is not only limiting but a bit absurd when taken to the logical end. How many of the mobile web only folks would work only in their computer's browser for every activity, professionally or personally, for months on end? Why ask that of the mobile owner that every task and activity should be accomplished only in the browser?

Two recent articles have pinpointed that now is the time to pioneer mobile design:

Cennydd Bowles makes a clear and concise argument that we need to build and innovate for mobile be it web or native apps:

"No one has this problem about native desktop apps vs. web apps. The same people that decry native mobile apps use Coda, Photoshop, and OmniFocus. Native enthusiasts use FreeAgent, Google Docs, and Basecamp without a second thought. In the desktop world, we already know that whether a native or web app is better depends on what it's for."

Go read it.

In another recent article in the Guardian piece on Nokia's Design EVP, Marko Ahtisaari, makes a great point about giving the mobile user choice:

One of the glories of a mobile is that it is particularly personal and the user should have the choice to use their mobile as they so choose, not how we choose for them. Maybe you prefer to do things in your mobile's browser, but your next door neighbor loves loves loves native apps, dowloading them mostly but loves 'em anyways. Maybe you have only one ecosystem you will use and all of your devices use that one OS, but maybe your neighbor has a MacBook, an XBox, and an Android mobile and doesn't care if they are different OSes, in fact they prefer it that way.

The mobile world is still very young and let's not fight for a small slices of professional territory but instead let's create great human centered user experiences and happy mobile owners rather than getting set in our ways so early.

It is the 52nd Week of the Year, the 452nd Week of this Blog, and 540th Week of my Freelance Web Business (minus the 53 weeks at Grad School).

It is time for something new.

Thur 09.29.11 - The long awaited Nokia N9 with much talked about Swipe UI and the Meego/Harmattan OS has now started to ship or will be in a store near you within the next two weeks. Well, in a shop near you if you live in Sweden, Finland, Pakistan, Kazakistan, or China, but if you live in the US, UK, Germany or many other places you are f*ck3d unto the very Ballmer. Yep, only MacroSquish for you if you live in Western Europe or the Western Hemisphere.

Order the Nokia N9 online, even if your local shop doesn't carry it, it is worth it. The Swipe UI is beautiful and very usable, the hardware delish, and Maemo's Harmattan with a touch of Meego goodness hiding behind all the UI swipe is a geek's delight. I have had the Nokia N950 developer phone for two weeks now and it causes mobile envy even in the most dedicated iAddict. If the Nokia N950 turns heads...

Hello lovely little Nokia N9, welcome. Go forth and prosper.

Sun 07.17.11 - Today I was struck by a serious case of closet envy. Yes, closet envy.

The closet in the room I am staying at in the Camp Camp 8.0 rental house in Truckee is every thing I wish my closet was: big, walk-in, two clothes hanging dowels, shelves, etc.

Oh, wait. The current Closet of Doom at my place in Seal Beach is big-ish in a long way, walk-in, has two dowels for hanging clothes on, and has four shelves. So, why do I have a serious case of closet envy?

The Closet of Doom is less than 30 inches wide, 6 feet deep and over 8 feet tall, which results in it only being good for storing, stacks and stacks, layers and layers of boxes in. The closet in Truckee was roughly 6 feet long and 4 or 5 feet wide, nearly a square and had plenty of room to walk in and reach stuff hung or on the shelves even if it had stuff stored all over the place.

When I am dwelling on closet envy, I think it is time to move, as the Closet of Doom is not going to change shape, size, and its basic lack of usability.

Are you a web designer or developer who is mobile curious? Are you a web des/dev who wants to jump into mobile, but is not sure where to start?

Are you a seasoned mobile designer or developer who really would like to have your own practice sparked & challenged by a some great speakers on mobile web design & development, as well as mobile web user experience?

Do you just want a good excuse to go to Amsterdam in late Spring?

Come join us at Mobilism:

Mobilism is the first conference that focuses exclusively on web design and development for mobile devices. Mobilism will take place in Felix Meritis in Amsterdam on the 12th and 13th of May 2011. Follow us on Twitter for the latest Mobilism news. Or buy a ticket now!

Mobilism has a great line up of speakers from mobile web world and mobile user experience as well as web design & development. I am excited about participating in and making the mobile web better for all, to that end, I am really looking forward to Mobilism 2011.

By HTML5, I don't mean the hyped up Everything But the Kitchen Sink HTML5 that has been peddled the last two years by various internet and technology companies, but I mean the semantic web markup language that is the successor to HTML 4.

I have spent the last few years watching as my early bleeding edge adopter friends have been talking about, blogging about, and writing about HTML5, all the while hearing fantastic claims from various members of the the tech related or marketing crowd. I have been somewhat skeptical, as I am a big fan of the stripped down, rigid framework of XHTML 1.0.

I like minimalism. I like my code separated from my presentation and behavior. HTML5 from the beginning looked like a big ole' pot of jambalya rather than the straight, clean formalism of XHMTL. When the W3C announced that there would be no XHTML 2.0, I knew it was only a matter of time before I caved and joined the HTML5 bandwagon.

While that time has come for this blog to convert to HTLM5, my little XHTML/Python coding soul and typing fingers will most likely be still stripping down the code and working on how to get this blog really lean and mean, even if HTML5 is still in its early days and is not a full spec at this point.

Give me a few weeks to settle in with, tweak, and rummage around the new HTML5 code base, please be patient. I have tested it thoroughly on Mac & Ubuntu, but not on Windows. Right now I have only access to IE8, as my old 2004 Dell with a dual boot of IE6 and IE7 died on Tuesday and has gone off to e-recycling heaven.

If you have access to a PC with IE6 or IE7, please take a screen shot of the front page of the blog and of this page, and email the screenshots to me noting which version of Windows & which version of IE (ex: Win XP/IE6, Vista/IE7, etc). I am using Remy Sharp's HTML5 shiv to make the code work in all versions of Internet Explorer, but if you see quirks, please let me know.

Over time, I am sure I will continue to explore HTML5 in more depth but right now, I am happy how this little experiment in transferring the markup of this blog from XHTML to HTML5 has gone.

Ok, friends, family, colleagues, and drive bys compliments of search engines, please be prepared for MAJOR BLOG CONSTRUCTION.

I am going to completely overhaul this blog in the next two days and switch from my somewhat modified XHTML 1.0 Movable Type templates to HTML5 code and templates of my own creation. As is my want for my own blog, I will be doing this live and not in a test dev/stage server type thing. Be prepared for a bit of a bumpy ride and you might see a peak behind the curtain, hang tight.

Wish me well, I am diving in.

After I wrote last night's post on "DIY Mobile Programming: Get Started with HTML, CSS, and Javascript", I realized that I assumed that all of my readers who want to learn to create | develop their own mobile apps are already familiar with and design | develop in HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

This is after I shut off my computer and was on my way to bed, when I realized that maybe those of us in the web & mobile industries need to give more than lipservice to the idea of web education but is it time for all of us to consider that HTML should be apart of the canon of literacy.

Should HTML, in a basic form, be taught in primary school along with reading, writing, and arithmetic?

Yes, I do think it should. The internet, in all of its permutations, is in every aspect of our lives regardless if one lives in the developed or developing world(s). If we don't teach the basics of the markup language of how to develop | create for the internet, then we are leaving literacy half-baked at best for the 21st Century, because if one does not understand the basic underpinnings of the internet, then one is illiterate to a major facet of 21st Century life.

The drive to increase literacy over the last 200 years has been more than making sure the most folks possible can read and write but it has also been the drive to give everyone the skills to participate on a more level playing field in society, as well as to open the opportunity for all of society to rise to the level of the educated. In every country where literacy has risen above 80%, poverty has decreased, self-sufficiency has increased, and the economy grows in proportion to the increase in literacy.

If you can learn to count to ten in another language, you can learn the 10 most used tags in HTML. If you can string to together a sentence or two in your native language, you can learn the semantics and grammar of HTML. With HTML, you are more than partially capable of creating simple pages and apps for the internet, be it mobile or desktop.

When one can create a page or alter a page in their care, then they are no longer audience, but a participant. No longer just a consumer, but a creator.

*******
Ms. Jen's DIY Programming Series:
DIY Dev: Program or be Programmed
DIY Mobile Programming: Get Started with HTML, CSS, and Javascript
DIY Programming: Should HTML be Required for Literacy in the 21st Century?

Ms. Jen, in one sentence please tell us what you think about the Nokia N8:

"Love it."

Yesterday at the end of the Nokia Developer Day at CTIA in San Francisco, the developers attending were given a laptop bag with a t-shirt, a usb key loaded with the Nokia developer tools, and a Nokia N8. I enjoyed the Nokia Developer day, of which I will write about tomorrow, as there was a lot of good information about native mobile app development with the QT framework & C++, as well as mobile app user experience, WRT widget development using HTML/CSS/Javascript web technologies and Java for S40. The Nokia N8 was a fabulous addition to an already good day.

Here are my first impressions as a photographer, developer, designer, and mobilista in a bit more detail:

1) The Nokia N8 is smaller than I thought or remembered. I did see a few in the wild in May and along with all the promotional photos, I thought/remembered it would be the size of an iPhone in width, but have been pleasantly surprised that it has a huge screen but is still small enough to fit in my little hands comfortably.

2) The screen is amazing and is even better than amazing in strong sunlight. Today at 11am, I sat on a bench on the edge of the San Francisco bay in front of the Ferry Building and was able to check into my flight on Virgin America with my sunglasses on! Yes, the screen, in strong sunlight with sunglasses on was very visible.

3) Which leads me to point #3, hello fabulous amazing Nokia N8 mobile web browser, you KICK SERIOUS BOOTAY. The N8's browser even kicks the Nokia N900's bootay, as I am able to blog to this blog's regular admin area which is heavy in javascript/AJAX that even makes the Nokia N900 gack. I was able to check into my flight this afternoon on the regular Virgin America website, which is heavy in flash & javascript, with the javascript fly down menus overlaying the flash promotional area and the N8's mobile web browser cleared the hurdle with flying colors and did not send be the promo parts of the website but to check in. Hello, Hot Stuff.

