Tongue-Tied
It's daunting. That big white box waiting to be filled with text. The blinking cursor waiting for some reason to dance across the screen. You sit there and wait and think maybe this time something will come out. Then the phone rings, a coworker stops by, you get a craving for lemon chess pie, or you just need to get one more kill to finish that really hard quest. And you're off again ...
Yes, I've neglected this space for quite awhile. It wasn't intentional, really - it just happened. Every once in awhile, I'd glance over and notice the cobwebs, the dust, and think, "Hey, I should really do something about that." And for a short moment I'd ponder what to say, what to do. And then I'd find some other more pressing thing to do.
In the meantime, life has happened. Time has flown by and plans for the future have been replaced by memories. I've moved to an apartment in the city, within walking distance of a myriad restaurants, shops, museums, parks, and other distractions. I've designed more websites and publications at work. I've met new friend and seen old friends move away. I've grown a beard, shaved it off, and grown it again.
Am I back? Maybe. I still like this little place, I think it has potential, and I do want to visit it more often. I just don't want to promise anything ... in the meantime, I'll see what I can do about these cobwebs and that strange musty smell.
Madobedia: The Future of Design
I'm not a fan of corporate mergers and the gradual consolidation of companies that seems to be happening across most industries, so news of Adobe purchasing Macromedia left a bad initial taste in my mouth. After a bit of reflection and reading a few early impressions (one, two, three) around the Web, I can say that I'm a little assuaged but still have quite a few doubts. Things will definitely change with the products each company offers, but I wonder whether users will welcome all of the changes.
The Good
This merger can only strengthen the position of Flash and SVG graphics for the Web. Adobe's SVG support has been growing by leaps and bounds in the last few releases of their products; with an influx of Flash developers and the industry clout of Adobe, I hope that we'll see SVG support grow not only in Adobe/Macromedia products but in browsers and other software as well.
Tighter product integration between the two companies' respective suites will almost certainly be an outcome. How easy can they make it to export Photoshop comps into Dreamweaver? Sure, most web developers will still prefer to have their hands on the code, but just think of the rapid prototyping possibilities. If you can create a workable prototype in half the time, you might not have to show up to client meetings with Photoshop comps and explain, "This is where you'd click to do X."
I think we could see better print-to-web conversion as well. Macromedia is almost universally recognized as the industry leader in web design technology, and Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator software is the de facto standard in the print world. Even InDesign (though still a relative newcomer) is making huge leaps in acceptance with printers. Converting print documents for the web has been an issue for a long time; personally, I still prefer copying and pasting text from one program to another. If this merger can make that workflow easier, that alone will satisfy many people.
The Bad
No marriage is without its flaws. (Not that I can speak from experience.) What will happen to a number of competitive products after this merger has completed? I think it's safe to say that Photoshop, Flash, and Acrobat will exist more or less unchanged. What about Dreamweaver and GoLive? Will they be merged? Will one be dropped in favor of the other. Logically, it makes more sense to maintain Dreamweaver as it has a much larger market share, but it is Adobe buying Macromedia. ImageReady and Fireworks? This is tougher for me to call - a lot more people seem satisfied with Fireworks, but I'm not very familiar with it. I also hardly ever use ImageReady - particularly not the newer versions. (It always seemed like a mostly redundant copy of Photoshop to me.) And what about that bastard child of Macromedia, Director? Will it finally breath its last as Flash continues its inexorable climb to the top? (I have nothing against Director - my experiences with both, several years ago, left me favoring Director for multimedia production. Flash, I'm told, has come a long way since then, while Director seems to have stagnated a bit.)
The Ugly
Macromedia and Adobe are direct competitors and are two of the strongest names in the design field. As a single company with little in the way of major competition, can we dare to hope that they'll still strive to create amazing products that focus on the designers and developers that use them? Or need we fear that the Creative Suite will become the Microsoft Office of the creative world? Does this open the field at all to major competition from Apple? (With the iLife and iWork suites, is there an iCreate suite down the road?) What about Corel? (Hahahaha. No, seriously.)
The only thing for us peons to do right now, however, is sit and watch. We can cross our fingers and hope for the best, but somehow things will change.
SXSW Plans & First Time Tips
Goodness, I keep meaning to say this outright and forgetting, so here goes. Yes, I'm heading back to SXSW this year, along with everyone and his mother. I'll be there for the duration of the interactive conference, arriving Friday afternoon and leaving Wednesday morning. In between panels, parties, and eating out, I may be found sleeping in the Hampton Inn Hotel at odd hours. Anyway, this is my second year, and I've somehow managed to convince a few friends to come. The following tips are for them and for anyone else who may be coming for the first time.
SXSW Tips for First-Timers
First and foremost, come to have fun. Leave your work at home, and bring your hawaiian shirts if you have them. I made this mistake last year, bringing a few projects that had to get done while I was there. As a result, I missed out on quite a bit. I'm not making the same mistake this year. Don't you make it, either.
