I’ve been on an inspiration curation kick lately. At the end of September, 2011, I signed up for Gimmiebar, a more niche-focused curation site akin to the web 2.0 social bookmarking site del.icio.us. The idea behind the service is when you stumble upon something awesome, be it an image, text, or most videos, you can save it to your gimmiebar using their handy browser extension or bookmarklet. You can find your friends and follow them like any social network and see what they add to their collections in the Discovery section. I must not be following the right people as now and then I will see what others are finding only to come up uninspired. There’s no sitewide search but there is a Notable section that you can peruse.

The gimmiebar extension for Chrome or bookmarklet for other browsers (both do the same thing) is slick. Activating your gimmiebar gives you two drop zones for dragging images into: your Public Firehose and Private Stash. Once you add your image you can add it to one or more collections or create a new collection on the fly. You’re given the option to give a description and tagging is done inline by adding a # before a word.

Gimmiebar does a really good job of being quick and painless. I also like how they save a copy of the image or website incase the original source should go offline. You can even hook up your Dropbox account and have your saved images saved to the cloud as another backup. Overall Gimmiebar has good tools for personal curation but lacks in the social aspect. I’m sure this will get better over time as more and more people start using it. Pinterest, on the other hand, has a huge focus on socially sharing interesting things found on the web. You create boards which you pin different things to. Your friends can see what you have pinned and even repin it to their boards. Repinning is just like reposting on Tumblr or re-tweeting on Twitter.

My favorite feature of Pinterest is their search feature, which works well. Just enter a term and you get back a large swath of different images to pore over. Since the community is so active, you will want to keep checking your favorite searches for new inspiration. Commenting is also there but I don’t see much conversation occurring on pins. Pinterests audience is heavily female oriented. There is a lot of fashion, do-it-yourself crafts, wedding, recipes and decorating pins going through my stream. But that’s ok because there is also a lot of robots.

With all the buzz surrounding Pinterest and their traffic numbers going up and up every month, it’s no wonder the site can slow down to a crawl from time to time. Ingesting and searching through all of those images is a tough job for any systems engineer at Pinterest’s scale. Hopefully that $27 million in funding will ease some of their growing pains. So while both invite-only services are based around the same concept, curating inspiration, I’ve found myself using both for different purposes. Gimmiebar is more for my design/photography/art inspiration while Pinterest is for collecting fashion and home ideas. Kristina is also on Pinterest and we share a board which is fun to pin stuff to when I find interesting stuff for her. It’s also neat to learn about your friends based on what things they collect. Be sure to give both sites a try. I have plenty of invites for both. You can find me on Gimmiebar and on Pinterest. Pinterest Vs. Gimmiebar by Russell Heimlich

How to use Google's text to speech api. 

Use CSS3 Animations with jQuery for better performance especially in mobile apps.

Best practices for designing a website layout and handing it off to a developer. Little things can go a long way.

Awesome generator for coming up with random domain names and stuff.

Ordered by when the domain name was registered.http://dummyimage.com (2007-07-20)http://fpoimg.com (2010-01-26)http://nosrc.net (2010-02-04)http://placehold.it (2010-02-04)http://placekitten.com (2010-11-22)http://placehold.us (2011-01-14)http://placedog.com (2011-03-01)http://flickholdr.com (2011-03-05)http://placesheen.com (2011-03-07)http://lorempixum.com (2011-03-23)Other Dummy Image Generators that I couldn’t figure out when they were createdhttp://ipsumimage.appspot.com (???)http://mrspeaker.github.com/lowersrc/ (???)I’m glad dummyimage.com inspired others to build a placeholder image service and expand upon my original idea. You can download my source code and do whatever you want with it.Thanks to Web Resource Depot for the round-up where I first heard about many of these sites.List Of Dummy Image Generators by Russell Heimlich

Using prime numbers to generate seamless tiled backgrounds

A heaping of mobile web resources and links to different data points.