4) Symbian ^3 & all touch screen. Anyone who reads my Twitter or this blog knows that I am pretty agnostic about Symbian and not a big all/only touch screen fan, as I do like my buttons. But the Nokia N8 is the first mobile I have met that does not have me yearning heavily to the point of frustration for a keypad or a qwerty keyboard. To that end, while I would like a little more haptic feedback while typing on the virtual on screen keyboard, I am happy with the layout of the keyboard. Honestly, it would be nice to have a mashup of the best of capacitive with the best of resistive touchscreens, but the N8's capacitive touch screen is working for me.

I know that lots of folk have called for Nokia to send Symbian to the dustbin of mobile history, I do think the Symbian and Nokia folks have done a very good to great job of iterating the Symbian S60 5th edition that was on the Nokia N97 into a very usable and yet still familiar Symbian ^3. I have only had a few struggles to find where a function would be and for the most part everything is just so much easier on the N8's OS than on the N97.

5) My only real complaint is that I wish all messaging and all music functions were under one app/folder for each major idea. I would like my email and sms to be in the same folder/silo, as previous editions of Symbian, and not separated out into two different silos. Messaging is messaging, what technology and how long the message is should not matter to the user when tapping an icon. Once I have tapped the icon and am in the app, then I can choose if I want texting or one of my email accounts.

The same goes with Music. I would like one icon for the home screen that then opens a folder/silo where I can find the music player and radio, rather than a bunch of different icons and activities.

6) The hardware build is lovely. The aluminum body feels smooth and organic rather than cold & metal. I love the big screen. I would further love to flip up (twack!) the screen and reveal a physical qwerty keyboard, but I am told I will have to wait for that. And I am darned glad for the gorilla glass front, as my neighbor now has a shattered iPhone 4 front screen due to a gravity storm. Say what you would like about Nokia, but they do make great mobile hardware.

7) Last but not least, the camera is fantastic. Not good. Not decent. Not even great, but fantastic. If you see 'bad' N8 photos, blame the person pushing the shutter button not the N8.

Please look at the unretouched, though resized with the on board editor, sunset photo in the post before this. I purposely set the camera to the highest setting of 12 megapixels and have been just astounded at what a point & shoot camera phone delivers in terms of color, clarity, and color accuracy. The era of crappy camera phone photos is now over.

I would like to publicly thank Damian Dinning and the whole Nseries team, as well as the camera team, for making a truly revolutionary camera phone. Damian and the team's quest for excellence is highly evident. As a photographer who wants my camera with me wherever I go, I am very, very pleased.

In closing, I am not just excited for the camera, but also to develop apps for the N8. I have ideas, now I just need some time and there is that small matter to learning how to use PySide, the python bindings for QT. Thank you to Nokia for the lovely Developer Day and the Nokia N8 for the developers.

Recently Ryan Carson lobbed the digital equivalent to a molotov cocktail in to the User Experience bloggers corner and did folks come out swinging!

To get a bit of perspective, let's start with a few salvos from The Great UX Mini-Debate of 2009:

Pabini Gabriel-Petit on Specialists Versus Generalists: A False Dichotomy?
Dan Saffer on A Fool and a Liar
Jeremy Keith on I don't care about UX

Jeremy starts with a quote from Mark Boulton's twitter stream:

"Since when did good web design suddenly get called 'UX'? Everywhere I look now, good UI design is called 'UX', good type = 'UX', Colour? UX."

I find Mark's tweet to be a good place to jump off from, as I have spent the last two years scratching my head in wonder how the formerly mostly academic and large company/agency discipline of HCI/user-psychology/UX had morphed into a the job title du jour for web designers. My bafflement continued when at a party last year a prominent user experience designer introduced me to others as a mobile user experience designer. I was a bit flabbergasted, as while I am very interested in Mobile UX and I wrote my master's thesis on how creative professionals use their mobile phones, I am very reluctant to use the title Mobile UX designer.

My preferred job title is Professional Art Weirdo, but that doesn't go far in terms of business and professional contacts, although I do get a laugh from folks who know me when I use that title. In the course of my now decade plus career of actual practice in web design & development, as well as mobile design & now mobile app devloper, user researcher, systems designer, occasional information architect, small business strategist, plus social media bits and whatever other hat seemed fun to wear at the time when a client needed a task to be completed.

While I am most confident using the title 'web designer' as it encompasses the broad range of tasks that one does in the course of a freelance consultant career, I have found there to be pressure over the last two years to declare a specialty or even a sub-specialty in one's job title - be it on LinkedIn, Twitter, one's resume/CV, or on a business card. In the last two years to use the title 'web designer' is seen as either naive or one is just a small time, small business hack, even if one has mad generalist skills and a deep specialist skill set or two.

I have also spent much time lately revamping my resume/CV and portfolio in preparation for a job search, as I have decided that I would much prefer to work on a team at a company or agency than by myself as a freelance consultant. Companies and agencies or their recruiters/HR specialists want definition out their applicants or at least the appearance thereof. How does one define a decade long freelance career to folks who see a lot of resumes from specialists or bullshitters. I am not interested in misrepresenting myself.

Thus, my interest in the Great UX Debate of 2010. Go read the various links and let me know what you think:

Ryan Carson's defense of his tweet: 'UX Professional' isn't a Real Job
Andy Budd takes the first swing in Why I think Ryan Carson doesn't believe in UX Professionals, and why I do
Mark Boulton gives a little history on the Debate in On defining UX
Cennydd Bowles finds a molotov cocktail to throw back in The pollution of UX
Scott Berkun asks 'UX professional' isn't a real job? and simplifies the debate
Oliver Reichenstein in iA breaks the debate back down and reassembles it in
Can Experience be Designed?

I will conclude with Scott Berkun's second to last paragraph:

I'm fond of simply calling myself a writer. There should be a verb in your job. Usability engineers are really analysts or consultants. Designers of all flavors are, surprise, designers. Information architects are planners. If they are expected to be leaders beyond their specialization, then add the word lead. And on it could go. one word, preferably a verb, and we're done. The pretense is fancier titles better convey the role, but I think that's the real bullshit. Simpler titles, based on a verb, would be way more useful for clients or co-workers in figuring out what you can do for them.

And if push comes to shove, I will use the verb designer to describe myself, as well as the verb developer.

Last friday at Tuttle Club LA, in two separate conversations, one with Kelly Sims and one with Luke Dorny, we discussed the challenges of having a career as a freelance web designer.

Out of that set of conversations, Luke and I decided to meet up today to refine the topic and work out a few kinks on the rocky road to growing one's own business. The best part is that as we worked through a list of skill sets and discussing what was important for a web designer to have, Luke suggested that we rate skills as one would have levels of power or talents in Dungeons & Dragons.

Luke is a 13th power typographic visual wonder Elf Mage. I am design developer mobile hybrid Warrior Princess.

As you can tell, I have never played D&D or WOW, only picked up, vaguely, enough from others to be dangerous...

I have gotten some requests from a few web designers and developers on what are the best approaches for mobile forms.

My short & sweet answer is to keep it simple and make it flexible. Make sure your forms work with according to web standards best practices: clean code, strip out the extraneous that does not work towards the form's task or goal, and use progressive enhancement when coding the javascript if you use it at all. Resize the screen, are inputs too long or hidden? Test your form: if you turn off your javascript & CSS will the form inputs work? If so, then your forms will work on almost any device out there.

But you argue, "Jen, I am designing for smart phones with good webkit/gecko browsers, so I don't need to worry."

Yes, you do, as you can't guarantee on the mobile web what phone, be it smart or feature phone, what browser, and what screen size will come to visit your mobile or web site and may want to fill out a contact form or purchase something.

Here are some resources to get you started:

Luke W, the king of forms, on mobile forms:
Web Form Innovations on Mobile Devices
Better Mobile Form Design
Forms On Mobile Devices: Modern Solutions

Linda Bustos at Get Elastic on Mobile Commerce Usability: Forms and Checkout

Chris Mills in ThinkVitamin on Coding for the mobile web

WestCiv's Complete CSS Guide, The Mobile Profile

PPK's Mobile with links to his CSS & Javascript mobile tests

If you like the Details & Standards and a different point of view from Luke W, don't miss:
Luca Passini's Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web, under point 3.2 Usability Luca argues that one should Beware of HTML style forms and has a different approach to Managing User Input.

Finally, the W3C recommendation on Mobile User Input

Back in April, Cindy Li & I spoke at the UX Summit on Mobile UX (aka Mobile User Experience), a subject very near & dear to me. Cindy took the first bit of the slides and concentrated on her experience in mobile app design as well as mobile web, I took the second part of the slides and focused on the principles of Mobile UX and the concepts that we need to be thinking about as we start design a mobile app or mobile web site/app.

It was surprisingly fun to sit at Cindy's and have us both get to speak into her MacBook Pro and have the magic of Adobe Connect (or something like it) project our slides, our video and the chat area of the attendees from all over the world on one computer screen. By seeing the chat as we spoke, we were able to answer questions as they were asked or reasonably soon thereafter. Later on Twitter, we received quite a few thank yous.

Now in return, Cindy & I present to you all our slides on Mobile UX. Enjoy. And thank you!

Today, after much thought, I decided to experiment with redesigning the front page of blackphoebe.com. Previous to today, it was a shorter variation of the Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen blog theme, as of today, it is now one large background photo with a semi-transparent left sidebar with various navigation bits to get around.

I have been wanting for at least the last four years to find a way to feature my mobile phone photography without giving up the usual blog front page of chronological ordering of at least eight blog posts, as I like readers to see the choices available and not to pigeon hole Black Phoebe as only a photo blog. About four years ago, I solved the problem by making the blackphoebe.com entry page be the most recent post from this blog plus a set of the most important links to this blog, recent entries links, the about page, and my master's thesis on Mobile.

