inspiration category
Really interactive websites
Living web sites that grow, develop and evolve to suit the taste of the people that read them are now finding their way on to the internet.
Roger Highfield - Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'
According to the article scientists at Creative Synthesis are evolving a software that tracks the behavior of a visitor and what attracts him and what's not to improve the site experience for each visitor, by every refresh of a page features changed.
This is an awesome new technology that can enhance user experiences very much, can you imagine, tracking a visitor day by day, see what he uses the most what's not, and focus on what he needs the most, The more you use the site the more it gets to know you and adapt more to your needs.
Once the blog went live, control of the design was out of their hands.
Roger Highfield - Web pages have 'come alive and started breeding'
That is really awesome, I didn't see real application of that yet but if it is applied nicely, it will be a revolution in user experience, I mean by applied nicely not to surprise the user by every refresh with different navigation position, links switched, headers or links colors changed, etc....
The transition should be done gradually so the user adapt to it smoothly, I guess people at Creative Synthesis are smart enough to already know what I'm saying, and I hope we see an application of this technology out in the wild, see how far will it get.
April 18, 2008, 11:25 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
My red or your red
As a web designer, I usually like to hear opinions of colleague designers and even unprofessional family members and friends, every opinion I hear gives me more insight of how different visitors reacts to my design.
Ofcourse I get different reactions from "WOW" to "Excuse me, is that a site!", but what really may be a point of discussion is the choice of colors, I always get confused by how various people are in color tastes.
I always thought about this, why people are so different in color tastes? why do some people may adore a design color selections and others hate it?
All my life I've been thinking of this till I get to something and this is what I wanted to say from the beginning after all this introduction, please don't think I'm nuts.
I thought maybe every person see colors differently, for example what you see green I see red or what you see light grade of blue I see it very bluish like the blue in RGB, so now you thinking how do I get to this? why do I think that different eyes see different colors? I tell you why, remember back when your teacher first teach you colors how do she do it? she hold a red card in her hands and said this is red, then a blue card this is blue etc... so every child get in his head that this color is red and that is blue, after class a kid said I like blue color the other said I like green.
I'm not trying to prove something here, I'm just saying why not, maybe my theory is right, how will we know if we see colors differently or not, maybe there is kind of scientific research or something about this issue I don't know maybe scientist could prove or disprove this, but I'm speaking away from science and scientists.
By the way I like orange so much, maybe you see it as big lemons I don't know but I still like it.
August 9, 2007, 9:03 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Happy Cog redesigned
The old Happy Cog site was great but this new site is even greater I like it's sentence navigation very much it delivers the message just perfect, and it's typography, colors & layout are very nice.
Designed by Jason Santa Maria top illustration by Kevin Cornell who is well known by his ALA illustrations Daniel Mall for markup, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and Dan Cederholm set up the WordPress blog.
What do you expect when the best of the web industry minds get together to create this master piece, I hope web designers, developers and more importantly user experience designers learn from those giants how to make a web site.
February 9, 2007, 8:48 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art Of Web Design
Are you a visual designer? All you care about is the visual design of a website, you don't care much about what behinds visual interface like HTML or CSS.
The web has changed, and so has the art of creating web sites. Few visual designers are natural programmers, and as a result, visualizing how to work with markup, CSS and a range of programmatic techniques to create beautiful design is difficult.
Andy Clarke's new book
Transcending CSS: The Fine Art Of Web Design
is for that purpose, Andy is a visual web designer who get over this step and rocked the web with his beautiful designs and in the same time valid semantic markups.
November 26, 2006, 1:00 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
What brilliance behind Doug?
My mind has been hurting me since the last post about doug's change page trying to figure out what he's trying to say, like Glenda said in she's comment Doug Bowman is beyond brilliant.
If your mind hurts you like me I don't advice you to see Doug's new page titled Roulette try refreshing the page and the text will change, any body please help what does Doug mean by putting this roulette and the change poetry on his home page of Stopdesign?
September 8, 2006, 6:44 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
What change for Doug?
Have you seen Stopdesign home page recently, what does Doug mean by these words, what change does he mean? is it something about his work at google, I really don't know, What do you think this is about guys?
Change
Remain
The more you see,
the less you know
The less you find out
as you go
I knew much more then,
than I do now
—Bono, City of Blinding Lights
Check it now, or maybe by the time you read this post the home page is changed so here is a screen shot.
August 29, 2006, 8:16 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
OMG, 37Signals just bought Google!
Is it hard to believe check google now, well I think you got it by now, it's done using a very cool and inspiring tool by Cameron Adams called CSS Love Child.
I've been playing with for a while now. it's very funny to see your site body on other faces check point studios on Joe's face, Andy's face & Dustin's face.
Also encouraging to see other bodies on your face like 37Signals body, Doug's body, Andy's body.
Go have fun and come back here tell us in the comments below what delicious combines you've made.
May 3, 2006, 7:32 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Vitamin
Vitamin a great resource for designers, developers and entrepreneurs, including articles, training, interviews from well known designers and developers like Dan Cederholm, Shaun Inman, Eric Meyer, Dave Shea & Molly. Brought to you by Carson Systems.
Today I read a great article titled How C.R.A.P is Your Site Design? that focuses on 4 aspects that designers often forget which are contrast, repetition, alignment & Proximity.
What are you waiting for, go get some Vitamin ;)
April 18, 2006, 11:26 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
CSS Naked Day
In the spirit of promoting Web Standards along with good semantic markup and proper hierarchy structure, Dustin Diaz will start the first annual CSS naked day on 5th April.
