Posts Tagged ‘web’

“To Squint or Scroll? That is the New Question…”

Three words help us to answer this question: “Touch Screen Innovation”. Apple’s iPad and iPhone utilize this technology to revolutionize the way users browse vertically through websites. As a result, modern site design allows for more height in the layout, requiring vertical scrolling. The overall web experience is naturally developing into a scroll and slide approach. Continue reading “To Squint or Scroll? That is the New Question…”

October 6th, 2011 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , in Creative | No Comments »

Google’s (sort of) Wiki of web design…

Google has now launched Google Doctype which, in their words, is Google Doctype is an open encyclopedia and reference library. Written by web developers, for web developers.

What sets this apart from other “how-to’s” is the fact you can log in using your Google account and add to the information.

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May 15th, 2008 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , , in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Day of .NET

Thanks to Linda for forwarding this.  Cleveland is taking part of the “Day of .NET” and details can be found over at http://clevelanddodn.org/.

Subjects to covered are Silverlight, Semantic Web and Sharepoint.  Might be worth a look.

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April 25th, 2008 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , , , in Uncategorized | No Comments »

A shift in industry communication?

I’ve noticed a change in they way I’ve been communicating with people in my extended community online.

Now this is not a trend I’m seeing with everyone online or that would spread to the general populous ant time soon, but it is definitely spreading to those that build and use the web on a day-to-day basis.

Personal web pages have given way to the mighty blog, though social networks are claiming a little of that back now, and video use seems to be on the rise with sites such as Y!Live, DialedIn etc. though it still seems a little too much like a fad.

Daily communications are the things that I have seen the most change in and the delivery methods are in a state of flux.

Tweet!

I’ve mentioned my initial reception to twitter before, but since adopting Snitter I find myself using it more and more.  I’ve tried organizing lunch meetings through it which didn’t go to well (eh, Joe) and ended up using the phone.  So for long-term planning (are you going to XYZ next week?) and general communication I find Twitter does fine.  Also the fact that this is easily used with portable devices, like mobile phones, only adds to it’s adoption.

IM

I was a bit of a hold-out on IM initially too (see a pattern?) but internally it proved a very good method of communicating between the coders & designers here.  Since moving to different digs the use has dropped off as none of the account teams seem to use it that much.  I still keep it open & have found Trillian a great tool for managing the different connections including IRC.

Email=EFAIL

This (for me) originated from a tweet I saw by Tantek Çelik.  He’s since backed it up by a blog post expanding his view on this.  Now I don’t agree with everything put forward there, but as with everything, it’s a reaction to how you use the tools or how they are used at you.

This sparked me to view Merlin Manns’ Inbox Zero video.  It’s well worth watching and since trying the method out today, seems very effective.

Now I don’t think we’ll ever be free of email or that we’ll be doing important client communication via Twitter, but I do think as more of these alternatives seep into every day adoption within companies and the space where we do business continues to shrink – we’ll see email’s sense of immediacy erode and more general discussion moving over to a new medium.

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March 18th, 2008 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , , , , in Uncategorized | No Comments »

The internet is growing again…

When I first started really using the Internet it was through a service called CompuServe and a browser named Mosaic via a 14.4k dial-up in Southend, Essex. It was all new and sites were appearing all the time. The web seemed to be continually expanding and as I started building sites myself using HTML Notepad, I found myself going back to foreigner’s such as Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman who were becoming a constant in my daily “pay-as-you-go” surfing.

By the time I came to the US and started working for Optiem I was more comfortable with my online surroundings. I had a good grasp on where to go for information, had been lucky enough to meet a few of “those foreigners” and concentrated on improving the quality of the sites we were building by introducing CSS for layout, validating against W3C standards, focusing on accessibilty and usability and how all the above effect SEO.

But for a time the web, it seemed, had stopped expanding for me.

Most web designers were on board with CSS, semantic layout, standards-based (X)HTML. Blogs had increased the number of voices but RSS was diminishing the number of sites I actually visited. I found I was actually surfing a lot less though my consumption had increased.

Where I’m going with this ramble is that I feel the web, for me, is expanding again – This time in a new direction with a new toolset. I’m starting to feel as I did back in front of my monitor, listening to the modem and waiting for the new to reveal itself.

Social networks, content distribution, a choice of browsers that can be as individual as their users, the expectation of a truly mobile web that is portable, safe, semantic and built using foundations that make sense. The chance for companies to truly shape and grow their presence on the web in 2008 is HUGE and I’m really looking forward to being part of that.

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November 20th, 2007 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , , , , in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Great post about client observations…

I stumbled onto Eric Karjaluoto‘s post on How to disarm 10 difficult client observations/requests today.  It’s a fun read which I found myself nodding along too.  His take on the responses to give are good and can be easliy adapted to your style of client interaction.

I found this in Laura Carlson’s Web Design Update email.  I’ve dropped a lot of email newsletters (RSS feeds is the way I normally keep up with industry news) but I’ve kept with Laura’s email – some of it duplicates the blogs I read anyway but every issue has something like Eric’s’ post that I might never have found.

Do yourself a favor and give her email a go.

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October 19th, 2007 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , , in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Beef up Firebug with YSlow…

So now we have extensions to add-ons in Firefox.  You can download YSlow now from the Yahoo! Developer Network and boost the results you get out of the excellent Firebug add-on.  With YSlow you can analyze web pages that you are working on listing such things as:

  • number of components (including their type)
  • total size of the web page
  • changes to make the page performance better

If you haven’t already downloaded the latest version of Firebug, do it now and then add YSlow.  Also watch the creator of Firebug talk at the excellent YUI Theater.

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July 25th, 2007 by The Adcom Group Tags: , , , , , in Development | No Comments »