Many photo blogs have one big photo with a few links to recent posts or possibly a short set of excerpts in the footer. I love this layout style, but I don't want to prioritize image over text. This point of this blog since its inception in April of 2003 was to feature image and text equally. How to manage this goal structurally and visually?

I want to feature my passion for mobile phone & (D)SLR photography with at least one showcase for my favorite photo of the week or day or whatever. And I want to feature the text-based articles, reviews, and humorous pieces that I write. One of the things that I like about the Movable Type software is that the templating system is very robust and allows me to set up a template where just one post from a certain author with a certain tag is shown.

Today I changed around the templates for the blackphoebe.com entry page to have the most recent moblogged (mobile blogged) photo to this blog be the feature photo as the whole 100% of the page background photo. I also took out the blog post area, footer, and reduced the left hand sidebar down to the bare essentials.

I am going to try this out for awhile. I may also try adding a footer with a few recent entries summaries as well to balance out the big image, but for now I will try out image only.

Please let me know how it looks on your mobile or iPhone and if you are using an older version of IE, such as IE6, as my IE testing machine is currently out on loan.

Let me know what you think.

****

p.s. For the 100% background image, I tried a CSS only solution with no javascript for better cross-browser/cross-device rendering. Please do report how it works on your mobile and any older browser versions.

Sun 04.18.10 - Just want to remind folks about the UX Web Summit that will be this upcoming Wed April 21, 2010, at a connected computer near you.

I will be departing for San Francisco on Tuesday morning so that Cindy Li and I will be able to conduct our session together at one computer rather than have a split screen.

If you are in San Francisco on Wed 04.21.10 and would like to get together for dinner and drinks, let me know, as it would be good to see folks, even if briefly.

Next Wed., April 21, 2010 is the UX Web Summit, of which anyone anywhere in the world with an internet connection can attend.

Our online Summits bring the experts to your desktop! Forget about the hassle of travel or leaving family so you can focus on diving deeper into Web design and development topics.

A great user experience (UX) can mean the difference between merely having a web presence and truly engaging your visitors so they'll gladly come back over and over again. Practical techniques to create the best UX are hard to come by, though.

Join some of the Web's most experienced UX professionals as they share experiences culled from working on sites big and small. Learn from the pros how to tackle user experience difficulties head-on with proven methods in use by some of the most popular sites on the Web.

Cindy Li, the fabulous designer and illustrator, and I will be speaking on Mobile User Experience Design, both from the perspective of native mobile apps and the mobile web. Cindy will be presenting on how to best approach the UX of iPhone app design and I will be tackling the UX of the mobile web. I am very excited to co-present with Cindy on this topic as both of us are passionate about User centered design and the mobile space.

More info on our session:

Mobile UX by Jenifer Hanen & Cindy Li Online

Mobile platform has become more and more important part of the web experience, but how do you design for it? Presented by Jennifer Hanen and Cindy Li, this session will cover resources for mobile design, what you need to get started, principles for mobile design, and prototyping your next mobile application.

Topics covered:

* Resources for templates in Fireworks and Photoshop
* Principles to consider when you are designing for mobile
* Keeping the essence of your traditional desktop web site
* Is it a mobile app or website?
* Designing for a mobile location-based mobile app
* Creating a test without coding
* What to send off to Apple to get your iPhone/iPad app approved

The UX Summit will also have sessions by Dan Rubin, Daniel Burka, Juliette Melton, Nick Finck, Donna Spencer, and Rob Goodlatte.

For a registration Discount, go to http://uxwebsummit.eventbrite.com/?discount=UXHANEN10 or use the discount code UXHANEN10 for 10% off!

Tom Hall, asked at the beginning of March,

How many Twitter follows is too many?

Not followers, but follows. The people who you are meant to be interested in.

I find myself more and more these days getting lost in Twitter trails of people I follow (a measly 361 at the time of writing), wishing I could stop, but pressing on in case I miss something. I got the junk food addiction.

So what's the proper Twetiquette (sorry!) for ensuring you can have a life away from Twitter? ....

"User Experience is a focus, a thread that runs through all of our disciplines, and which no discipline owns or controls." - @UXsters via ExplainUX

Between Thursday night and Friday morning of this past week The Atlantic launched a new website redesign and switched the comments on the various blogs from self-hosted to Disqus hosted comments.

My first shock upon my morning review of the website was the new colors: Red - White - & - Blue - UGH! I find red, white and blue to be very divisive and a cheap, cheap, cheap visual shot.

During the 2000s, the red and the blue of Red, White, & Blue were used to separate out Us Vs. Them. At that time, the Us was the Red and the Them was the Blue. Still is. I just hate that American politics has dissolved down into color. UGH.

What was the rotten, pus-y cherry on top of the political sundae was the summer of 2006 when I spent a good deal of time traveling around Northern Ireland, where the colors of Red, White, and Blue are used as a symbol of war and hate. Driving through towns that had painted red, white & blue curbs as well as flags and placards was beyond creepy.

Heaven forfend that the United States of America devolve into a Northern Ireland style division, warfare, and ideological hatred. But the continued use by a variety of media of the colors red-white-&-blue only furthers a cheap visual metaphor about supposed patriotism and political partisanship.

Why did the Atlantic Monthly, formerly one of the most intelligent news sources, decide to join the ranks of creepy and division? Could they not afford a graphic or brand designer who could explain the concept of visual literacy and metaphor to them?

I showed the Atlantic's site redesign to other web designers at Tuttle Club LA on Friday morning and they were as horrified as I was. One thought it looked like a conservative business website and the other went on a discussion about hosted comments and HTTP Request loads.

As my visual acuity was assaulted by the new color scheme, I went to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Altantic blog to read what others in his community of readers thought only to be confronted with the fact that the comment section had been switched over to Disqus hosted comments.

Disqus. My blood boiled at 212F and my blood pressure went sky high. I hate Disqus comments.

I don't really like hosted comments, but I understand why bloggers use them for ease of AJAXy goodness with ratings, liking, and threading. The big but is that Disqus login fails about 2 out of every 1 time(s) that I try to login and then a good portion of those failures also deletes my carefully crafted comment to the blog in question.

My problems with Disqus occur regardless of computer or browser. Yes, I have my third party cookies set to on. Yes, I have been in dialogue with Disqus' one man support team.

I have come to dread encountering a blog that uses Disqus, as it normally takes me 3 times as long to comment on a Disqus blog as a blog with a complicated self-hosted comment system, if Disqus lets me comment at all.

On one hand, I understand why a large site like The Atlantic would prefer to use Disqus, as it reduces the load on their database, but given the amount of readers on the site, Disqus is a bad idea for two main reasons: usability and privacy. When I went to comment on Ta-Nehisi's blog, it took 3 times of attempting to login before Disqus would post my comment and it took over 5 minutes for the 3rd login to commence and post the comment.

When my comment finally posted, it made the title to be "404 Error". Perfect. Yes, Disqus is one big 404 error waiting to happen on a website with as many users as The Atlantic's website due to the heavy load of HTTP Requests from theatlantic.com to the disqus.com's servers. Good thing Andrew Sullivan does not have comments on his blog or Disqus's servers would melt.

Beyond HTTP Requests and error messages, the more important part of the Disqus Fail is that Disqus publishes one's comments not just to the website that one has decided to comment on and participate in that community, but Disqus also creates an automatic page for ALL of one's comments on the Disqus website of which one cannot make private or switch off.

Go look at my Disqus Profile, of which I can't make private: http://www.disqus.com/msjen/

Yes, every comment I have ever made to a blog that uses Disqus' hosted comments is now available and search-able on the Disqus website out of context and without my permission. I have searched the Disqus site for a way to make my comments not publicly viewable on their site, but there is no way to turn off the comments from my profile page.

I don't mind the information that I placed into my Disqus profile to be viewable publicly, I do very much mind that Disqus makes all of my Disqus blog comments available to anyone to view.

This breaks the community of comments and the context of the comments to the blogs where they were originally posted.

To that end, I am a bit surprised that the web had a collective apoplexy last week about Google Buzz and the original lack of the ability to opt-out of a public display of one's Buzz's but no one has said a thing about how both Disqus and Intense Debate do not give the registered user the ability to make their comments private on the Disqus or Intense Debate websites. This lack of ability to opt-out is just as egregious as the first week of Google Buzz, as in all three cases the display of the comments/threads without permission and context breaks the original posting of the comment within the blog or media community that it was posted in.

Some folks may want all of their comments to be public beyond the blog they originally posted them on and search-able for that matter, but many of us may not. Disqus and Intense Debate, offer your users a profile privacy option.

For a magazine as web savvy and web successful as The Atlantic has been, this redesign is both a tired political branding trope in the color choice and a social media privacy bomb waiting to happen.

********

Update, Sun 02.28.10 10:30pm (PST): I am not the only one who doesn't like The Atlantic's redesign, Mr. Sullivan doesn't either for different reasons.

Wow. I am more than a bit stunned that the Atlantic would go ahead and do such a big visual and content management redesign without consulting the main bloggers/writers who create their content and draw in the readers who form the community of the site.

Now I am just sad. Sad as a faithful reader & subscriber of the Atlantic and sad for my profession of web design. In web design, we talk a lot about User Experience, but UX is just not the experience of the end user, but also of the authors, bloggers, and content creators of the websites in question as they are also our clients who we must design a good experience for.

Contrary to all of the uproar this past week, I like Google Buzz, but with a reservation or two.

I like that Buzz is a version of Jaiku, which I love love love, that is attached to my Gmail & Latitude on my mobile phone. I like that most of the people I liked best on Jaiku are already on Google Buzz and are already my friends due to being in my address book. I really like that I am not limited to 140 characters, as I am on Twitter, and that to interact with Google Buzz I just need to log into Gmail.

