Ok, so I have been reading all about the MacBook Air, just like most of the tech world, and I just don’t get it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a Mac hater by any means. The iMac revolutionized how computers looked (thank God!), and I have been drooling over the iPhone since I saw the first pictures leaked onto the web (I would have one if it wasn’t for the $200 cancellation fee from my current carrier). I also think the iPod is inspired and a great little device (although I will admit I got a Zune 2 for my wife, but it was a tough choice).

Before MacWorld I was as excited as the next guy to see what Jobs and company were going to come up with next, but the more I read about the Air the more I get confused.

From a design/ui perspective I get it. Its sleek and sexy and has that cool “apple” look to it. Where I stop drinking the Kool-Aid is when I think about it from a business perspective. Who is the market for this thing?

I know there are the mac addicts…chalk up a few thousand sold. Then you have the first adopters who just have to have anything with a power button. There are a few more thousand. But outside of that, whats the point?

Is there really a large audience looking to spend $1,800 on a laptop that has less functionality than one half that cost just because it fits in a manilla folder? I understand that road warriors needs a lightweight device because they are always on the move, but its not like you can’t find a great laptop (even a mac) that weighs 3 or 4 pounds for a lot cheaper.

Now if it were cheaper…say under $1,000, then that might make it more drool-worthy. Or heck…maybe even if it were actually smaller (like a UMPC) or maybe a sexy tablet (now we’re talkin’). I would be in heaven to have a tablet with the look and functionality of an iPhone on steroids. Mmmmm….tasty.

But as it stands now you get a fragile device (imagine dropping that little thing?) with a funky touchpad that costs almost two grand (for the cheap one).

Am I missing something?

Have you ever read a book and once it was finished you thought “that book would have been so much better if it was 100 pages shorter”?

Some authors like to “hear their own voice” as it were and don’t know when to stop. There are a lot of web designers/developers who do the same thing. I definitely have fallen into that trap from time to time. You just get so excited by what you are working on that you add a little thing here, another piece of flair over there…before you know it, the point of the design gets lost under a pile of textures.

In recent months you have probably noticed a new trend…the minimalist look. Now when some people hear that term they think “boring”. In some cases they are spot on. If you go too far with it, it can be boring, but it doesn’t have to be. Take a look at A List Apart to see minimalism done right. Its clean, but not boring. Basically instead of using colors and textures to add interest, you make the layout do the heavy lifting of catching the user’s eye. Whitespace can be beautiful when done right.

Design Meltdown calls sites that follow this trend “super clean”. They have a four page showcase of sites built with this technique if you want to see some examples. Some are better than others obviously, but there are some great sites on that list (Protolize, mkdynamic, spacemaker).

I have found myself jumping on that train with some of the things I am building. To me it is just a completely different way of building a site. Instead of thinking of what textures, effects, and dohickies I can add to make the site stand out, I go through a mental process of stripping out everything that takes away from the core of the design. Its like cutting out those unnecessary 150 pages in a novel. Once they are gone, the narrative is crisp and flows the way it is supposed to.

In the design/development world, the final product gives the user a clear, easy way to understand and use the application. In my experience, I have found that it takes a good bit longer than I thought it would. Initially it seems easy and that having a lot of whitespace is enough, but when you take out gradients, shiny-effects, and whatnot, all you are left with is the content. How you make that interesting is what separates the proverbial “men from the boys”.

Rainfall Daffison is a “strategic design consultancy” based in Europe. Their thing is to design sites with a minimalist design and feel. They are quite passionate about it and think you should be too. They have an article that runs through 24 “moments” of minimalism” over the last decade. Its a great article that shows examples of some of the best minimalist sites out there today.

If you are thinking of how to wrap your head around minimalism, its not a bad place to start because you can see how some of the best in the business make it work.

What do you think? Have you jumped on the bandwagon, or do you think it is gonna go the way of the dodo? Did you find it easier or harder to create a super clean site?

So yesterday I was a bit bored and headed on over to the Sitepoint Marketplace. If you have never been there it is pretty interesting to see what is up for sale. Basically they are an auction site selling full websites, domain names, templates etc.

Personally I always peruse the established websites section to see what is up for grabs. While reading several of the listings I noticed that a good part of the sites are just a couple of months old. Sure there are exceptions, but I was really amazed to see how many sites were barely off the ground, much less successful. The really strange thing is, some of the sites are sold for a pretty good amount of money (several thousand dollars in some cases).