That said, bring your laptop if you've got one. A large part of the meeting and greeting I did last year was sitting in the hall next to the power outlets along with most of the other geeks. Yeah yeah, only geeks would consider power outlets a great meeting spot. And as Jeffrey Veen pointed out last year, Rendezvous and iChat make for a great way of discussing things in panels. (For those that have Macs at least - PC users, be prepared to be jealous.)
Also, bring business cards. You will meet a lot of people, and a lot of people will meet you. Your business card is just one way to help them remember.
Speaking of meeting people, come play kickball! It's always fun, it's a great way to meet people, and it's a great way to start out the conference. Even if you don't want to play, at least come to watch and cheer. Besides, everyone usually goes out to lunch afterwards.
Finally, yeah, there's a huge list of panels, and it's very hard to choose which to attend. But you don't have to commit to them in advance; in fact, you're allowed to change your mind even in the middle of a panel! (So long as you don't distract people leaving, that is.) Seriously, though - don't feel like you have to commit to specific panels or "tracks" - branch out and go to something that might not necessarily be your forte. You can learn as much or as little as you want while you're there. Into CSS? Check out a wifi panel. Big movie nut? Check out the journalism panels.
So, in short, here are my tips: Meet people. Have fun. Learn lots. Be your geeky self. Oh, and if you see me, stop me and say "Hey," because I'm pretty shy and can sometimes space out. But I would love to meet you.
Web Design and Architecture
At the Web Standards Project weblog a few weeks ago, Ian Lloyd pointed out a post on Web Pages that Suck entitled The Biggest Web Design Mistakes of 2004. In his article, Vincent Flanders claims that one of the biggest web design mistakes of 2004 is "Mystical belief in the power of Web Standards, Usability, and tableless CSS,"
There is nothing wrong with any of the above except they're being touted by...guess who?...people who offer web design services specializing in...guess what?...Web Standards, Usability, and tableless CSS. These are simply tools. Remember, nobody gets excited about the tools used to build a house ("Please tell me what brand of hammers you used!"). People get excited about how the house looks and performs.
He goes on to discuss that businesses aren't interested in standards, usability, or the code behind a site; they are only interested in increasing traffic and revenue and turning over more customers. This is all very true (and something that, yes, standards zealots can sometimes ignore). However, the growing endorsement of web standards is based on more than just a mystical belief; it is the logical conclusion of intelligent designers and developments who see real results from their implementation of web standards and who hope to positively influence the future of a still fledgling industry.
Blueprints, Plans, and Walkthroughs
Don't look now, Mr. Flanders, but there's a problem with your analogy. You compare web standards and usability to "tools used to build a house." That's just silly. In keeping with your architectural analogy, web standards would be more akin to the building specifications, building materials (should we use wood? cement? brick?), and perhaps even local zoning and building regulatory laws. Those comparisons may seem a bit disparate, and they are. But web standards encompass several different concepts - not only the code behind the actual site, but also the specifications and code ideologies that code is based on.
Also in his analogy, usability studies would more accurately relate to architectural walkthroughs, industry best practices, and the regular discourse between an architect and a tenant that must happen for both sides to be mutually satisfied. It's funny how these are sounding less like tools, and more like the things that are worthwhile considerations from the client's side.
What Are the Tools Then?
So what are those tools that Mr. Flanders mentions (like the hammer)? The tools are the basic software and reference guides that go into producing a website. Like construction tools, these tools aren't necessary to hold the house together once it's built. But when you need to update your website, you can pull them out again.
Idea #1: Attachment Reminders
You type up an email to send a file to a friend or coworker, and click send. Whoops, you forgot to attach the file. It's happened to everyone. Embarrassingly enough, I once did this three times in a row for the same file. Why is it so hard to remember? I'm not sure, but I suspect it has something to do with the foreign nature of attaching files in most email applications.
I've begun to rely on MarsEdit for updating this website, and one of the biggest reasons is a little feature that warns me before sending a post if I haven't filled one of the fields. (I can choose which fields are required for each weblog.)
This feature has got me thinking about email clients and how useful attachment reminders could be. As I see it, there are a few different ways to approach reminders:
Check the message for an attachment context. This could be difficult to implement. At its most basic, it would require a basic search of the email message for terms that might imply an attachment: attach (and all forms thereof), include, file, document, etc.
Always verify before sending. This would probably get annoying for most people.
Check only for certain recipients. Again, this would probably get annoying for some people, but if emails to certain individuals often or always include attachments, a reminder might be useful.
Is this too much to expect of software? Should software try to anticipate user error of this sort?
From Beneath You It Devours
Tell my loved ones I love them. Tell everyone else, well, something endearing. The state of Virginia is about to be devoured by a demented hybrid of Barney and Yoshi. And I'm off to stock up on the essentials (maybe a generator so my World of Warcraft sessions can continue uninterrupted?). If I somehow manage to survive the 4 to 6 inches of slush that's been predicted, I'll try to send a post via carrier pigeon. Do they speak XML-RPC yet?
</sarcasm> Seriously, though, I'm glad winter finally decided to show up in Virginia.