Google did ask if I wanted to have Buzz attached to my Gmail account and I said yes. Google also asked if I wanted my Google profile public, which I edited and then made public and searchable.

My only but about Buzz is that it would have been much better if Google Buzz had asked if I wanted to make all my address contacts and Google Reader follows to be my friends in Buzz. I would like to have opted-in rather than logged in with over 100 people I was following automatically! 100! Woah!

I can't really go unfollow them now. And by automatically having me follow the folks in my address book who are on Buzz, it took away the fun game of joining a social network where one has to search for one's friends or other interesting people. Google took away the exploration phase.

Google, please allow for opt-in, not opt-out. And don't forget to let us explore to find our own friends rather than finding them for us.

Mon 01.18.10 - If you are reading this on a feed/RSS/Atom, then you haven't noticed anything unless you click through, but if you are reading this on the website then you can see that I have made some incremental changes.

The changes I have made have mostly been an attempt to improve the speed of the site for you, the reader, as YSlow and Google's Webmaster have let me know that this site was a bit sluggish.

I have noticed the slowdown the last year, of which I believe have been a combination of more and more entries, the shared hosting that I have my sites on, and a few blogging software configuration issues.

Today, I did the following:

1) I reduced the Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen index page to 6 entries rather than 12, as the home page is image heavy.

2) I combined some scripts and stylesheets, as well as eliminating a few that not currently being used but were legacy code bits.

3) I cleaned up the sidebars on the index and entry pages to reduce the http requests, as well as taking the Flickr Badge off the index page as it was causing a whole second of rendering time.

4) Plus a few other Movable Type template tweaks.

What I still need to do:

5) Combine as much of the javascript for the site, comments, and lightbox as possible into one script with out causing conflicts.

6) Figure out a better Movable Type to blackphoebe.mobi solution. The current one that I threw up in a day in January 2008 is slowing down the whole install.

Let me know if the site is faster for you and if the changes are good or not working. Thanks!

Project52 : Week 2

File Under: I didn't need to see the shit squeezed out of the intestines before they are turned into sausage casings...
OR
Fire Under: How did the drafting of the specs for the new HTML5 and web standards turn into a serious detour in to the spider webs of Mirkwood?

Wow! The Twitter-verse erupted this last week on WTF is going on in HTML5 world:

"is there a good concise blog post anywhere explaining just what happened to HTML5 / WHAT WG last week? Seeing the trees, not the forest." - @mezzoblue

'Thinking of getting this framed: http://icanhaz.com/specdance" - @adactio

"Pleased that http://whatwg.org/html5 is back to being a spec called HTML5 (and more) rather than HTML (including HTML5). Thank you @hixie." - @adactio

" '#HTML5 is a beautiful mess': Sitepoint podcast with moi, @lloydi, @cssquirrel. Transcribed as well, thanks @sentience http://bit.ly/5rJmbS" - @brucel

"#html5 punch-up featuring @marcosc, @hixie, @shelleypowers, @johnfoliot http://bit.ly/4Ojp2v" - @brucel

And there are many more Tweets from Jan 8th to 15th on the subject of HTML5, the WC3, WHATWG, and the spec deliberations.

I am unabashedly a fan of strict XHTML 1.0, as I love the element tag minimalism and the strict code typing. If I code a site in XHTML 1.0, be it transitional or strict, I have few worries on what device will the site work on and I have fewer cross-broswer debugging issues than if I write in HTML 4.01 or the like. I realize that others want more features and the early specs of HTML5 appear to make better semantic sense, but the web standard spec and full browser adoption is supposedly years away.

I don't like to watch the tech sausage being made, I much prefer to let folks duke it out behind some closet doors and then when the browsers adopt the spec, then I will learn it. My passion is in mobile and the web that works for all, not to be the first to use or develop a tecnology. On top of all of that, I am a minimalist. I prefer lean, mean, and elegant over busy, full-featured, and many-optioned.

I first noticed this week's brouhaha when Dave (@mezzoblue) tweeted his call for someone to interpret and explain the forest for the trees (first tweet quote/link above). Tonight was the first time I had the opportunity to go through my feed reader and read some of the blog posts on the HTML5 rupture of the last 9 days.

I started by reading Dori Smith's post, My (current) opinions on HTML5, on Backup Brain which was a good summary of the situation and how it effects the various parts of the web design and development ecosystems. Dori is clear sighted in the matter and I noticed quite a few comments, upon clicking on the comments, I was treated to John Foliot's stident interpretation of Dori's take on HTML5 and Web Standards.

I clicked over to Mr. Foliot's web site to find that he was in full defense / offense mode all at once. ((O.o))

Mr. Foliot referred to Andy Clarke's "Keep calm and carry on (with HTML5)"

Faruk Ateş attempts to find the forest for the close examination of the trees in "The Battlefield of HTML5"

Bruce Lawson, Ian Lloyd, and Kyle Weems weigh in with a SitePoint podcast on "HTML5 is a (Beautiful) Mess"

Mark Pilgrim asserts that nothing has happened other than the HTML5 spec is in the Last Call phase. Mr. Foliot continues his offense/defense bit.

Wow! See what I miss when I am working rather than reading... Wake me up when the spec is ready and the browsers are using it. Then we can slather the HTML5 up in some garlic oil, cook it up on the grill and make some beautiful, accessible web sites and apps.

No Mirkwood spiders, please.

Some how I have hit the Google Wave invite jackpot* and now have 38 invites to give away. If you want one, please comment on this blog post with your email address and I will send you one.

***Update*** : Sun 11.29.09 - Thanks for the folks who have requested an invite by a comment so far. I have two requests before giving out any more invites:

1) Please put your email in the email box in the comment form rather than in the comment itself, this protects your email as only I can see it.

2) Please put the URL of your online space in the URL box, as if I am going to invite folks I want to be able to see your website or twitterstream and say hi.

****UPDATE**** : Mon 12.07.09 - Thanks for your comments and replies, but the invites are now over and done. If you commented here and did not get an invite, it was because you didn't give me your URL after I asked for it above. I hope you enjoy Google Wave.

* T'would be nice to hit the lottery jackpot instead... but one has to work with what one has got... ;o)

Congrats to a very lovely and intriguing city on the 60th N parallel line.

Mon 11.16.09 - Today Erika and I met Thomas at the Art Center's Auditorium for Jan Chipchase's new 'Edge. Edgier. Edgiest.' talk for the Designmatters Lecture Series.

I wanted to see Jan Chipcase speak, as I have been reading his blog FuturePerfect ever since various and sundry friends referred to his work and writing in the last four or so years. Much of what he writes about and the photos he posts are fascinating to me as they are about people, culture, technology, and how people interact thereof. As a long time fan of anything Central Asian and former Silk Road territory, I am particularly enthralled by his posts about design research adventures in the 'stans'. I am very jealous that he was in Kabul a few weeks ago.

Though by his own admission, Chipchase is still working on the material he presented today, it was a good fit for a design college crowd as he covered the his approach to design research, the ethics he applies to field work, how one works under a corporate umbrella, and the pure adventure of it all.

Thomas had to leave the presentation a bit early as he had a class to teach upstairs in room 202, but Erika and I stayed through the Q&A before walking up to Thomas' class to see the student work that was being critiqued this afternoon. As we came out of the class, both of us opened our mobiles, Erika to text and me to check my email. As we were both engrossed in tiptapping away, Jan Chipchase passed us in the hallway and with a twinkle in his eye quipped as he passed, "Put down your bloody mobiles."

I know it is good to be a DRY, Agile programmer and not repeat yourself, but I have a hard time being "lazy" due to a problem with perfectionism.

I have been working on finishing up additions to a web app in PHP that I coded last year and for each day that I *should* wrap up, I find One More Thing that should be polished A Bit More, just One More Thing. Last week, I fell down a hole of internet research about the latest developments in PHP security. This was bad, because there have been new techniques on how to best beat the bad boy hackers, so this week I found myself making a few changes to reflect best, current secure practices of the most recent cutting edge.

This is the right thing to do, right?

Well, bits of the app then needed to be recoded, and then a few more changes, and then test the database, and then some more recoding, and I had a huge refactoring snowball rolling down a hill attacking me. Gah. But in good conscience, I could not leave the client with security holes.

Where do you stop? Right at the letter and law of the contract? A few extra hours of work if you find some new information on the latest and greatest practices? Or do you just do it and refactor the whole app for professional pride and a good job well done?

Let me know where you draw the line.

The design world, particularly the web design / user interface folk, have been going through a spasm of minimalism / simplicity lately with many top web folk redesigning their blogs to simple text, plain background (usually white or a light color), and a graphic line or two.

Tim Brown at Design Thinking has decided to plunge into the murky waters of design philosophy and semantics to parse out what the difference is between simplicity and minimalism as it pertains to web design / interface design. The articles does not end with his words, but the real debate begins in the comments as various designers debate what do the words and practices really mean.

Read it.

Now if you need a visual for who is the current king of minimalism, view this photo from 1982 which sums up the future of ID/UX 27 years later in one go.

Developers and Designers need each other and need to work together. (duh.)

All of the super exciting internet / computer eco-systems of the last 15 years have had developers and designers involved together as a tight team: HTML/CSS - Web Standards, Ruby on Rails, Django, Mac OS X, the iPhone app world, etc.

By exciting eco-system, I mean that the platform, device, or system has grown beyond the company or small core group of folk who created/originated the system, a growing that goes beyond all the usual vendors for the company/core to take a life of its own in a wide range of design & development professionals and hobbyists who expand the ecosystem to a dynamic space that is much greater than any marketing budget could every afford or create.

This is definitely the case of the Open Source LAMP proponents, the HTML/CSS web standards folk, the Ruby on Rails & Django communities that have had designers working with developers from the very beginning. By dint of Apple's penchant for design, designers have been on board fully with developers to expand the iPhone and Mac OS X applications and universe.

