It's Not the User's Fault
July 17th, 2008
This article almost perfectly echoes my programming philosophy and reasons I’m interested in software in general (to rid the world of crappy HCI). Read it.
Why They (And I) Skip Photoshop
June 23rd, 2008
I just found an article by the guys at 37signals: Why we skip Photoshop. I trashed Photoshop (and pixel-perfect mockups in general) five or six sites ago and haven’t looked back. In addition to their reasons, I’d add that I’m generally faster at creating interfaces in HTML/CSS than Photoshop anyways, so why even bother? Working in code from the beginning also forces me to get a first-hand feel at how difficult certain interface aspects are to implement—I used to come out of Photoshop with something that looked pretty simple only to find that it took all amounts of fugly wrapper divs and CSS hax to accomplish. I’d like to keep my code as slim, semantic, and generally “pure” as possible, thankyouverymuch.
For fairness’ sake, here’s a post by Jeff Croft of Blue Flavor: Why we don’t skip Photoshop. Personally, his reasons for using the ‘shop don’t ring true for me: I’m not sure I have a firmly established visual aesthetic, and while I do tend to err on the side of simplicity, I think my approach benefits the user in the end. But, as Jeff says, to each his own.
The deeper issue here was, I think, communicated nicely over at A List Apart: Sketching in Code: the Magic of Prototyping. They attack it from the “mockup vs. prototype” angle, and point out many of the practical benefits (and faults) of rapid prototyping. It’s a good read for anybody looking to tweak their design process.
This Design
January 27th, 2008
What does everyone think about the design of this site?
I wanted something that clearly separated actual content from meta-content (navigation and so on), and I think I definitely succeeded there. I also tried something new, using a “semi-liquid” layout, with a fixed content width but percentage values elsewhere. My biggest worry is that on higher resolution monitors the right half of the screen might be wasted space. Also, how does everyone feel about the fixed-position navigation and stuff (on the left)? Annoying or helpful?
Let me know what you think in the comments.