See the details of a users browser set-up including browser version, OS, screen resolution, etc.

List of apps for completely free wire framing and design mockups.

Equations for calculating the contrast of two colors.

Build native iOS apps using JavaScript

Tricks for enhancing a mobile version of a site tailored to iOS devices.

Disclaimer: I worked as a developer at U.S.News & World Report from 2006 – 2009.News broke late on Friday that U.S.News & World Report was ending the monthly print version of it’s magazine. The focus going forward will be “a predominantly digital publishing model” according to editor Brian Kelly. The leaked  e-mail mentioned shifting their focus to emerging platforms, specifically tablet computers.“…these latest moves will accelerate our ability to grow our online businesses and position ourselves to take advantage of the emerging platforms for distributing information such as the iPad and Android tablets.”I’m generally a fan of this position but I really hope USNews executes their strategy the right way. When it comes to mobile platforms, their are two options: web apps and native apps. When most people think of apps on phones and tablets they are thinking about native apps. Apple’s App Store and the Android Marketplace distribute and sell native apps; apps which need to be built specifically for each platform and need to be downloaded and installed. Web apps, on the other hand, are open to anything running a web browser.Mobile web apps are what USNews should be focused on. Chances are they don’t have anyone in-house with knowledge of building native apps, so that task would have to be outsourced at an additional cost. Meanwhile the stable of talented in-house web developers could start work on building a platform-independent experience as soon as possible. In the meantime they should read this online book, Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and [removed] Making App Store Apps Without Objective-C or Cocoa.But development talent aside, building on top of the open web is flexible. Updates can be pushed out nearly instantly without the need to go through a gatekeeper or approval process. As new platforms emerge, you’re brand is covered so long as it can connect to the web. Much of the functionality of native apps can be accomplished in non-desktop browsers like those found on phones and tablets. See check.in, iphone.netvibes.com, and even Apple’s own webapps catalog for examples of apps built on the web. For content publishers, native apps present far more problems than they appear to solve.But what about money? Perhaps the biggest allure of native apps is the fact that they are attached to marketplaces where everyone browsing has a credit card attached to their account and purchases can happen with a single click. But do you get direct contact with your customers? Apps that want to span many platforms need their own payment process that they can be in control of. That way regardless of how or what platform your audience uses to accesses your content, they will get a consistent experience. And if you want to charge a recurring subscription for premium access your only option is to run your own payment platform. USNews already has this up and running with their Best Colleges and Digital Weekly products so why not extend that?And judging from the past releases of magazine brands on the iPad, the industry is getting it wrong. They can’t just shove their traditional print product onto a touchscreen device with a few gestural interactions and call it a day. Jeffery Zeldman sums it up best in his post iPad as the new Flash“Everything we’ve learned in the past decade about preferring open standards to proprietary platforms and user-focused interfaces to masturbatory ones is forgotten as designers and publishers once again scramble to create novelty interfaces no one but them cares about.”So usnews.com is at a pivotal point where the company can focus on building a proprietary native app or an open web app. Today, it just seems so obvious to me to go the web app route. Native apps may seem like the answer today in the short term, but in the long term, their fragmentation overhead will hold them back for publishers while the open web will reign supreme.I hope U.S.News & World Report doesn’t fuck this up.U.S.News & World Report Needs To Bet On The Web by Russell Heimlich