While I love using Android and Symbian mobile devices, it has recently become glaringly obvious to me that both of these communities don't have the same co-working / symbiotic relationships with the design community that the above eco-systems have. Yes, Google and Nokia/Symbian can afford high end designers, but what about the community outside of Google, Nokia, Symbian, and their paid vendors?

The Google I/O conference while multiple thousands strong in developers, programmers, and business dev folk, was very poor in terms of designers and any integration thereof.

Android and Symbian dev folk, we need to get designers on board in teams working together from the very beginning of projects to get the eco-system more than just aesthetically pleasing but also to balance the platforms to think outside of the dev/programming box and to grow the eco-systems dynamically as well as spread the goodness.

Design is more than aesthetics, it is an essential part of of balancing the right & left brains as well as the needs of the creators with the consumers. By creating a space for both designers and developers in teams, at conferences, and getting the dialogue moving between both communities means that we build balance applications, devices, and web systems that are usable and delightful.

To grow our communities, to build great apps we need to think of the disciplines of design and development as feeding into each other - feeding ideas, cross polinating, cooperation, and coordination.

Design + Development = Developers <=> Desingers

Ok, Nokia / Symbian and Google / Android, let's figure out how to get more designers and design thinkers involved in community based projects from the ground up. Let's start with design tracks at your sponsored conferences and meet ups between developers and designers at the conferences, why don't we?

Or even better, why don't we all agree to meet up and have a Android / Symbian conference to cross-pollinate between platforms and invite designers of all stripes (web, mobile, interaction, and user experience) to join us?

Update: Sun 07.26.09 - To clarify, I wrote this post because there has been much talk amongst tech bloggers and early adopters that the reason that folks are buying the Apple iPhone is because of the App Store and not buying Nokias or Android phones due to the poor showings on their app stores. I think this point is debatable, as most of the folks I know who purchase phones find out about the App Stores after purchase, not as a point to purchase.

But I do think it is instructive for those of us who are tech folk/early adopters and|or professional developers|designers to examine the web and mobile communities that have been successful, of which my point was that the communities that are growing organically without millions of dollars of advertising & subsidies from the companies behind the technologies are the communities where both developers and designers are both excited about and actively participating in.

To this end, I think that it would benefit Nokia's Symbian community and Google's Android community to draw in more User Experience | User Interface | and good old school Designers. At this point, both of these communities are programmer|engineer heavy. As Mike M. states in the below comment, designers & design thinkers bring an equal set of different skills that are absolutely necessary to the web & mobile site|app|software development process.

To Answer a Few Folk on Twitter: I don't think that Apple has their mental market share amongst designers due to their TV advertising. I know more top end designers who are working on Ruby on Rails and Django projects than Apple iPhone projects with developers. It is not just about big money, but where is it exciting and challenging to create. A place to create where one can make a difference, prototype quickly, and also make money as well.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 06.26.09 - Jon Hicks and Andy Budd enjoying the sunshine outside of the Southbank Royal (something) Hall near Waterloo Station, London. About a half hour later, or as the cat herding organizers turn, a group of us walked over the bridge, through Leicester Sq, up into Soho to go have dinner to the same delicious Thai restaurant that Andy took my Mom and I to in Nov of 2007 and whose name I have forgotten now. The said Thai place was able to seat 14 of us with no reservation after a small wait on a Friday night. They Rock. If I could just remember the name...

A nice Google search has yielded the name - Busaba Eathai at 106 Wardour St. Delicious.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 06.26.09 - Two of the bestest, dearest gentlemen on the planet: Steve Lawson and James Whatley.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 06.26.09 - This morning I had the most delightful time at the Tuttle Club London, which due to a music conference at the ICA was held on the deck of a cafe in St. James Park just across the Mall from the ICA. Being in the park, on a deck, surrounded by grass and trees on such a lovely, sunny morning was the most delightful summery thing I can think of doing in London. Esp. when said activity includes great conversations with like minded geeks.

I think the Tuttle Club LA (LB) needs to meet outside sometime this summer.

If the folks at Starcut are going to proudly announce that they mobilize brands and media and charge a newspaper to mobilize the said newspaper's website, then they should educate themselves on the standards of the mobile user experience.

Major rule of the mobile web: Give the User a Choice. Don't assume that they want the full website or that they want a reduced site for mobile. Just because a script has detected that the browser coming to the site is a mobile browser, doesn't mean the reader/user wants to be forced into a locked sandbox with no exit. Don't assume that every user wants to reduce their data usage, some of us have unlimited plans. Give the user a choice.

Here are a few examples of Mobile Sites that do the User Experience right by giving the reader/user a choice to either view the mobile version or to switch over to the "classic", "full", "regular" version of the website:

Why does this matter? Well, not every Nokia or Sony Ericsson or Blackberry or insert name of mobile device is a smartphone with Opera Mini or a version of the Webkit or Gecko mobile browsers, but then again, not every Nokia or Sony or Blackberry or other mobile device is a simple device with a simple mobile web browser.

I think it is great that more and more websites offer mobile versions that are stripped down and load fast for mobile devices, but if you are going to strip out choice along with kilobytes, this is not good.

My Nokia N95 has a full featured web browser that renders most websites, except heavily AJAX sites, quite nicely. I have an unlimited data plan. Between my Nokia's browser and my data plan, I want to see the full version of most websites unless I need information quickly and then the mobile version is usually fine.

Not yesterday.

Yesterday, I left the house in a rush to meet up with Lauren Isaacson in Encino so that we could have lunch together before she departs for Vancouver. I was heading north on the 405 and passing the Long Beach Airport when I realized that I left my paper copy of the LA Times Food section. So, I did what I would normally do in this situation, I opened my Nokia's web browser and typed "latimes.com", instead of getting the usual, full web version of the LA Times website, I was forced into the mobile version of the site with no exit out.

No link to the full version. No links to the Food section. No ability to get out of the reduced web version. I then went to Google to search for the article and the Google search took me back to the front page of the mobile site with no link to the full version of the LATimes.com. Here is the mobile site that I saw with no link to the full version of the LATimes.com at either the top of the mobile page nor at the bottom:

I was very frustrated.

I was mad in the immediate situation of trying to locate information that was still live on the full version of the website but I was unable to get to the information because the mobile version of the site did not let me go there. I was mad as a web & mobile user experience designer to experience bad UX design first hand. I was frustrated that Starcut has probably charged the LA Times a lot of money to piss off loyal readers like me.

In the end, I had to use a desktop computer at Lauren's parent's house to search the LA Times' website for the article on the restaurant we were to go to. Itzik Hagadol is excellent, especially their 20 salads for $8.99.

But the lack of ability to exit the LA Times's mobile site from a mobile browser is not excellent. It would be excellent if Starcut would revisit the site and add a simple link at the top or the bottom of each mobile page, giving the reader/user the option to go to the full non-mobile version of the site from their mobile browser.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Thurs 05.14.09 - Now on to color research and comparison, I am trying out different shades of aubergine. To this end, I after I dropped Scruffy McDoglet off at the groomers, I walked into India Sweet & Spices to buy little cute baby eggplants in a range of shades to see what colors of aubergine I could capture for a design I am working on.

Yes, design research with vegetables. They will make a tasty saute or bake later.

Fri. 03.27.09 - Actually the Tuttle Club LA was not born yesterday, but a month ago today, though the super cheap bagels at the Library in Long Beach apparently were born yesterday.

When Steve and Lobelia Lawson were out in the LA area for the NAMM show, Steve told Geoff Hickman and myself that we should start a Tuttle Club for LA. Well, due to the busy-ness of January, February and March, I was out of the picture on any organization, but Geoff and Francine Kinzner did get on top of things and started LA/LB/OC's own social media club, modeled after London's Tuttle Club, four weeks ago on Feb. 27, 2009.

Today was the 3rd Tuttle LA, but it was my first due to my being in Arizona & Texas for the other two. I enjoyed myself. I knew 3 of the 6 folks (Jeb, Geoff, and Lauren) and got to make friends with the other 3 (Francine, Nguyen, and Mark). It was great to get out of the house and away from the computer to talk about computers, mobile, web, extra and et al, during a Friday mid-day in Long Beach.

Jeb Brilliant and I fleshed out an idea that I have had rolling around in my head for over a year now, Lauren Isaacson thought up a great domain name, and Jeb and I made a plan on how to execute the idea, all over tea and coffee at the Library on Broadway & Redondo in Long Beach. Yay!

The only downside was hanging out too long and returning to my car to find a ticket on it for parking longer than an hour. Next time - Tuttle LA #4 - I will ride my bike the 4 or so miles from Seal Beach to The Library.

Next Tuttle LA (really Tuttle LA/LB/OC):
Fri. April 10, 2009
10:30 am
@ The Library
3418 E Broadway
Long Beach, CA 90803

Here you go, the first day of Ms. Jen's panel transcripts:

Sat March 14, 2006 - SXSW Interactive
Austin, TX

11:30am - The Creative Path
Jim Coudal - Coudal Partners
Brendan Dawes - Magnetic North
Gary Hustwit - Filmmaker "Helvetica", "Objectified"

Objectified premier is at the Paramount at 5pm.

Jim Couldal:
Creative Path: show don't tell.
Speaking on Joseph Conrad, literary theory, "we are complicit in our own corruption" By the time you have finished the book or movie, the narrative leads you through your own corruption much more powerfully than if Conrad was to write an essay.

Montessori - Teaching kids to learn.
Layer Tennis - Live on Friday afternoons, two artists swap a file back and forth in real time. Continue to add to the file on top each other's work. Ultimate end is to probably to reduce productivity on Friday afternoon. Restraint and freedom, creativity comes out of the balance between the two. Keep in mind that the act and result of creation is a conversation, not a lecture.

