Some nifty CSS techniques floated across my radar screen today:
Semantically Correct Knockout Quotes. I've been looking (not very hard, I admit) for a slick way to do this for a while now. Also, note Dave Shea's suggestion of using a cite tag rather than a meta tag.
Pure CSS Scrollable Table with Fixed Header. Pretty nifty effect.
Here's why I love Basecamp: they're constantly on the lookout for great new features. Like most good companies, they pay attention to the feedback they get from customers. But, they also keep an eye on how customers actually use the product. Case in point: today's tip about setting an update flag. They noticed how a customer used the system, and improved on it. Very cool.
An aside to the Basecamp guys: Can you add the same replacement features with priorities? I'd love to see [high], [medium], [low] turn into cute little images.
At the same time I read about the Basecamp tip, I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell talk about trusting people's opinions. He gave a couple of nice examples in his talk. Early focus groups hated how the Aeron chair looked but Herman Miller forged ahead and it went on to be a wildly successful product. And Coke executives trusted the results of taste tests and launched the much reviled New Coke.
All of which goes to say that paying attention to how people actually use a product is more valuable than what they say about it.
Update: If you're into Gladwell, check out The Ketchup Conundrum. Good stuff.
I saw Super Size Me (DVD, website, blog) last night.
Basic overview: Americans are hooked on fast food, and it is killing us, both corporately and individually.
I haven't been a big fan of fast food for quite some time. Fast Food Nation didn't help matters much, but my basic beef (pun intended) with fast food is that I just don't think it tastes very good.
I seem to be very much in the minority with my opinions about fast food. A large percent of the population loves the stuff. Add in the large amount of processed food found in the supermarket, and we're in big trouble here, folks.
The blame for this mess? Morgan Spurlock, director of Super Size Me points the finger at the food companies (he uses McDonalds as the prime whipping boy in the film). I think they are in line for a fair amount of the blame. The food industry counters that people choose to eat their products.
Let's look at this for a second. I see a couple of factors at play here. One is time. Most Americans just don't have time to spend cooking. I happen to really like cooking, as does my wife. But, we really only have time to make a "real" meal a few times a week. Other nights it is leftovers or a quick 'n easy meal rather than something too fancy. Fast food and processed food is attractive because, well, it's fast.
Fast food is also cheap. Eating good food is expensive. We've made the choice to spend our money on good food. That means shopping at our local organic-focused grocery store (PCC), as well as places like Whole Foods. (We also live close to the country's best farmer's market, making it easy to walk up the block and buy fresh produce.) These stores are pricey. Produce is good, but expensive. For us, it is a choice to pay for quality. We can afford to do it. Lots of folks can't. Fast food is cheap. 5000 calories for $5!
So, what can be done about this? I've been thinking about this ever since I saw the film. I don't think I have any grand solutions. But I do have a few wacky ideas.
What about an open source "fast food" restaurant? We need alternatives to the big fast food chains, and these alternatives need to be able to sell inexpensive, yet healthy food. Can a place sell good quality food? Yes, I think so. One way to compete with big food companies is to have people from around the country cooperatively come up with menu items, marketing ideas, and other aspects of restaurant design. Then local operators (franchisees--only they wouldn't have to pay a franchise fee) could take these ideas and turn them into reality. They could compete on price by lowering the overhead of having to come up with recipes and marketing pieces. And growth could be done quickly by allowing anyone who wanted to to open a location based on the open source ideas. Networks of people contributing know-how can be powerful. Open source software is one example. Even in the slightly more traditional food biz, connecting people can be powerful, as shown in Tom McMakin's book on Great Harvest bakeries.
Education is another place where change can happen. Super Size Me profiled a physical education course in Illinois that looked to be successful. Kids also need to be taught how to shop and how to cook. And schools probably need to get out of the business of serving junk food, and focus on serving healthy food to students.
I keep thinking that there must be many other ways to address this problem. Technology must have something up its sleeve, and I'm not just thinking of a magic pill. Any other ideas? Email me.
Douglas Bowman has a beautiful and informative presentation on Pushing Your Limits (and other secrets of designing with CSS). Good stuff.
Donna Maurer has written a short little review of the card sorting tools out there.
