So, they just painted big letters and numbers in my parking garage at work. Can you name that font? With the numbers being below the baseline of the text, it makes me think it’s Georgia. Anyone else have a guess?
I went with a MacBook Pro. Find out what helped me to make my decision.
I have been craving an Apple laptop for about a year and a half now. Since Apple, just updated both the MacBook and the Macbook Pro today, I think it’s finally time. But now, the hard part comes up, which do I get: the MacBook or the MacBook Pro?
So here are the specs for the MacBook that I would get:
Now, here are the specs for the MacBook Pro I would get:
Based on those specs, it seems like the MacBook pro isn’t packing that much more. But in addition to all that, it has a better graphics card, backlit keyboard, and a multi-touch trackpad.
The backlit keyboard and 15 inch screen are big for me. But is it worth that much more? I’m not sure.
I wish Apple would update their laptop comparison chart. Hopefully they will get to it today.
So what do YOU think? Which would you get?
";s:10:"bodyBlocks";a:0:{}}i:2;a:6:{s:5:"title";s:24:"Weekly Link Round-Up #19";s:4:"slug";s:23:"weekly-link-round-up-19";s:2:"id";s:3:"240";s:10:"typeHandle";s:4:"blog";s:4:"body";s:3381:"There has been a lot of discussion/arguments recently about IE8’s rumored version targeting. I have been a little in between on which side to take, but I think a few articles from this week really helped me to make my decision.
Jeremy Keith has a great discussion about why the default version targeting is incorrect. He does not think you should have to add extra code (ok, just one line) in order to “enable” new browser features.
Jeffrey Zeldman takes a different approach and discusses how huge IE’s market share is, and that a majority of people are not developing their websites with Web Standards, and their sites would “break” (display differently) in IE8 (if by default, it would act like IE8).
Imagine all of those large and powerful companies having their sites “broken”, Microsoft couldn’t take it. This is what I think really sold me. While I don’t think it’s necessarily correct, it is probably the right thing for Microsoft to do to protect themselves.
Eric Meyer brings up a fantastic point here regarding the two different views of version targeting:
We all want to advance web standards. We all want browsers to improve their support. We all want better and more advanced specifications. We all want to reduce inconsistencies. We all want a better web.
Here is the rest of this stuff that I found interesting this week:
Very interesting review of the affordable XO laptop.
While I am not a print/type designer, I found this amusing.
I want to start my own sometime in the future. Great guide about what you need to do it right.
Nice list of 5 important things to remember before working so many hours.
Simple tutorial about how to spruce up your design with an auroral background.
Damn, that’s awesome. Still not enough though…
Wow, Matt just turned 24. I’m turning 24 soon! Amazing what he has accomplished. I am anxiously awaiting the new version of Wordpress to see what the admin section looks like.
Wow, I’m actually all caught up with my feeds. I’m really looking forward to this 3-day weekend. I really could use the extra time to work on a personal project.
Here is what I found interesting this week:
It’s surprising how many sites you see that don’t work one way or the other. Not to mention that this can hurt your search engine optimization. Oh, by the way, I’m in the no-www crowd.
This would be an awesome addition to CSS. Think about how much we use image replacement. We should really have a bulletproof implementation without adding extra markup.
I need to go through this list and see if there is anything I should do.
Wow, that’s crazy. I barely ever click on any ads.
At first, I kind of had mixed feelings about this. On one side, if someone was on my site and got a Google 404 page I would not be happy. On the other hand, the people have the option to just remove the toolbar if they don’t want it. And I guess to make it even better, it only displays the Google 404 page if the 404 page on the site is under 512 bytes. I think it could actually be pretty useful.
Well, I’m actually writing my weekly round-up on time this week. Guess it helps to actually keep up with my feeds. Here are a couple of items from last week that I didn’t get a chance to read until this week.
Nice overview of 10 principles to make designs usable. Remember, web design is all about the user.
Some examples of how to use the CSS3 pseudo selector: target. If only browsers could keep up.
Now for the items from this week that I found interesting:
I feel like I am an ‘average’ freelancer, and I am perfectly happy with it. My design ability is not amazing, but it’s not bad either. That’s not saying I don’t want to improve it.
I love Obama’s website. It does feel very Mac-y.
This most important part is simplicity. This is my favorite section: “An Email is Not a Web Page”.
I love the analogy.
I agree totally. I wish I would have received more design training. I’m trying on my own though…
More jQuery coolness. I love the demos.
Calls to Action: such an important part of turning visitors into conversions.
Interesting discussion breaking down the different parts of a comment and what popular sites display which pieces.