Gary Hustwit - Seventy-five minutes and thrity-six seconds.
I make documentary films, which are linear fixed forms of media. There is no way for the viewer of the film to change the plot line, characters, destination, or duration of the film, unless they get up and leave.
How do you make a fixed documentary film to be interactive?
1. use ellipsis... Intentionally leave out information, that the viewer of the film needs to put in themselves, a moment of discovery is more compelling than if someone tells you what the story is.
What is not there, what is left out. It leave the piece open to interpretation.
Delayed gratification.
2. Make it a game. bring in puzzles.
Dialogue going on between the viewer and the film.
Timing, juxtaposition.
"If all else fails, put a dog in the film." - Gary Hustwit

Brendan Dawes -
Made a flash video editor in 1998 - Pyscho Studio - See if folks could make their own version of the pyscho shower scene.
The danger is that when you give folks things to play with, you get some weird shit. Then you realize that people are weird.
Human beings versus machines. Computer would plot an efficient line from a to be. Critical Mass by Philip Ball is where he had folks walk across a park, before they put in the paths, to see how humans used the park.
Good design is about taking things away. Gives example of traffic calming in Brighton, by having the sidewalk & street be the same space with no directions & signs -> it makes drivers slow down to 10mph and be much more aware.
Makes sketches, as sketchbooks don't run out of batteries.
doodlebuzz.com - We get complacent with interface, why can't we create new interface.
"People think these days that if you can't use an interface in 2 seconds that it is rubbish. That is rubbish." - Brendan advocates making new UIs and making the user work for it.
You can start with Britney Spears and end up with the Pope. Any interface that allows you to do that is good.
"If you don't go out in the woods, nothing will never happen & your life will never begin..." Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Yes, it is that time of year again, time for SXSW Interactive and the 2009 Weblog Awards!

The Bloggies are the web's longest-running non-profit, reader voted blog awards. The votes are in and the Weblog Awards ceremony will be held on Monday, March 16th at 12:30pm (Central Time, GMT-5) at the SXSW Trade Show Day Stage.

Come join us in celebrating blogs and bloggers at SXSW Monday at lunch. If you can't make in person to the Bloggies Award Ceremony, join us on IRC, #Bloggies on irc.freenode.net, for live coverage and chat. After the ceremony the winning blogs can be found at 2009.bloggies.com.

The 9th Annual Weblog Awards Ceremony will be brought to you this Monday by Ms. Jen and George Kelly, with big ideas & help from Glenda Sims, as well as all the fabulous presenters and bloggers. Extra big thanks to Nikolai Nolan for all his hard work on the Ninth Annual Weblog Awards web site and managing the whole voting process.

If you are going to SXSWi, please come join us on Monday 3/16 at 12:30pm at the Day Stage for the Bloggies!

If you are like me, you have found your web browsing managed by a feed reader that alerts you when web sites, blogs, and other subscription based web spaces make an update. But not every web site out there in the big wide world of the web has a subscription or a feed available... Shock! Horror! How 1999!

So, I have a few bookmarked that I like to visit but for various reasons they aren't on my feed reader or don't have a feed be it atom or rss or rdf or feedburner.

My favorite non-feed web site that I check every day is the Interactive Global Composite Weather Satellite Images page from NASA. This page allows me to see the most recent set of satellite images from the Pacific and see what weather is coming California's way. It also allows me to see the Pacific Ocean and the nations on its rim as a whole rather than a set of disjointed far away places. Truly fun and lovely.

Best of all, you can animate up to the last 30 satellite images to see how the storms are tracking across the Pacific. The only sad thing is that due to various weather satellite agreements, most of Europe, Asia, and Africa are blacked out. Grrr... Give me the whole globe!

What websites do you go to every day that are not in your feed reader, so you either have them bookmarked or actually type out the URL old school style?

Tonight at dinner, Erika and I had a long talk about my Facebook post from last night: how each of us use it, why I hate it, and why it is the first social network site that she has really gotten into. We talked at length about synchronous vs. asynchronous communication, public vs. private, the open web vs. the closed web (like MySpace or Facebook), preferred modes of communication, and which worked better when. It was a great conversation over excellent food at Fu Rai Bo in West LA.

All the while we were discussing Facebook and styles of communication an early 20s-something couple next to us was on a date and the whole time the girl kept taking phone calls and texting, all the while she was leaning across the table to smooch the fellow. When they left, I pointed out the extreme difference to Erika.

Not once during dinner did either Erika or I touch our mobile phones, I did not take photos or check my email, she did not take any phone calls. We talked. Then again, we weren't on a date, just having a fun debate over issues. Yet, the youngsters were completely ok with continuous partial attention and smooching in between communicative interruptions.

One of the things that Erika pointed out to me during our discussion, of which she should know as we have been friends for over 18 years now, is that if I strongly don't like something then it is a guarantee that 80% of the rest of the planet will strongly like it. I have a problem with intuitively not being mainstream. Thus, if I don't like Facebook, you should probably go buy stock in it. Well, if they were public that is.

I got home tonight and found this post over at The Spittoon and have concluded that I must not be "Miss Con-GENE-iality":

If Facebook is starting to take over your life, maybe your genes are partly to blame.

While I am good at keeping up with a wide circle of networks, I don't enjoy nor have I gotten sucked into Facebook. As I stated to Erika tonight, it really comes down to the open web vs. the closed web and how services like Facebook & MySpace encourage folks to remain in the closed web and get dumbed down by the confined space. Erika argued that folks like the convenience of the closed web spaces like Facebook & MySpace that allows folks to do everything in one place.

I don't want the internet to become an slightly more interactive version of the brain dead Boob Tube (TV), but a place where folks can grow and become more creative and alive.

I have social networking fatigue and I have had it for years.

I jumped on my first alt.music board/list in 1994 and have been full bore ahead on mailing lists, alt.music, bulletin boards, message boards, groups, friendster, myspace, flickr, twitter, facebook, jaiku, ad finitum, ad nauseum ever since. Fifteen years later, I alternately love the online spaces that allow me to really connect and be fed by others, and I am overwhelmed by the ones that sap my attention and energy.

I hate chat/IM/AIM and text/sms is not far behind in my book, as they both demand that one reply immediately and in a shallow fashion. I really do prefer asynchronous communication in which I can take the time to reply in depth if necessary to instant now chat. I prefer to be able to check in on [insert name of service] when I have the time and post / reply at my leisure. It is for this same reason that I only pick up about half of the phone calls I receive. As a bouncy adult who is easily distracted, I have learned that I need to think before I respond.

As a creative who has had her own consultancy / freelance web design & development business since August of 2000, I have learned that if I want to be a good little citizen and pay my bills on time I really need to focus on the task(s) at hand when I am working.

While continuous partial attention may be a great catch phrase for the current cultural zeitgeist, if I practice it at any length it will toss me out of my house and I will be living in my car. My car, while wonderful, does not have a comfy bed & a hot shower. Thus, I need to focus and concentrate on work and the online leisure activities that feed my life and soul - like blogging, researching, creating, and communicating in a constructive manner.

Ok, so that is my explanation for preferring email & phone calls and avoiding chat & texting. Now let's talk about social networks....

I have read up and checked out the Google AppEngine in a cursory fashion a couple of times in the last few months, even to the point of signing up for an invite before it was publicly open and downloading the SDK. But life and work and play were too busy, so I didn't have time to really delve into GAE with any intent and real application.

Until today. Last Friday night, a much admired friend passed away in a car accident and on Sunday I was asked if I would develop a memorial web application for friends, family, and colleagues to post photos and stories up. I said yes and ran through my head quickly all the possible ways we could do it. Given the resources at hand it seemed that PHP, be it hand rolled or Cake PHP would be the only approach to take given the time & server constraints. Yikes.

I really struggle with PHP, I dislike all the verbage, punctuation, and braces. When I am able to make a whole app work in it, I am vastly relieved. But most of the time the butt kicking that PHP delivers is greater than my feelings of accomplishment.

One of the things that I do adore about Python and Ruby is that they both are lean and make sense. There is not butt kicking, only happy writing, testing and deploying. Except most host servers don't like one to run a good Python or Ruby framework such as Django or Ruby on Rails. So if a client or friend already has a server and a domain and wants to move forward fast, much of the time Django and Ruby on Rails gets ruled out. Thus, the evils of PHP reassert themselves.

After sending most of yesterday and this morning debating of how I should plan and construct the memorial site, a meteor of insight flashed through my head... Google App Engine.

GAE is free (for now), uses Python and Django (happy days!!!!), it has great tutorials on top of all the Google resources. No reinventing the wheels with PHP and/or Cake PHP.

So this afternoon I started experimenting with GAE and discovered very quickly that between its webapp extension and the images/Picasa API that I would be able to develop the whole memorial application with very little fuss and stress.

Here is a quote from an email that I sent to the folks organizing the memorial:

Google AppEngine is a dreamy love bug of a dev environment, I may have to marry it. PHP is formally now dead to me. Normally 6 hours into a dev project I am not happy but really really really really really frustrated and writing snarky twitters about how much I *hate* PHP. But no... Love love love love the Google.

Google, thank you for making my life easier today when I would rather be crying than developing.

Dear Yahoo Executives,

If you are wondering why your company is failing, it is because you don't get the internet.

What were you all thinking last week when you decided to layoff one of the founding employees who is now one of the two most public facing and world popular employees of your most important property?

After this bonehead move of exceedingly bad strategy and timing, everyone involved in the decision to layoff George Oates should be fired asap.

Sincerely, Jenifer Hanen

*******
Update from Tues 12.16.08:

Jeremy and Jeffrey both weigh in on George getting laid off.

Now that video is all the rage, Flash seems to have been sidelined to banner ads, games, and corporate websites.

I miss the days of silly, homemade, whimsical* Flash animations with very little purpose. While I am not a big fan of all Flash websites in which most of the time I immediately exit, I do like fun Flash.

