I just finished watching the movie Bridge to Terabithia with Katie and the Kids. It was the saddest thing I have seen in years. I almost started crying. I had that terrible lump in my throat. I can still feel it. I thought it was going to be a movie…
I was just reading the CSS3 specifications. This got me down for two reasons. One, because I am a total geek for reading these. Two, because browsers are pretty far away from supporting these. Who knows when I will feel comfortable actually using some of these capabilities? When IE7 dies? …
For a long time, I have not liked the functionality in the image zoom implementations out there. Usually I use HighSlide. It is probably the best of the bunch. It zooms, drags around, has great styling with lots of options. But it doesn’t dim the screen and it doesn’t have…
I have been getting myself accustomed to the idea that my first book advance check will go to a list of fun stuff. Here is my current list. Logitech Harmony 800 Remote Control (or equivalent) Digital recorder for Katie. I don’t know which one is best. It’s for recording her…
An engineer friend of mine needed some help on CSS. He was extremely frustrated with the CSS. As I fixed it, he looked at me like I was performing black magic. I asked, “Isn’t programming like this?” He said, “No, programming is more deterministic.” This made me think about all…
I am stunned, shocked and dismayed. Microsoft has kicked me straight in the family jewels on this one. I am so mad, I could spit! Literally. This is a horrible decision. Microsoft Outlook 2000 and 2003 both used Internet Explorer as their rendering engine. T his meant you could design…
To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should. –Jean Rostand I highly resemble this quote.
jQuery just announced launched a new plugin area. This is an area that I have had particular interest in for some time. The jQuery plugins really are needed to do any advanced UX. Once you have a taste of great UX, you just can’t hold back from every detail. Anyway,…
Busy weekend as usual. Worked more on the book. It’s moving along. In the book there are lots of “examples” that I am mocking up. I find myself making them way too complicated. I believe that any page can have dozens of small details that make it smooth and perfect. …
Ok, I couldn’t help myself. I installed Safari for Windows. It was a beta! I couldn’t resist. Almost immediately, I noticed a few annoying things which bother my User Experience senses. There was no top bar. I use that top bar. I resize with it, I double click on it…
Apple is in the news alot this week. And almost all of it really burns by biscuit. They redesigned their website. They are using Prototype and Scriptaculous javascript frameworks for some of the subpages. (lame!) I haven’t made up my mind about the Information Architecture, but from a visual standpoint,…
I found this new program that converts regular pictures into ASCII art. It’s surprisingly easy to use. You load a picture and boom, it’s done. Check out the sample I just made. It even saves in color. I love it. I used to be totally enamored with ASCII art. It…
I noticed a quote from Bobby Knight. Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win. I thought it was a cool quote, but then I played tennis last night. It was some of the best tennis I have ever played. It was with…
A news article on Ajaxian led me to this post about this article (PDF) from Microsoft. It talks about A/B testing and how important it is to success on the web. The article even cites the legendary Avinash Kaushik whom I had the pleasure of working with at Intuit. The…