The IA world apparently is still waiting for the perfect tool for this...
37Signals noted that Steve Jobs shares their philosophy of saying no. As Jobs says:
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.
I agree. But it is hard to hold the line. People ask for additional features. "Wouldn't it be great if..." You end up adding them. Death by a thousand paper cuts. It probably helps to be a tyrannical business guru...
Here's an interesting article: Visual vs Structural. The author argues there are two types of web designers (we'll kindly ignore those who just don't have a clue): those who layout a page--the visual thinkers, and those who assemble structured documents.
I strongly come down in the structural canp. Perhaps this is because I approach a web page from the point of view of a programmer rather than a visual designer. I am, I must admit, often more concerned about the structure of the content. There's nothing really wrong with taking the other approach, unless in doing so you completely ignore the structure of the page.
I've seen too many pages designed with little thought to how the content should be structured. The signs are fairly obvious: br tags; many nested tables; spacer images, and so forth. These approaches work. But, I think they're fairly shortsighted. When approaching pages designed with little thought given to structure, the "next guy" often has to do more work to make a little tweak. Pages with proper structural elements are much easier to style, and change later. And change always happens, and it is often not at the hand of the first designer. So, be kind to the next guy and write good code.
End of rant.
I'm always a big fan of simple and low-tech. So, check out these Lightweight Low Tech CSS Tabs.
Eric Meyer's S5 slideshow system is a great example of what can be done with HTML, CSS, and a little Javascript. Basically, you can build a simple, lightweight HTML file that can be used as a presentation, a la Powerpoint. Very nice.
Now all we need is for someone to build a tool to export from Powerpoint into S5. Any takers?
Update: Oren Sreebny at the UW writes about giving a presentation with S5. Turns out he'd like to know how to convert PowerPoint to S5, too!
Jakob Nielsen has a nice new piece on the ideologies of the web:
The mastery ideology provides the best match with the Web's fundamental nature: it lets users go where they want. Web users want instant gratification and have little patience for the mystery approach's detours and puzzles. Users are getting ever-more goal-driven in their approach to the Web, which they see more as a tool than an environment. Surfing to check out cool sites is a thing of the past.
Worth a look.
Laszlo is now open source. Very interesting. This is basically a system (language and application server) to create flash-based rich internet applications.
37signals' Ryan Singer has published a nice little introduction to using patterns in web design. This draws on the ideas of Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, a book I recently read. Good stuff. (via Signal vs. Noise)
I've actually had a blog entry on website patterns sitting in draft form for way too long...maybe I'll be able to finish up at some point...
Tom Hoffman reports on an interesting project from Warwick University. They've created what looks like a blog tool that supports many many users and weblogs.
I've tried to use some existing systems (Movable Type, mostly) to create similar installations (on a smaller scale). Because most blogging tools aren't created with this type of usage in mind, they really don't work well. What I'd like to see is bascially a TypePad in a box--or, even better, an open source TypePad-like tool. Maybe the Warwick tool will become that...
Update: Andrew Hallam wrote to tell me about Roller, the system Sun uses to power http://blogs.sun.com/. Looks like an interesting system. Any other good ones out there?
OCLC's xISBN web service is pretty cool. Feed it an ISBN number (via a GET), and it'll send you back a nice list of other ISBNs for that same title.
I have an idea floating around in the back of my head for a little web app that would allow you to store a list of books (a reading list, or an Amazon-style wish list, for example). You'd simply punch in the ISBN of the edition you found, then it could check with xISBN for a list of all other editions (hardback, paperback, audio, whatever). Then, the app could reach out and see if the book was available at the library, or how much it cost on Amazon. Too bad the library doesn't expose it's catalog as a web service...
Here's an entry in the category of "really-nifty-things-the-web-can-do": RedFin. This is a real estate tool, presented in a nifty flash interface. They've taken satellite photos, overlayed them with city and street information, then overlayed that with information on houses for sale (as well as recent sales). The company presents data for King County (Seattle & burbs) only right now, but they hope to expand. Not that I mind the limited selection, given that I live in Seattle. Anyway, this site is a great way to blow a couple of hours...
Jeff Veen gives some good advice to makers of open source content management systems. I hope they listen.