Where have all the silly Flash animations gone? Are art students and high school students too broke to buy the education version Flash from Adobe and don't have a crack code? Are they too deep into WOW/Wii/XBox/etc and celebrating 4:20 to create their own Flash silliness? Are they too used to the Facebook & MySpace communities to put up their own websites?

Do you have a favorite fun Flash that has been created in the last 2 years?

************

* Let's not even talk about silly, off the wall animated gifs...

The video(s) from the Nokia Open Lab 2008 are now up on the Ovi channel.

For all the attendees who were baffled as to why we were invited and what the purpose of the Lab was, in the part 2 of Jari Pasanen's introduction to the Nokia Open Lab event, he states what, as VP of Strategy, he was hoping to get out of the event:

"How we can actually improve the communication dialogue between guys like your self, because you also are not only leaders but also censors. You have a lot of understanding where this business is going. Nokia is now moving fast into the internet business. We are not saying we are an internet company. We still have our legacy, we are a mobile phone company, even though we call some of our products 'multimedia computers'...."

As I have watched some of the video from the event that is up on the Nokia Open Lab Ovi Channel, it has helped me to more clearly remember was was said, but... and this is a big but, I am even more forcefully struck then I was at the time by the lack of women present. The four of us who were invited did talk about the lack of women during the event and were told when we asked that more women were invited but couldn't make it.

In the video(s) of the Lab, it appears that Nokia's interest in brainstorming and/ or the experts about mobile and the interwebs' is only a guy thing. Yes, Anne, Micki, and I are featured in the videos (sorry, I haven't seen Rebecca yet in the vidstream), but the greater majority of the event invitees are men (4 women, over 35 men).

Where was Darla? Where was Cat? Where was Rita? There are a lot of women in mobile and internet who have expertise that should be shared with Nokia at an event like Open Lab.

If we are to take Jari's introduction seriously and statement that the Open Lab was a way for internet folk to share their expertise with Nokia, then there were many women with expertise in social media, blogging, media, creation, and the internet who could have been invited, such as: Danah Boyd. Lynne D. Johnson. Sharanya Manivannan. Jen Beckman. Anne Galloway. Megan McMillan. Molly Wright Steenson.

Just sayin'. For next time.

Also, next time, 2 or 3 days of workshopping / discussions / brainstorming would be better than 1.5 days. We were just getting comfortable to really get down to the issues when it was time to go home.

Go watch the videos on the Nokia Open Lab Ovi Channel, there is some good stuff there. And some funny stuff as well. ;o)

All Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

The synopsis of the very first ever Nokia Open Lab 2008 is below the "fold" (aka click on the continue reading bit)...

All Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82.

Wed. 09.10.08 and Thurs. 09.11.08 - Thus the Nokia Open Lab 2008 starts off with travel from Seal Beach, California at an ungodly hour of the morning on Wednesday (ie before 5am) to get to LAX in time for a 7am (!!!!) flight to New York's JFK airport before transferring on to Helsinki via Finnair.

My neighbor Earl was so kind as to give me a ride to LAX before the crack of dawn even thought of getting up. The flight from LAX -> JFK was wonderful due to the lovely inflight GoGo wifi, as previously documented. At JFK, Micki and I stopped for lunch at an amusing "bistro" that was themed as a New York cop bar with the servers in fake police uniforms.

The plane ride from New York to Helsinki was uneventful, in that there was no wifi, and my poor rowmate, Rahul Nair, got a chatty Ms. Jen (sorry, Rahul...). But hey! Rahul was a part of the team that was responsible for Zonetag and Zurfer. Oh how I would have liked to have met him 2 years ago when I was working on the Around Ireland project. In my defense, it was an 8 hour flight to Helsinki and Rahul has been working in geo-location for a couple of years... ;o)

Is blogging a writing / posting activity that one does with a specific web based content software that allows one to publish to a website chronologically or is it a writing / posting activity that is about keeping a web log of one's life / thoughts irregardless of software running the web site?

If the second, then I have been keeping a weblog (self-publishing) in one form or another since 1996, when I put up my first internet homepage on my exciting 6 megs of space on the Boston University web servers (ACS3, if you must know). From 1997-1998, I had a home page over on the earthlink.net servers. From 1999 - 2003, I hand coded pages of writing and photos at the Barflies.net. And from 2003 to present, I have used Movable Type software at Blackphoebe.com and barflies.net to publish my thoughts and photos.

All this being said, if blogging is a software than my biggest influences were Ben & Mena Trott at SXSWi 2003. If blogging is a community, then Jish is my biggest influence, as he was the first person to be nice to me and invite me into the group at SXSWi 2003 (previous to that, I was an outsider from the Music world).

Previous to attending the first BlogHer in 2005, I had no idea who Dooce was, other than folks I know liked her blog. My first inkling into the web celebrity that is Heather Armstrong is when I was getting out of the car at the parking lot of the Westin Hotel pre-BlogHer 2005, and one of my friends got out of our car and shrieked, "DOOOOOOOOCE!" as loud as humanly possible.

The tall, blonde female person getting out of the car next to us looked horrified. I was mortified and busied myself with unloading the car. While I had not read Dooce's blog up to this point, but I understood in that instant the full power of internet celebrity. One would think it was 1964 and the Beatles had just landed.

During that first one day BlogHer conference in the summer of 2005, I was both excited by being at an event that was for and by women bloggers and more than a bit alienated by the whole thing. All my web related conference attendance up to this point was SXSW Interactive, which does have many bloggers but the focus is quite different. What I did like about the first BlogHer was how homegrown it was and friendly.

The same group of us, plus a few more, traveled up to San Jose late July 2006 for the second BlogHer. This one I spoke at and once again met folks that I would not have otherwise crossed paths with. Yet again, there were aspects to BlogHer that were just plain weird, mostly some of the interpersonal communication and overt familiarity, as well as judgments that folks made about others just based on their blogs genre (mommy bloggers vs. the business bloggers) or by the content on the blog. Odd but true.

The last two BlogHers (2007 & 2008), I did not attend due to other commitments. I did seriously consider going this year, as this would be the only place to meet up with a whole set of great bloggers who don't attend SXSW or other tech events. But in the end, the price of staying in San Francisco, project deadlines in July, and the general weirdness at the other 2 BlogHers I attended kept me away.

Why bring this all up now?

Can someone please give me three good reasons why I should renew my AIGA Membership?

My first year of $295 - really only good for email spam for events that are completely irrelevant to web design and you have to pay more money to attend the event that the email spam was promoting - AIGA membership has seemed quite useless. At least once as week, I become beyond irritated by either the AIGA mothership or AIGA Los Angeles for sending yet *another* email for the same event that they have already emailed me about four times in the last month.

I have a hard time defending a $295 fee to join a professional organization that is so web clueless. The mothership in New York recently sent me a very designed professional packet on why I should renew, of which I looked at and thought, "Oh, that is where the membership fee is going to... High end printing. Huh."

Where is the web related events? Where are the free events for folks who have already spent their $295 for the year? Where are the just plain networking get togethers?

I am not interested in driving up to LA to see some ultra special human speak on (fill in black here) design and pay $25-40 for the privilege on top of my $295 yearly fee. I would spend $5-10 for a happy hour cocktail party to meet other SoCal designers of all stripes, but those types of events are never organized.

Web professionals who are also AIGA members who don't live in NYC or SF, please tell me why you are a member or remain one after the first rip off year?

If you can't give me a good reason, should we maybe form a professional organization for web based designers?

This week Sandra and I are working on an iteration or somewhat-redesign of her Debutante Clothing blog. The other night I went over to her house and used a photo of Justin's sister to make a big bold splash of a banner header.

But by the time I got home and all through yesterday day, I felt it was too bold for the rest of Sandra's blog and overwhelmed the content. This afternoon, I plugged my Wacom tablet in, turned on Fireworks, opened up the photo of the roses outside of Sandra's front door that I took on Tuesday evening and started to draw over the photo with colors from her blog.

I wasn't sure if Sandra would like the drawing for her masthead or if she liked our big bold statement, or if I should take the the drawn over roses and weave them into the new masthead I created on Tuesday evening.

Tuesday Evening's Masthead:

This Afternoon's Rose additions to the Bold Banner:

Now looking at the two ideas above, I thought of a subtler iteration:

What do you think?

About two weeks ago, I received an invitation to join a Flickr beta test. I was intrigued, so I said yes. I had to sign an NDA stating that for the love of a tasty chicken I would not breath a blog, twitter, or in person word that I was beta testing Flickr Video. Yes, Flickr can have my silence in return for uploading 60 seconds of various tasty chickens from India, SXSW 2008, and Scruffy & Belle.

Oh, what a delight. I have had quite a bit of fun over the last 2 weeks uploading videos, really participating in a Flickr group in a way that I have not been interested in or invested enough in before, and watching with baited breath what folks would post as their videos. And then there was the Fridget meme that Derek started...

In all truthfulness, while I appreciate YouTube, Google Video, and Vimeo, I am not drawn into these services. I don't wait to see what will be posted, I only go when someone else sends me a link. If the video is longer than 5 minutes, I don't watch, be it too much work or just plain not interested.

It has been very different with Flickr Video. I am drawn in. I love the short format of 60 to 90 seconds. As the Flickr folk said - think of it as a long photograph. I also love the fact that I can use the same uploader and same Flickr tagging and interface that I use for photos. The user interface is simple and easy to use and not just because I am used to it.

Most of all, I am having fun with video on Flickr in a way that has never been fun before. Thanks, Flickr! Y'all rock.

Sun 03.09.08 - Today is the Big Day. George Kelly and I will be conducting our Web Standards Confession Booth "Core Conversation" in the Ballroom E of the Austin Convention Center at 3:30pm.

Come on down, drop by, etc. to participate in the conversation and/or to give your confession. ;o)

While web usability experts and designers decry the horizontal scroll, I believe that it has its a rightful place on the web. I actually love it when an art or experimental site shakes up the convention of vertical scroll by defying our expectations of usage. Design Melt Down also believes that there is a place for the horizontal scroll.