Website performance is a big deal. Experiments conducted by the biggest websites on the net conclude page performance is directly related to revenue. Bing.com found a 2 second slow down equals a 4.3% reduction in revenue per user. A 400 millisecond delay on Google search pages led to 0.59% fewer searches per user. Aol found users who experience the fastest Web page load times view 50% more pages per visit than users experiencing the slowest page load times.Content Delivery Networks (CDN) can be a big boost in page speed by 1) saving a copy of the fully-rendered page and 2) serving that copy from a server as close to the user as possible. Big CDNs like Akamai and CacheFly charge hundreds of dollars a month at the minimum. CloudFlare, a new  start-up, is hoping to change that by offering a CDN for free. I tried it out with two of my sites, this blog and dummyimage.com, and below are my findings.Setting up CloudFlare with my sites was a breeze. All you have to do is change some DNS settings to route your traffic through their servers. Since I use Dreamhost as a host, CloudFlare made it even easier by hooking into Dreamhost’s system to make the changes for me. An e-mail with the original DNS settings was also sent as a backup in case I wanted to revert back. Within 5 minutes, I was up and running.Dummyimage.com saw the most benefit from CloudFlare as it serves up dynamically generated images. Once that image was cached, any subsequent requests for that URL would be for a static image without needing PHP to create it. Dummyimage is popular and the reduced load on my measly shared servers was noticeable.CloudFlare provides a bunch of stats for monitoring the amount of traffic going through their network as well as the bandwidth saved.  In my case, for both of my sites, I’ve saved 11.5 gigbytes of bandwidth on 23,985,639 requests in 14 days.Another advantage of CloudFlare is the security aspect. The network will identify and block threats ranging from botnet zombies to web spammers. CloudFlare presents suspected threats with a captcha and a chance for the user to leave a message if they might have been falsely accused. Part of their stats lets you see all of the threats including ones that passed the captcha and/or left a message. So far I have seen no false positives.So while things have been mostly great, there are a couple of drawbacks. For one, the service is still figuring things out. There was about 50 minutes of downtime when all sites running through CloudFlare were inaccessible. It didn’t irk me too much. I figure I can’t really complain when the price is free. Another issue is the stats take forever to load. The stats for the free version are delayed 24 hours on purpose, but several times when trying to access the statistics dashboard the site would timeout.Because all of the traffic is now coming from the CloudFlare servers, any code on your end that relies on the IP address of the end user will need to tweak their code. CloudFlare has a simple guide for how to do this on their wiki.So if you’ve made it this far you’re probably wondering, “should I run my site through CloudFlare?” If you run a personal site and can live with a little downtime here and there, then absolutely. If your site is your sole means of income and any downtime causes your blood to boil, then you should probably find a more trusted CDN (and expect to pay for it). You could always experiment with it over the weekend for a couple of days and then switch back if you run into problems.Content Delivery Networks bring a big performance boost to a site and with a free one out there like CloudFlare, there’s no excuse to not be using one.CloudFlare Can Boost Sites Performance For Free by Russell Heimlich