Who has the courage to take off his CSS for a day and show his <body> to every one, check the naked page to see how can you participate and a list of all participants.
I'm in with Point & FRESH PX, see us naked next Wednesday.
April 3, 2006, 10:36 PM Comments 3 TrackBack 0
Today solar eclipse, don't miss it
Total eclipse photo by Juanjaen from Universidad de Barcelona.
Partial eclipse photo by Koalie from Cannes.
Don't miss it today, as it will not be repeated again till maybe 2017, and as you know avoid looking directly at the sun as it may damage your eyes.
For folks here in Egypt it will begin on 12:38 PM (GMT +2:00) it will be 80% partial in Cairo and total in Saloom , I will post photos as soon as I can.
Coverage:
March 29, 2006, 8:15 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Getting Real
37signals reveals the secrets about how they get real in a relatively short period of time in there new book Getting Real, I advice entrepreneurs, designers, programmers, executives & marketers to read it.
March 8, 2006, 4:02 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
"Web 2.0 Show" interview with Jason Fried
Web 2.0 show interviewed Jason Fried the owner of 37 Signals about his different vision of some aspects that let 37 Signals an inspiration to all of us and a leader of Web 2.0 move, he kind of denied it but definitely it is.
They discussed some of his thoughts and opinions that is mainly found on 37 Signals blog Signal vs. Noise
like the less is more
vision and there way of developing web apps by designing it's interface before coding the backend and how ridiculous is beta releases. I can't agree more. any way the incredible success of 37 Signals in such a short time prove the brilliance of his visions.
It's about 45 minutes interview you gotta listen to it.
January 17, 2006, 2:55 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
New era of publishing
How many times have you read a thousand pages book just to know some information that could be written in only 100 pages or even 10, and how many times you forced to buy a hard copy of a book while you wish you could download it, how many times you wanted to actually contribute and help improving books and suggesting ideas.
It looks like publishing strategies need to be updated to cope the new era of innovated bright readers, and I think Rosenfeld Media is this bright new publisher, publishing right to the point books that could be read on a short plane ride.
Unfortunately they are publishing user experience design books only, I understand that maybe for a new era of publishing most of regular readers will not be familiar with it, but user experience designers will be familiar with it as this new way actually is innovated from user experience but it maybe called reader experience, but I hope it will be more familiar to more readers by time especially in the technology related subjects, they didn't published any books yet but I'm expecting really nice books from them.
By the way the magnificent design is Dave Shea's design.
January 13, 2006, 9:53 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Blogging for all
Well I was searching the web and I saw a lot of blogs with one or two posts with old dates. I was thinking why do they stop what stops them, and I thought of writing this post to encourage every body on blogging and describe some miss-understanding about blogging and even about comments.
First of all you don't have to write the perfect post there is no problem if your post has some spelling or grammar mistakes or has some scrambled thoughts that is not perfectly organized. Just write as you write when you are chatting with a close friend.
Don't expect all your readers to like all your posts, you just have to post your thoughts without hurting anybody or giving wrong information if you get out of those two, then your post is perfect.
Why blog?
I see blogging as a big part of education you post technical posts in your field and some body comment it so you learn from this comments, even non-technical posts that should be the majority of posts will also educate you, you know only thinking of a post and starting to organize your thoughts to write it, is useful and will increase your knowledge about this thing you're posting about, it also will improve your language and your communication skills.
So now what are you waiting for go start blogging.
And please leave me a comment any comment let's see what you could come up with, maybe you are not that good in English or you don't know much about blogging and what I'm talking about, but sure your comment will reflect your opinion and your thought in that post and in that blog in general.
Here is an example of a blogger who know how to do it right but he prefer not to, because he want to write about what he believes in not just impress his readers.
December 11, 2005, 2:22 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 1
How to be creative
It is a post by hugh macleod, Titled How to be creative, hugh macleod came up with a creative idea which is drawing cartoons on the back of business cards. And now he wrote this post to share with the world his experience in being creative, and a lot of useful tips in the way of climbing the Mount Everest as he call it.
I got inspired and encouraged a lot with this post, it's a very long post but I like to mention the 30 points that he coined out as the main points for being creative.
- Ignore everybody.
- The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to change the world.
- Put the hours in.
- If your biz plan depends on you suddenly being "discovered" by some big shot, your plan will probably fail.
- You are responsible for your own experience.
- Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.
- Keep your day job.
- Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
- Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.
- The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
- Don't try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether.
- If you accept the pain, it cannot hurt you.
- Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.
- Dying young is overrated.
- The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do, and what you are not.
- The world is changing.
- Merit can be bought. Passion can't.
- Avoid the Watercooler Gang.
- Sing in your own voice.
- The choice of media is irrelevant.
- Selling out is harder than it looks.
- Nobody cares. Do it for yourself.
- Worrying about "Commercial vs. Artistic" is a complete waste of time.
- Don’t worry about finding inspiration. It comes eventually.
- You have to find your own schtick.
- Write from the heart.
- The best way to get approval is not to need it.
- Power is never given. Power is taken.
- Whatever choice you make, The Devil gets his due eventually.
- The hardest part of being creative is getting used to it.
To read the explanation of every point read the complete post
Thanks a lot hugh macleod the words can't express how much I learned and inspired from this article.
November 27, 2005, 3:21 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0