I’ve reviewed mr. Hoekman’s Designing the Obvious book in the past – I must say I’m somehow biased, since I enjoy too much the way he writes. His books are simple and easy to follow and much focused – something that is a bit rare in the “Web Design” shelf, take my word for that.
“Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action” (as its full title goes) is no different. In this, mr. Hoekman touches most current web design aspects (or problems) and presents his take on how to design in a more effective but simpler manner.
Tag clouds, video players, forms, even the almighty (and common as hell) blog design gets tossed into Hoekman’s blender and gets out leaner and meaner. I agree with most of his points but not with all – that’s the beauty of it all, it’s like having a normal conversation with a fellow web designer, discussing the practical matters at hand. I like practical.
I can’t say if I like DtM or DtO best – they’re two different takes on the same problem. What I really liked in this was the fact that practical examples were given everywhere throughout the book. Did I say I love practical?
It’s simple, it’s short, and if you’re concerned about the best way to design things, it might get a special place in your bookplace. Give it a try.
You know Mindmeister, the online mind-mapping tool, right?
It has an awesome sharing feature that permits you to collaborate on mind-mapping with other users, editing your mind maps in real time. It’s pretty cool, use it and you’ll see what I mean.
But because I felt über enough during this fun productive Friday, I decided the best use for Mindmeister is chatting. Check it out:
Why not? Come on! It’s live, you can invite as many people as you want (I think), there are emoticons, and the logic of mind-mapping can help with conversations that span multiple subjects. Plus you get nice previews for adding links and there’s even some Wikipedia love.
No, think about it. Really!
*fades in the background*
Internet Explorer 6 acting up, blank pages due to an obscure PHP error, floated images that seem to defy standards – we have all been there.
Bugs.
For some, an almost enjoyable quest of squashing problems, for another a nightmarish experience that spans two lifetimes and then some more.
Which are your favourite debugging techniques?
For CSS (especially Internet Explorer issues) I use a lot of background: yellow to properly see how my containers are stacked. I previously used borders, but they alter an element’s width and height, so I don’t do that anymore.
For ultra-hardcore cases, I create a simple test page with stripped down to basics elements and try to build it up from there, checking for errors as I go.
What I’ve realised after those few years that I work as a web designer is that with experience comes efficiency. I rarely if ever lose my sleep over Internet Explorer display bugs now – the Javascript errors? Oh, that’s another issue.
How about you? How do you debug?