The Event Apart conference series is the top-notch gathering for people who make websites. Making its way across various cities in the U.S., the Event Apart tour stopped in Washington, D.C., which I was fortunate enough to attend. The speakers themselves were amazing but interacting with the attendees in real-time during the talks opened a whole new level to the experience. Below are some of the best tweets I curated from each of the sessions. All of which came from afeedapart.com, the official feed aggregator for An Event Apart.Web 2.1: The Medium Comes of Age by Jeffery ZeldmanZeldman started things off with a presentation covering the history of communication from the printing press to HTML5, and everything in between. In 2010, standards based design is no longer fringe, HTML5/CSS3 are viable technologies, and the mobile web is taking shape.The death of the web is greatly exaggerated. @tomkrukIf the web is dead, then print must be mummified. @Merlaak“There are 241 newsgroups on 1986. 240 are porn…” @grum_dot_comZeldman calls the telegraph The Victorian Internet @eduiconfR. Cailliau – leading man’s best friend. Worked with Tim Berners-Lee to invent the web. @mad_sunshine1991 AOL… remember 9600 baud modem? = yuck @lavinia“there’s a history of the internet being ugly and being designed by people who can’t design their way out of a paper bag” @ashleyjoost1993. Mosaic. We’ve come a long way. #aea http://yfrog.com/jcem8mj @eTapWebI remember using MOSAIC on my Amiga 500, wondering why “forms” are not showing… @tomkrukAnd you had to PAY for Netscape @cityrider49Netscape Gold FTW! @tomkrukZeldman breaking down landmark moments in web history: “1995 brings us the tiled background” @mattmediadc“IE no longer sucks, IE is awesome” – Zeldman, #aea … hear it from the man! @franksedivy1998 — internet traffic doubles every 100 days @ashleyjoostthe phrase “best viewed…” should be left to history @cityrider49dot com bust = coming off a coke bender @tonyvia2000 dot com bubble burst brought us benefits: people were forced to learn standards, improve their skills to make a difference. @mihswatThe CSS Zen Garden changed my professional career… Design for the web became a whole different concept @mattmediadc“you can’t burn every house down because we have this new idea for architecture” @TheTrozXHTML 2.0 was burning every house in the world just to propose a new architecture. @mihswat“HTML5. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” @eTapWebObject Oriented CSS by Nicole SullivanNicole developed a technique for managing CSS called Object Oriented CSS. The basic premise is to recognize visual patterns and mark them up consistently. Consistent markup results in more compact and efficient CSS code to style which in turn results in more manageable code and faster performing websites.If you write CSS for any site of significant size or traffic you MUST hear @stubbornella talk on OOCSS. This is my second time listen. @aebsrReason for CSS optimization, CSS Blocks progressive rendering @eduiconf42% of Alexa’s Top 1000 don’t gzip CSS. 44% have more than 2 files. 56% serve with cookies. 62% don’t minify. 21% have > 100k of CSS. @mihswat“Our sites are choking on the amount of CSS we’re throwing over the wire.” @eTapWebOOCSS makes me intellectually erect @grum_dot_comObject oriented CSS sound a lot more complicated than it really is. @kingkool68wow around May 2009 FaceBook had over 700 CSS files that totaled more than 1.9Mb @160mph“If you fighting your CSS, your architecture failed” @franksedivyFacebook has all of their headings bold. Non-bolded headings looked weird to users. @kingkool68People aren’t viewing your home page or reading your about section anymore. It’s all Google hit-and-runs, and it’s changing our design. @brian_klaasCss objects were better for humungo sites like Facebook. Seems overkill for smaller, simple sites. @kingkool68Dust-me Selectors to find unused css. http://www.sitepoint.com/dustmeselectors/ @chrismjonesA ‘giant pink heading’ should not become a ‘small blue heading’ when placed in another part of the site. @phejElements should be styled globally, avoiding area-dependent declarations in CSS. Rules should be predictable, avoid overwriting them. @mihswatLove how @stubbornella uses the story of the lady who swallowed a fly in relation to CSS @candiRSXWriting CSS to correct previous bad CSS is the legacy of the old woman who swallowed a fly. It makes sense when @stubbornella says it. @achelliosNicole Sullivan’s Grids on github – http://wiki.github.com/stubbornella/oocss/grids @MerlaakClassing elements with element names (“.h1″) is