Escalator temporarily stairs … sorry for the convenience.
Too good on the way to work today:
Kind of a crappy image (taken via celli), but still gotta make you feel a little good.
ALA at it again
Two (count ’em 2) articles on the importance content plays (or at least “should play”) in good design. It somehow still amazes me, how still so too often layout is allowed to dictate content rather than content determining what the layout should accommodate.
Expression Engine ASCII Encoder plugin
Just a plugin I wrote (and the Ellis crew cleaned up and optimized) for Expression Engine as an alternative to the built in JavaScript Email encoding. Submitted to their Add-On library as well, however it never seemed to get posted after they cleaned up the code. It's similar to some plugins that are already out there, but a bit simpler and a little more straight-forward.
It's easy to use, just enclose the text you want to encode in the plugins tags.
{exp:ascii_encode}Text to encode{/exp:ascii_encode}
Ideal for masking Email addresses and any other content you might not want harvested.
Download it here, and upload pi.ascii_encode.php to your plugins directory.
ASCII Email Encoder
A simple form for encoding text to ASCII characters. It’s by no means “100% bot-proof” and will most likely someday not be an effective way to hide text from harvesters, but I've been using this exact method for the past 6–8 months with great success. There are other similar Web-apps out there, but many seem to have their own set of caveats (e.g. some convert all text to lowercase, etc.). This incarnation should display whatever characters you enter as they are entered (case intact).
*Note: It’s not much to look at right now (I’ll dress it up some when I get a chance), but should be functioning fine. Please feel free to leave any bugs you run into in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.
The Best ALA Article I’ve Read This Year
Admittedly, I haven’t read all of the ALA articles this year, … but this one, perhaps solely for its assertion that “Web design is a discipline,” really struck a cord with me.
Improvements in Safari 3 Beta
I’m not sure if it’s just out of habit, or convenience, or if somewhere in my subconscious I preferred it’s [apparent] quickness, but I almost always find myself using Safari when browsing the Web. So, needless to say I downloaded the beta of version 3.0 as soon as it was available on apple.com. I’m sure there's numerous improvements made, and I'm not even entirely sure what they've been trying to sell it on, but from a design/development standpoint, a few new features and fixes have already caught my eye.
- Support for styling of form elements
- This was always kind of a bummer, both when using Safari or when designing a site. Using Safari, you always knew you might not be getting the whole picture when it came to styled form elements. And from a design standpoint, you never wanted to do anything too drastic that might only partially style form elements for Safari users. As lame as I feel admitting it, I’m totally excited that Safari’s supporting form element styling, though probably more from a user viewpoint. It’s so weird running across styled submit buttons I’ve done for past projects and since forgotten about.
- HTML over Flash
- This used to be a problem in [nearly?] all major browsers. Dropdowns in that primary-nav resting right above your main Flash content, never seemed to behave quite right. Flash always bullying that HTML content for top z-index. Well now Safari (as well as Firefox) users can view all the HTML content they want on top of Flash player.
- Improved “Find”
- No more searching for that pale-blue highlight. Command+f now dims the whole page (or source) with all instances of the searched text remaining un-dimmed, and the current/target found instance being highlighted in orange.
There are a couple of annoyances that come along with the beta though – not the least of which is the resizable textarea elements. I’m all for providing the user with desired functionality, but this one just seems a little too weird for me. Personally, I think it’s the designer’s responsibility to ensure a textarea is sized adequately, if not, increasing the browser’s font-size should provide the flexibility to scale the textarea to a reasonable and usable alternative. I haven’t looked into how the textarea’s parent element’s width must be defined to ensure it scales with the textarea, and I can't say I'm going to concern myself with it any time soon. A behavior this quirky in a browser is a bit of a detractor for me. It’s only the beta Ryan, it’s only the beta
The Cornelius Group are Robots
Last Monday, the 7th, some friends and I had the opportunity to check out “The Cornelius Group ‘Sensuous Synchronized Show,’” and the name’s pretty much spot-on … it was almost exactly what I was anticipating (which isn’t a bad thing at all), probably even a little better. The closest thing I can think of comparing it to would maybe be what I imagine a Velvet Underground show at Warhol’s Factory might have been like – except Lou Reed’s a malfunctioning robot covering Mr. Bungle covering Drug Me … and that my friend is why I don’t write reviews for Rolling Stone. Pitchfork’s got some good pictures up that are almost as bright and ridiculous as I remember the show being.
Anyway, if you haven’t had a chance to check out the show, and you’re not in Europe, I think you’re officially out of luck for the time being. So, here’s a clip that maybe almost comes close to capturing the overwhelmingness of the whole crazy effing show.
Simplify
With a recent influx in requests for estimates coming from my site over the last few weeks, I decided it time to change formats a bit. In late November, I accepted a full-time position as senior Web designer with Juice Interactive in Chicago. I’d like to, for the time being, dedicate my professional efforts solely to Juice, and am therefore currently not accepting any freelance work (and will most likely not be for the remainder of 2007). Please contact Juice if you’re interested in working with me. We’ve got a great (and still quaint), specialized team of individuals, affording each of us the opportunity to focus on our respective areas of expertise. It’s still the same quality work … but now instead of spending my nights balancing the books and worrying about taxes and billing, I can focus solely on what I know and do best (and maybe get a couple hours of sleep every now and then).
That said, expect a bit of a change around here. I intend to post more frequently and more personal content going forward (not having to take care of the billing off the clock will hopefully give me a chance to get out and enjoy the city a little more). So, in short, I’m looking forward to the change in formats for the site and my life.