Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for January, 2005
Flickr-powered Color Schemes
Here’s an interesting blend of the classic online color scheme generator and Adam Polselli’s ‘Where’d ya get that Color Scheme‘.
KrazyDad.com has constructed a Flickr-powered color schemer. Click a color swatch and the schemer queries the Flickr archive of images for random color matched images. Clever.
Access All Areas
One of the happy side effects of the CSS revolution has been the new spotlight that it has given to web accessibility issues. Often designers and developers who were initially drawn to table-less layout for other reasons (i.e. speed, adaptability, philosophical reasons, etc), have become increasingly convinced of the benefits and importance of providing accessible content as they progressed.
Of course, becoming a convinced of the worth of accessibility is one thing, but developing the workaday processes that translate those principles into well-tested, working applications is quite another.
Normally when an important new browser/device appears on the scene, supporting it is not much more difficult than installing the new client and testing your work on it. At worst, you may need to scrounge an old Mac to run Safari and IE5Mac on (as we do), or perhaps a Knoppix CD for Konquerer. And even if you’re not a dedicated Opera diva, you can still easily test your pages on that browser without any outlay.
Screen reader seem to be a much more difficult prospect.
Freedom Scientific’s Jaws, which is generally acknowledged to control a majority share of the screen reader market, is a case in point.
Imagine you just got through …
When things go sour
Inevitably in your career, a project will go sour and you will need to transition out of a project. You can go down easy or hard when this happens. Here are some tips from someone working this out right now:
1. Don’t take it personally. Don’t be self-righteous. If you do, you will hurt your reputation and create more stress than you need to create. For instance, I know one developer who actually requested a formal apology as part of a transition settlement, which perhaps made sense to him at the time, but made him look kind of immature and naive as well. Just suck it up, be professional, and work towards an amicable settlement.
2. Get what you are owed. Go to the contract. If the contract states that the client owes you money, get that money. Be sure to have a clause in any termination agreement about how you get paid, what you have to do, and when you get paid. If you can, get paid up front.
3. Get a formal closing agreement in writing. Everything should be in writing.
4. Offer a warranty. One developer did this in a situation, and it made a difference in building trust and …
2004 - Open Source Year in Review
The year in review looks at some of the key developments in 2004 that could impact on a large scale AND more importantly squarely impact web professionals.
While there were dozens of people, programs and events that could be reviewed - I selected these as they first have a big impact on non-web professionals (namely current and prospective customers) that can have very positive results for your business.
As open source mainstreams to corporate folk, it becomes that much easier to build open source solutions into your proposals, opening up bidding for larger clients where perhaps software licensing issues kept you away in the past.
Lessons from a solid consultative sales call
A potential IT vendor made a terrific impression yesterday on a consultative sales call. I thought I’d share with you a few of the things he did to make the call productive:
1. He has a clear point of view, area of expertise, and niche. In his case, he has two edges: He knows how to find and tie together certain types software; and he knows how to find the best resources around the world to do that. But he knows what he is, and what he isn’t, and so it is easy for prospects separate him from others.
2. He knows his stuff. He was able to give clear examples of work he has done that meets the requirements I/we seek.
3. He asked great questions about what I/we are trying to do, pushing my own knowledge.
4. He connected technology to business by asking great questions and making solid comments, like:
- In your situation, speed is more important than quality. Here’s how you can launch fast, while saving lots of money and getting revenue in quickly….
5. He pushed back, and came to us as an equal, not a tacky salesperson. He told what he could and couldn’t do, made no guarantees, …
United Nations Joins Open Source
The United Nations is beginning to put its formidable capabilities into the open source community, initially through its International Open Source Network, which operates in the Asia-Pacific region.
The division calls itself a center of excellence for free and open source software offering educational materials, public sessions with speakers (including Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation) from the open source sphere and acting as an advocate for open source technology in general in the region.
The mission is put forth clear as a vision to reduce the digital divide where Linux and open source solutions serve as an economic alternative in scenarios where budget dollars are tight.