one step removed from or similar. @jgarberhmmmm…not sure about @stubbornella rec. on eg h3.h6 Isn’t that sort of hacky? Shouldn’t we re-examine design first? @ryanhoonlavertyAmong Alexa’s Top 1000, there’s a site with 511 declarations setting styles for h1-h6. Facebook used to have 958. @mihswatAfter a CSS rewrite, there were only 25 declarations. @mihswatAmen to the underscore hack. I use it all the time. @kingkool68Avoid styling IDs. IDs are for JavaScript. @mihswatstyling IDs messes up specificity @eduiconf“You should definitely suffer if you use hacks” @chrismjonesNot sure about this ‘not styling IDs’ and have class driven styles .that on top of the things aren’t semantic (.h1, .h2 etc…) … :/ @franksedivy“AVOID !IMPORTANT – except on leaf nodes” Good advice!! @JudyBad“I try to get specificity out-of-the-way so my cascade can really shine.” @andysherryagree with not using !important, disagree with not styling IDs. style IDs if they’re used sparingly or if “lead nodes”. @courcelanStyling using IDs, !importants, and too many nested elements is like fighting whose CSS rules are going to win. @mihswatwho knew? the way I wrote CSS as a n00b was on the right path – lots of class selectors and few element/ID selectors! @raelehmanI think OO CSS takes the art and craft away from CSS and gets it ready for consumers world! @franksedivyThe blinking cursor says, “You don’t remember anything.” (Referring to the command line) @MerlaakFind and replace is really why I use Dreamweaver as my coding tool of choice. No need to figure out grep. @kingkool68See how many times a declaration if when your css from command line. grep -r font-size . | wc -l @chrismjonesHmm, @stubbornella‘s OO approach to CSS preso has some good QA tricks, but her philosophy has too much scaffolding for general use @talbsFeeling a little weird about @stubbornella‘s approach to object-oriented CSS, but liking some ideas about finding duplication. @graphicsgirlOOCSS sounds like the best approach for Facebook, but not most sites we design and build. @graphicsgirlafraid newbs will get the wrong idea with @stubbornella‘s methodology and not consider scale/context/semantics @talbsI found taking the general idea from this presentation and building a custom framework for our approach to build sites worked great @aeaattendeeLooking at CSS in a way I never have thanks to @stubbornella @TheTrozFacebook reduced CSS size by 19% and HTML size by 44% after optimizations @mihswat* and _ hacks > conditional statements @160mphBeen using OOCSS for the past year and a half. Have never found a site that did not benefit. @chrismjonesThe CSS3 Experience by Dan CederholmDan emphasizes that sites don’t need to look and behave exactly the same in every browser. Case in point, he owns http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ and http://dowebsitesneedtobeexperiencedexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/. CSS3 is available in modern browsers today and suitable for non-critical elements of a design. His presentation consisted of several demos showcasing how CSS3 could be used to sweeten interfaces.Things We Left On The Moon: http://css3exp.com/moon/ (CSS3 demo site.) @zeldmanDesigners “pimping out” the message in a bottle – Dan Cederholm at ‘An Even Apart’ @sgstevens08Cederholm discussing progressive enhancement re: delivering info & determining UX based on capabilities of new devices @dinalewWebsites don’t need to look the same and don’t need to be experienced the same in every browser. @mihswatWill have to download IE9 beta. Just got a round of applause here. @mad_sunshineCSS3 rules you may use right now: border-radius, text-shadow, box-shadow, opacity, RGBA, multiple backgrounds. (IE version >= 9) @mihswathaha, I’m seeing a bit too much excitement about IE9 from speakers, and an equal amount of hate from attendees. @aebsrCritical vs. Non-critical elements. It currently makes the most sense to apply CSS3 to the latter. @eTapWeb-moz and -webkit, IE9 is now using border-radius. What do you think of that? @MattTurnureCheck out the background as you resize the browser window. Fun! http://silverbackapp.com/ @sgstevens08parallax effect IS pimping out the bottle. @ryanhoonlavertyMultiple background images in CSS3. Check out http://silverbackapp.com or http://css3exp.com/moon/ and resize your browser window. @eTapWebCSS3 gradient generator: http://www.westciv.com/tools/gradients/index.html @shiotaImpressed @stubbornella isn’t heckling @simplebits for using ID selectors in all his CSS examples. @lincolnwebsMobile First! by Luke WroblewskiLuke covered designing Web applications for mobile platforms first before the desktop. This helps you focus a website down to its bare essentials and functionality. The mobile web is exploding, and in some cases, is the only access someone has to the Internet.