Banksy's use of the horizontal scroll with big huge images of his outdoor work rocks. Then again, Banksy rocks. The page is even named horizontal_1.htm.

Keep rockin' the guerilla art & web, Banksy...

At SXSW Interactive 2006, an acquaintance of mine asked, "What do you do?"

This was not an intro question trying to find out who I was and what I did for a living upon first meeting, but a derisory question meant to belittle by someone who had known me for over a year or two by that time and knew my profession.

I was a bit stunned, "You know what I do. I am a web designer and mobile blogger."

The Acquaintance stated, "No, I am asking what do you do? Have you written a book? What conferences have you spoken at? etc."

What the acquaintance was really getting at was who was I and where did I rank in web hierarchy. I am here to tell you that I did not add up in the acquaintance's book. I did not matter in this person's world because I had not aggressively carved out a territory to have, to hold, and to defend in the new internet bubble known as "Web 2.0".

I was a bit bewildered by the whole conversation and later it offended my flat hierarchy punk rock ethos. I may have forgotten about it, except it happened a couple of more times over the course of the year with several other professional acquaintances.

Since I have finished my Master's program nearly a year ago, I have felt a great deal of pressure, both internally and externally, to carve out a territory, be it web design for developers or mobile design or mobile practices or ... or ... I have spoken to / met with 3 tech publishing house acquisition editors about the possibility of writing a book. I have spoken at two conferences and a few university speaking engagements on web design and mobile practices. While I love speaking and teaching, the very idea of writing tech book leaves me cold.

But most of all, I have been examining my motives and desires. During the third editor meeting last week, I stated out loud, "I love creating web sites and art, I am not sure I want to write a book."

My non-existent business manager would have given me a good talking to and possibly a swift kick in the rear, but I don't care. It is true. I most desire to create.

Be the creations art, photography, ideas, web design, a web app, a great meal, a blog post, or a coptic bound handmade book, I want to make things. I want to share ideas. I want be a blessing to others.

All the carving of territories that is currently happening in web design & development makes me nervous. No, not really nervous, it makes me shy away. Watching the internet that I have loved so dearly the last 13 years go from a wild place with lots of crazy ideas - a place of innovation and sharing - to a place that is slowing hardening into a place of hierarchy and territories, I want to pull out of it and go paint.

Seriously. I have an pdf application on my desktop to apply for a grant for a local studio space for LA area emerging artists. This is not a good response, as in 1994 - 1996 I purposely left the art world and all of its competition for the love of creating web sites.

A better response for me now is that while I don't care about competing for a specific slice of a web territory, I will create regardless. I don't care if the topics I could write a book on or in an article or speak on are currently or concurrently have 3-4 other higher profile web professionals jockeying for the slot as "The Expert ™". I will create. And I will share.

To this end, I will be blogging more of my ideas about the web design / dev and mobile worlds, not to carve out a territory but instead to celebrate a range of ideas. Sharing them with the internet. Hold me to this, I have been posting lots of photos but more ideas need to be flowing from this space.

Next time someone asks me, "What do you do?"

I create.

The design-o-sphere is in a twitter about the Photoshop CS3 Beta icons, but I am here to tell you that icons be darned, the real problems of the beta version is in the interface with one's Wacom tablet.

The tracking between my Wacom's pen tool and the actual mark made on the Photoshop CS3 beta image is faulty at best. I have spent two nights drawing on my Wacom tablet with Photoshop CS3 Beta and making a lot of messes, as 1/4 of the time the mark is made at least 30 pixels from where the pen was previously. A big jump with no lifting of my hand.. I have cross tested on Fireworks 8 and Photoshop CS2 with no troubles. Hopefully, Adobe will have this ironed out before CS3 goes to market.

On the good side of CS3: the glory and heavy lifter of the Photoshop CS3 Beta is the "Quick Selection Tool". Drool. Knock out whole sections of unwanted bits and then use the "Magic Wand Tool" for the fine tuning of your selection. Happy days.

Jessica Helfand at DesignObserver has written on The Ovalization of The American Mind.

One can imagine buttons being scaled to the oval circumference of an average adult fingertip, but recently it seems that the propensity for ovals has resulted in a morphologically compromised landscape of soft shapes and rounded edges. And nowhere is this more noticeable than in cars, which (with a few exceptions) have enthusiastically embraced everything rounded: fenders, dashboards, you name it. While I'm not advocating a market for squared-off odometers, it is difficult to find a car these days that doesn't look like a cartoon.

Ms. Jen echos: it is difficult to find a website these days that doesn't look like a cartoon.

While Ms. Helfand uses contemporary car and thornamental design to illustrate her points, my mind kept wandering to thoughts of the ovalization of web design. While most of the current crop of Web 2.0 web design is keeping within the ideals of geometric modernism and avoiding thornamental-ism, the oval has landed and many sites have the stylized appearance of a darkly lit neon cartoon.

I do like that designers are breaking out of the box, even ovalizing their box model, but when a web design trend takes off it really takes off and the oval, rounded cornered, neon bevel is in full flight.

The Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen Re-Design is proceeding as a for loop... in iterative steps.

The first step, after months of thinking and planning, was to work on the banner, sidebar, and type over the months of March and April.

The second step has been over the last two days, in which I have ported all my templates from Movable Type 3.0 or 3.1 (can't remember which, maybe it was 2.6 something) to MT 3.2 templates, and then refined the first steps design changes to work with the MT 3.2 template system.

Now you ask, why did I not do this last August when Movable Type 3.2 was released? Well, because the new stylesheets were designed to be a big bitch and the first few times I looked at them I shouted and cursed anyone who created a 1543 line css file (WTF!!!!). Then I spent months researching and testing other blogging systems (Word Press, et al) on private spaces to see if I should give up my three year relationship with Movable Type. But really, Word Press is not that much better in its own frustrating ways and since I am not going to home brew my own CMS ala KuraFire, I decided to go with the devil I know and love and just bite the template bullet to get the new features I want to use.

Last night I whittled the MT 3.2 CSS file down to under 350 lines and made snarky/cranky comments along the way. Tonight I worked on refining the details of the design (image placement, text, headlines, type spacing, etc) in the css and then ported all the new templates over from the test blog to Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen. Rebuild. Check on the PowerBook. Check on the Dell Inspiron. Tinker. Rebuild. Again. Again. And again...

Here is where you all come in... Please let me know how it looks in your browser. I have opened the comments up to TypeKey authentification and to moderated comments. Please tell me how the type size looks on your browser and screen resolution? Is the headline & body type readable & harmonious? Is the layout jacked up? Etc.

If there are serious errors, please send me an email (blackphoebe at gmail dot com) with a screen shot and what computer you have and what browser you are viewing the site on.

Thanks!

For the next ten minutes, I will be porting all my templates from Movable Type 3.something templates to the 3.2 templates. If this site is all jacked up, please wait until I hit the "rebuild" button.

Thank you. The Management.

Back in December I started thinking about re-designing Black Phoebe, in February I had a long flirtation with the idea, and since March I have been sketching and researching.

Well, rather than a Big CSS Reboot with the rest of the gang back on May 1st, I am going to be web 2.0 trendy and implement incremental or iterative design.

1 step + 1 step, looped over time will get me a new design. And so it has started. Watch the i++.

Around Christmas time, I started to think about the visual and conceptual design of this site, as it has gotten too cluttered from my personal tastes, besides the redesign itch had hit.

I have been thinking about moving towards a layout where there would be one big photo, a set of thumbnails of the last 5 photos, and exerpts of text. But I realized that not only has that been done and I don't really like it on other sites, but that I like the long blog-form of one column of chronological posts. I like seeing the last two plus weeks of posts all willy nilly next to each other, from my cameraphone photos, to text posts, to others. But the cameraphone posts had gotten out of control and very little text, and thus ideas, are seen.

I am the woman who loves Ab Ex and Color Field paintings ( esp. Sam Francis, Mark Rothko, & Helen Frankenthaler), as well as Minimalism.

After much thought, as well as discussing with others, I have decided to only post a photo or two a day from my cameraphone here and the rest of the output will go to my flickr account. I also promised myself that I would write more often, as I am interested in the intersection of text and image, not just image all the time. Rather than a redesign, less cluttered content, and more integration of image and text.

My next step is to de-clutter the right hand links sidebar. I have been trying to find a standards compliant DOM script link toggle so that the site visitor would see the headlines and when you rollover the headline, the links would come down.

After months of telling myself I would do it, I did.

I have worked out a tweak or small re-design of the blackphoebe.com front page and have given this blog a new banner, as well as made all the sub-pages of the blog consistent with the site design, and I added the Category names to each post.

Check it out. What thinkest thou?

A few notes about the current process of design around these parts:

1) I hope that I have fixed the Safari bug in terms on the creeping nav/links section. I found a free-range div tag with the help of the WC3 Validator. Safari users, please let me know if this has fixed the problem.

2) I realize that if the viewer/reader is coming in on a 800 x 600 resolution then the photos will be squeezing into the nav/links section. My logs tell me that most of you, over 70 some odd percent, are using 1024 x 768 or higher resolution. My apologies but I do want to use bigger photos or photos in sets of three.

That is it for now. Happy Saturday.

Construction Update:

Two days ago, Jay kindly emailed me to let me know that my right navigation bar / links section was not floating to the right as it should, but was instead down at the very bottom of the page. Jay uses Safari for Mac. I waited for my roommate Lauren to return home, asked her to power up her Mac and I went to look at this site via Safari... lo and behold... no navigation bar on the right, it was down at the bottom.

I have now tinkered with the CSS, so that the right nav/links bar is working in Mozilla for PC, IE 6.0 for PC, and IE 5.5 for PC. Can you please check on the various Mac browsers and other PC browsers for me and let me know if the page is working properly? Just give a heads up on what is working and what is not in the comments to this post. Thanks!