April 2004 Archives

Six months ago, I went in for an eye exam. I usually enjoy the part with the dilating drops. Sitting in the chair and looking around the room I commented on how trippy it is being unable to focus your eyes on anything. The doctor said "Its a good preview to life in your 40's". After a minor panic attack about inevitability of growing old, it occurred to me: is this how people over 40 have to look at the web?

I can't tell you how many times co-workers, aunts, grandparents, even my father-in-law complain about how hard it is to read text on a computer screen. Often, what is a perfectly legible font-size to me, is hard for them to read. It gets worse when I tell them how to change the text-size in their browser, only for them to complain that it didn't work.

Why? Because Interenet Explorer doesn't adjust fonts set to pixel-width, which is a very popular way to define font-sizes on the web for cross-browser and platform consistency. Alas, with a little CSS and Javascript, someone cleverly devised a way around IE's shortfall by providing an interface widget to control text sizes! Essentially, an accessibility hack.

Yesterday, Keith Robinson asked whether "font-size widgets are truly useful". For users caught in the IE/pixel-width font trap, I'd say it is more than useful, its necessary.

With better browser support, the encouraged solution is to set font-sizes using EMs. But many web designers still insist on using pixel-width declarations, either for design purposes or simply unwillingness to try a new method.

Therefore, if your site's target audience demographic is over 40, and the designer insists on defining fonts by pixel, a font-size widget should be a requirement. It is a small design cost for adding a level of accessibility that your target audience needs.

Design Update of the Day - 4/27/04

I have a plan. Using a little web-fu, bottle up everything I want to tell the world into a 800x600 screen. Simple.

I will:

• Postulate about my love for internet radio
• Explain what drives me to scream about designing for the web on the inside for Corporate America
• Argue excellent questions posted on web logs everyday, and ask some of my own
• Constantly fight for the rights of the user, and the value of his/her experience.

I will write about what I love, hate, and just don't understand.

How its going down

I do two things everyday. I read a set of web logs and magazine sites as if it were my daily newspaper, and I listen to internet radio while working. So, two things will be featured on the site are my favorite radio stations, and what of my daily reading that day I feel its important others to read.

I've already set up the categories, and I plan on letting that grow with the site.

Up Next

Document structures and layouts for the different parts of the site, dab in a little color, and maybe drop in a graphic or two.

Design update of the day - 4/26/04

I had to clean up the look of the site a little, I just couldn't stand waiting until I had my plan in place.

Font-sizing

Today I moved all of the fonts in the stylesheet to "em"s. There are many options for font-sizing on the web:Keyword Based, Pixel Based, Picas, Points, you get the idea.

My favorite technique as of late is prescribed by Owen Briggs, that calls for setting the body element to a percentage (76% is his recommendation after testing 276 configurations of platforms and browsers), and using em units in CSS to define all of the font-sizes on the page. I like how it changes uniformly with the text-size setting in the browser. I've also starting to use ems for my margin settings.

Categories

I've never actually used this function of MovableType before, so there is more work to be done, but I've created a list on the left hand for Categories, and have started using them for my entries.

Next Up

I still need to get a plan up here, even a very informal one, but I think the next step will be defining document structures for all parts of my site and adding some very important content to the homepage (namely Internet Radio).

Till next time...

I've spent my entire career working inside large companies. It has afforded me some really good opportunities, but has also come with a large disadvantage—I am often the only person that I know of in the company that is as excited about web design as I am.

As a result of this, I'm currently the only person in my company aware of, and practicing, web standards. But the time has come where CSS/XHTML and semantic markup are no longer a "luxury for web-geeks". Standards-based web design has taken root firmly in the internet, and the rest of the team needs to get on board, fast.

There are so many resources on the web for standards, and a couple of great books on CSS and standards, that I was able to cull together an outline for a one-day, jump in feet first, standards class for my co-workers.

I realize that I can't be the only one facing the issue of educating co-workers who are perfectly comfortable with Dreamweaver 4, and don't feel the need to continuously learn about web design. So I decided to share my outline here with all of you. It is still a work in progress but nearly all of the points are there.

My day in the classroom will come in a couple of weeks. After which, I will publish a follow-up with any updates to the outline and add the examples I reference with the simple "Example" now.

I would love to hear any feedback people might have on the outline itself, or teaching experiences they have had.

Cameron Moll has asked the question: "What was you're first website".

It took a little work, but I was able to cull together my first website I did back at the turn of the century. I had just finished my first HTML class and took on helping my friend with his website for the Volkswagen Enthusiasts Club of Colorado.

The design has since been replaced, and as much as I cringe when I look at it, I can't help but feel a little love for it. The site is kind of like the first girl you ever kissed, it was probably awkward and you tried too hard, but it opened up a whole new world.

Inspired by so many amazing personal websites out there, I've decided its time to jump into the ring and share my experiences, hoping that I can add to the already great discussions on experience design, web design, standards, and much much more.

My name is Sean King. I am a web designer and over the next month or so I will be building my personal site (inspirednonsense.com) here, before your eyes, out in the open. I will try my best to document how and why as I make design decisions, while informing of resources I use for technical issues and inspiration, and detailing many expected headaches along the way.

I know people have shared their insight while redesigning their sites before, but I come into this with no real plan for layout, graphics, or any design. The only preconception I have is for content and that I want to start sharing my experiences as a web designer and as a person.

So this is how I've begun. With an "inspired" domain name and the basic Movable Type template.

What's Next: I will do my best to come up with a basic project plan for getting this site developed and designed and share that here in the next week. I've never developed a personal site before, so I will have to do some real work defining what I want to do with this site!