“Web products should be designed for mobile first, even if no mobile version is planned.” @eTapWebdesktop internet devices: 1 billion, mobile devices: 10 billion @tonyvia“50% of people who were new to the web last year were on mobile devices.” @eTapWebWhy build mobile first? More growth and future users. @tyraleMobile Web growth has outpaced desktop Web growth 8x. Smartphone sales will pass PC sales in 2011. @mihswatMobile is the new black @JudyBadGreat mobile products are created never ported. @kingkool68mobile stats from #lukew http://lukew.com/ff/ @eduiconf“27% of searches on Yelp! come from 4% of users (i.e. the users who access Yelp! via iPhone.)” @zeldman“Designing for mobile forces you to focus and prioritize.” @eTapWebMoving from desktop to mobile… First remove 80% of the crap @tyraleDesign for mobile first and you will get down to the things that matter. @mad_sunshine“everything else on this page needs to pixelate and die.” @courcelanMobile devices’ limited screen size makes you focus on what’s important – main features, straight communication. @mihswatUse vector to design for the web, build with css3 it will scale automagically! @tyraleMobile design is all about adaption @kingkool68for mobile, make the content the UI @rkunboxed100ms delay results in 1% sales loss for Amazon ($191 Million) @eduiconfGoogle says 500ms delay drops search traffic by 20%. Wonder what our 8,000ms server hangs do. Cough. @itmaybejjoptimize for mobile:speed eg, eliminate redirects & use app cache for local content storage @dinalewMobile is quick bursts, and mostly at home on usage. @tyraleYour mobile is with you all the time, so designing for mobile means designing something that can be used all the time. @zeldmanOnly make content and web apps that are useful to people all the time @halvorsonPeople spend only about 2 to 4 seconds on a webpage using a mobile device. Optimize your site for this behavior. @mihswatdesign = constraining until an elegant solution presents itself @laviniaMany users will interact with mobile devices using one hand and one thumb (one-handed touch), so the UI has to be simple. @jessicaivins1 million per day = touch based phone purchase @laviniamobile: must accommodate “french fry fingers” @JudyBadwow. ’1.1 billion consumers with Nokia devices in 2009′ @westerndave8-10mm = average human finger pad , so design for 9mm touch area @laviniatouch me = Touch Gesture Reference Guide http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1071 @westerndaveHovers are not intentional, clicks are @eduiconfgreat stat: People spend only about 2 to 4 seconds on a webpage using a mobile device. Optimize your site for this behavior. @laviniaHovers are not intentional. Just because a user’s mouse has paused somewhere doesn’t mean they expect to see a menu. @zeldmanmost devices use wifi for location (gps is narly indoors) @laviniaYes! Hover cannot be considered an intentional interaction on a mobile device. I activate them accidentally on my *desktop. @kissaneYelp’s augmented reality feature boosted their sustained traffic by 40 to 50 percent @mihswatWonderful presentation from Luke Wroblewski. This really jives with a lot of stuff that get talked about in IxD these days. @iwilsonjrMessage and Medium: Better Content by Design by Kristina HalvorsonKristina sure knows how to develop a killer content strategy. A website’s message carries through to other places on the web than just the main website. Customer support, social media, and meta data should all echo the tone of the main message. And there is a lot more to a good content strategy than determining what text goes on the front page. How will this content be produced? Who will update it? How often will we add new content?Kristina Halvorson (@halvorson) asked us to sing Happy Birthday to her son. How sweet… @shiota@halvorson on two of my favorite topics: teeth & content strategy! @dinalewhaha. User-scented content. “Smells like user.” @ryanhoonlavertyContent strategy plans for the creation, delivery, and governance of content that people care about. @eTapWebwebsite content: stop talking about what you do and talk about what your users want. hello user-centered content @dinalewcontent requirements ≠ content strategy @tonyviacontent strategy = content (substance + structure) & people (workflow + governance) @tonyviamessaging is not a mission statement, brand promise or tagline @eduiconfnobody cares about your mission statement [so true!] @tonyviaFirst second visiting a website is an emotional response @kingkool68user forms an impression of your site in ONE SECOND (load time + design) & decides to trust you or not within 10 seconds @tonyviaIn 1 second user should have an emotional response. 