Open source has certainly proved over the last decade that operations large and small can deploy sophisticated platforms without the significant cost of proprietary software licensing. These efforts were mirrored by Sun Microsystems in releasing an open source Solaris. At today’s conference call announcing Open Solaris, Sun representatives (including CEO Scott McNealy and prodigal son Tom Goguen, back fresh from a stint with Apple) stated that in part the motivation in bringing the OS out free and open source is to provide enterprise-class capabilities in developing countries …
Hail the WDT — We are not worthy!
As fast and secure and cool as the Firefox web browser is, if I had to name my number one reason for using Firefox as my primary browser, there’s a simple answer — the Web Developer Toolbar.
Although I dimly remember a time, long ago, when I worked without it, like many other developers, my processes are now so entwined with the WDT that I’d find it hard to work without it.
And as the web developer community has made up a critical element of Phoniex/Firebird/Firefox’s ‘RA-RA’ squad throughout it’s teething period, it’s difficult to dismiss the importance of the WDT in helping to get Firefox to it’s current position of relative strength.
Chris Pederick, we salute you!
Anyway, as I was away for the last update (0.92 - Jan 3rd), I thought I’d check out the new features.
So what possible improvement could they make? Personalized horoscopes? Nail clippers? Espresso? ..
Not in this release, but almost as good.
For anyone who’s spent any time working on custom print or handheld stylesheets, life just got better. Forget ‘Print Preview’ — with a few simple clicks you can now view your print styles directly in the browser. Nice!
Three Case Studies: Are you a superstar?
Last blog asked if you are a flake. This blog presents the other side of the coin. Here are 3 case studies of superstar web designers I am working with, and lessons learned from them:
1. Arthur is a superstar because he has defined a niche talent for himself: He knows more about designing to get customers to convert to paid subscribers than almost anyone else out there. His career focus has been on sites that attract and convert subscribers. So he knows all about which types of offers and page flows work best, and he can also bring a clean sense of results-driven design to the process.
2. Jim creates web designs and overall marketing collateral/design for emerging technology companies. He is gifted at creating a unique look and feel for a company, so that it stands out to investors, partners and potential clients alike. His standards are high, and he refuses to let anything go out unless it meets the look and feel he wants the company to have. So he takes a leadership role in representing and standing for the company’s overall brand.
3. Catherine moves from home to home, housesitting. She has an extremely low overhead situation as a …
X11 on Mac OS X From the Experts
Apple has published an excellent guide to installing, configuring and running X11 on OS X at the Apple Developers Connection. The post includes excellent detail on getting the environment setup to your preference and also on working with remote servers.
There are some trade-offs considering the core Terminal in OS X has very nice integration with the GUI such as drag and drop. However, when you need an environment to run X11 apps - you cannot beat having the core BSD-Unix kernel of Darwin to run X11 on and still having immediate access to OS X.
One nice feature of X11 on the Mac is Finder integration - meaning if you double-click on an X11 app in OS X it will launch in X11.
Are you a flake?
It never ceases to amaze me how many flakes work in the IT world. Yes, flakes.
Just this week, I’m ready to hire an IT firm to get started on a project. We agree to kick off the process on Wednesday. Do they show? Do they communicate? No. They eventually send a note saying they will be ready to start Monday. Flakes!
Are you a flake? If any of the following apply to you, others may perceive you to be a flake:
- You show up late for meetings
- You are late with deliverables
- You make excuses, like you had a technology or Internet glitch, to explain lateness
- There are constant mismatches between what you and your client think you are delivering
- You have inflated your resume to get a job (meaning you may not be qualified for that job, but aren’t willing to be open and honest about your qualifications — something that is extremely common in tech, and especially Silicon Valley where I used to check references for IT folks)
- Your clients complain about how long it takes you to get things done, even if your quality is eventually good
- Fundamental flaws are discovered in your applications, things like security breaches, …
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