Ok, so I think I’m really late with this, but this show is hilarious. Started out as an online show, and now CBS bought the show. The episodes take a long time to download from the site, so I would also recommend checking them out on YouTube
Such things like copyright dates, ages, etc. can cause problems on websites unless they are dynamic. For example, I have my age in the little about me blurb in the sidebar. I made a little function to calculate my age so that I don’t have to go in every year on my birthday and add another year to my age.
function age($bMonth,$bDay,$bYear) {
$cMonth = date('n');
$cDay = date('j');
$cYear = date('Y');
if(($cMonth >= $bMonth && $cDay >= $bDay) || ($cMonth > $bMonth)) {
return ($cYear - $bYear);
} else {
return ($cYear - $bYear - 1);
}
}
This function takes 3 arguments: the birth month, the birth day, and the birth year. It will return the calculated age. It obviously won’t work with an age in the future; it will return a negative number. I could add in checking to see if it’s a valid date, but I don’t think it’s really necessary.
Nothing too complicated. Let me know if anyone has any suggestions to shorten the code.
";s:10:"bodyBlocks";a:0:{}}i:6;a:6:{s:5:"title";s:24:"Weekly Link Round-Up #16";s:4:"slug";s:23:"weekly-link-round-up-16";s:2:"id";s:3:"244";s:10:"typeHandle";s:4:"blog";s:4:"body";s:934:"Another busy weekend, so I’m a little late on my weekly link round-up from last week. Just a few links, but here it is:
Pretty good article discussing the ways to build a perfect portfolio. The key is to make sure you know your audience.
Two type designers discuss the typography used in the presidential candidates logos. I personally like Obama’s and John Edwards’ the best.
A nice list of contracts and forms for web designers and developers.
Yeah, so I am a little late with my weekly round-up from last week. Better late than never:
I view the source of almost every site I go to.
Roger gives a good round-up of this whole Doctype switching non-sense that had been going on last week.
I haven’t built one, but this seemed like a good getting started tutorial.
I need to start doing this.
Hmm, it’s not available right now. Hopefully they add it back, I need to watch this.
Just what we need, more animated graphics.
So it appears that there are two different fixes. One of them completely removes FireShot, and the second leaves FireShot installed. Both appear to work.
So a couple of my Firefox add-ons had updates this morning. I installed them all without even thinking about it, and my co-worker Adrian asked why I added the green background to my sIFR headings. I had no idea what he was talking about. He said he also had a Firefox add-on that was updated, FireShot.
I checked in Firefox on the Mac, IE, and another co-worker's Firefox on PC, and none of them had the green backgrounds. I disabled JavaScript, and the green backgrounds went away. So something is going on with my sIFR headings. Weird.
Anyone else seeing the green backgrounds? Anyone know why?
";s:10:"bodyBlocks";a:0:{}}i:9;a:6:{s:5:"title";s:25:"The Importance of Testing";s:4:"slug";s:25:"the-importance-of-testing";s:2:"id";s:3:"247";s:10:"typeHandle";s:4:"blog";s:4:"body";s:3075:"It is great when you can take situations in your everyday life and relate them to the web.
First, I am going to discuss a well designed product with one major problem that I used to use daily. Then I will discuss how we can use experiences from our every day lives to make the web a better place.
So, my parents have this Bosch dishwasher that they bought a few years ago. It really was awesome. It is super quiet, cleans well, and has a nice stainless steel finish. In the store and online, this thing looks great, and it’s easy to see why my parents bought it. But, there is just one big flaw…
As you can see by the photo, this is as slick as a dishwasher can get. The nice clean front with no buttons or switches to get in the way, its looks really nice. Since it’s so quiet when it runs, you don’t hear all those horrible dish-washing sounds.
This is where the major problem comes in. It’s so quiet, that you don’t even realize it’s running. You have to open the door to see the control panel on the top of the door.
It’s nice to have that out of view and gives the kitchen a sleek design. But there is no external display that lets you know that the dishwasher is running. There is no lock on the door for when it is running.
So how could this have been solved?
How about: thorough, in-home product testing? I’m sure they had a test dishwasher setup, and I bet they knew how long it took to run. They didn’t need to open it to see if it was still running. But if they had a regular person testing it, I’m sure they would encounter the same problem that I did.
This shows the importance of having users not close to the development of the site or application to be there to test. Just thinking about things like this remind you to slow down and make sure everything is tested thoroughly.
Steve Krug is the master of usability testing and shows the true value of it. A simple example that he gave when I went to An Event Apart was to go to Magazines.com and to “buy” a subscription to The New Yorker without using the search.
It takes a while. A little too long.
So everyone, test your web sites and applications…or you might just open the dishwasher and have all the water run out.
Can you think of other “problems” from your everyday life that could improve the way you develop websites?
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