10 seconds, understand your primary message. 2 minutes, secondary msg. @eTapWebReminded of how some of the traditional #ux roles/deliverables can suffocate copywriters’ creativity/skills. Preach on, @havlorson. @talbsInclude maintenance requirements for key pages – great content strategy idea @graphicsgirlConsistency inspires trust in your readers. @JudyBadconsistency inspires trust in your readers @laviniaVisiting every page of your site with its main message in mind helps to see if you’re communicating it the right way with consistency @mihswat#aea is really driving home the importance to collaboration across roles/disciplines to tackle those important grey areas of an experience! @talbsAnd your FAQ page is inconsistent. Where’s the fun, Ben & Jerry? @mad_sunshinepet peeve: “contact us” page hiding phone/address 10 layers deep. after all, that’s all we want from “contact us” page 99% of the time @sarahdippityWorkflow and governance are crucial for good content strategy. @kingkool68“whats our facebook strategy?” “that depends… what are you trying to do, who’s going to do [keep up with it]?” hear, hear. @courcelanWhat is your social media strategy? Is it successfully delivering your message? Or do you have a Twitter just for the sake of it? @mihswatPage descriptions. Tweets. Facebook posts. Google results. Your message should be consistently delivered everywhere. @mihswat@halvorson‘s talks on content strategy are ALWAYS timely and poignant. Maybe because content strategy is a never-ending struggle… @ryanhoonlavertyAnatomy of a Design Decision by Jared SpoolJared pointed out that every site on the web came to be from a series of decisions. He has identified 5 styles to design decisions and when each style might be appropriate for a given project. Oh and university homepages feature images of girls under trees way too much.Seen it before, but it’s easy to forget just how awesome http://havenworks.com/ is… @davidocoulter“it validates” – Jared Spool (sarcastically referring to havenworks.com) @SethBlanchard“Someone actually designed this on purpose. This way.” – @jmspool on a particularly egregious web design specimen. @alykatSites like havenworks.com or arngren.net went over design decisions. Now that’s something to think about. @shiotaJared is talking about the famous 37signals vs. Donald Norman “celebrity deathmatch”. @shiota“Self design works great when you’re designing something for your own use, or for use by people just like you.” @eTapWebCrappy and unhelpful error messages are the perfect way to frustrate your user. @shiotaUnintentional design happens on its own. Works great if user will put up with whatever or we don’t care about support costs. @eTapWebAirline websites: helping AEA speakers make their point since 2005 @ryanhoonlaverty“Genius design: when we’ve previously learned what users need. We’re solving the same problems repeatedly.” @eTapWeb“Activity Focused Design: designing for new activities unfamiliar to us.” @eTapWebWell @jmspool‘s talk includes a reference to @lingscars‘ website http://www.lingscars.com… and well, just check it out. @hellogeriJared is comparing Six Flags map to Disney World’s map. Both amusement parks, yet totally different maps. Each with its own focus. @mihswatDisney. Someone has thought about what happens between the rides. Thinking about the experience. @mad_sunshineexperience is the stuff that happens around usage. @lavinia“User experience is what happens in between activities” @simplebitsUniversity website traps — girl under trees. WOW! So many of them… @mad_sunshineOMG I can’t search – the search box is on the left [side]! @raelehmanRule #17: Always put the search box in the upper right @grum_dot_comHmm. design style guides and guidelines never work. @mad_sunshineInformed Decisions > Rule-based Decisions @160mphRule-based decisions prevent thinking. Informed decisions require thinking. @sarahdippityDesign is about the exception cases. If everything was always the same, we would not be interested in this work. @beepInstead of spreading dogmas/methodologies, try spreading tricks/techniques. People will learn, think, and won’t struggle with rules @mihswatSummary Of An Event Apart DC Day 1 by Russell Heimlich

Using Fluid to create automated tests.

Better web-safe font stacks.