Does this seem weird to anyone? After building and working on this site since April I know that it is tough to find an audience on the web nowadays. So how do sites one and two months old get enough traffic/customers to warrant such a price? Are they buying their traffic? Do they know something I don’t on how to attract people (always possible)?

Another thing I noticed is there is a good bit of turnaround. You will see a site for sale and in the post the owner will say “I bought this site from Sitepoint a few weeks ago…”. Huh? Why buy the site if you are just going to sell it again right away? How can you get your money back much less turn a profit? Its not like a few weeks is gonna show that you have caused a major turnaround and your site is the new “it” thing. Again, I must be missing something

Its kinda like watching an infomercial at 2 in the morning. You are bleary eyed and those knives that cut like a lightsaber are calling to you. You almost pick up the phone, but you finally wake up enough to ask yourself “when do I need to cut a coke can in half then slice a tomato?”. You sigh, put the phone down, and finally mosey on off to bed.

To me Sitepoint is a similar temptation…there is an “established” site out there. If you sell your vintage Battlestar Galactica collection you can probably come up with the money. It looks like a no brainer because the current owner says they make so much money every day that they have to sell it for fear of drowning in cash. You really start thinking about it…then you realize that you have no experience in dog grooming supplies nor do you really want any. You sigh, move away from the keyboard, and mosey on over to your Xbox.

So has anyone ever taken the plunge and bought one of these sites? How did it work out for you. Did you make the money you hoped? Would you do it again? Inquiring minds want to know…

Have you ever wondered that? Is there some “web cabal” that sits in their beanbag chairs with indirect lighting overhead and thinks…”lets make things shiny”…and then for the next 6 months every site looks like it is under a pane of glass.

The question hit me when I was looking at Smashing Magazine’s new list of all the logos that use leaves. I mean seriously…there are like 20 different logos that somehow incorporate a leaf in the design. How in the world?

Realistically I know how it happens. Someone makes a cool site or logo and then one designer sees it, then another, and another and finally you have a forest of little leaf icons all over the world.

What is interesting to think about is there are probably a dozen people in the “web world” that create something new and then there are about a million others who copy and expand upon the idea. Don’t you want to be one of those dozen? How cool would that be? To be the guy (or gal) that decided that was behind the “wet and shiny” look that took the design world by storm.

Now I say that would be cool, but honestly, it would take some serious cojones to be that person because for every iPod you think up, you have 100 Newtons that get ridiculed.

Still it would be a lot of fun when you do make your iPod…

So here is a question. What if you were one of the lucky few who has enough clout to really push the next thing in the world of web design? What would your next thing be?

I learned early on in my freelance days that it is always good to get a feel for what the client likes when it comes to web design. So whenever I get a new client I always ask them to send me some example sites that they find “cool” or “beautiful”. Over the years I have found that this is a good way to get a feel for their style. Conservative or artsy? Bright and bold or cool and subdued? You get the idea.

So what do you do when the client sends you to some sites that are just painfully ugly? Something with some 1998 animated gifs, or (God forbid) a site with some of those sparkly letters you see on myspace so much.

Do you swallow hard and build them a site that suits their taste even if it offends your own sense of style? Go go gadget sparkle!

Do you throw out all of their ideas and substitute them for your own?

Or do you try to somehow blend the two? Glassy effects and sparkles!!

Here is an extreme case. I built a site several years ago; it was basically a company that provided services for the elderly. The original design was meant to be cheerful, bright, and colorful. The first time I showed it to the owner he absolutely hated it. He demanded that I rework the site so the primary colors were black and violet. What is even worse, is he wanted his company’s logo to be a picture of an elderly couple floating in the clouds. Fortunately he understood that old people + clouds = dead people…not exactly the image you want to portray to your customers. In the end, the site was black, violet, and was (in my opinion) completely inappropriate for its target audience. Now that isn’t to say black and violet can’t work in some sites, just not this one.

With a client like that you don’t have a whole lotta choice except never to show the final result in your portfolio (that one never did make the cut by the way). In the end, the client always wins…

But lets take the scenario that you have a client who has…ahem…difficulties with their choices of style, but who has an open mind. In this case, I typically show them progress much more often than I would normally. This way you can build what you think looks good (you are the professional after all), but they can give their input before you wander too far down the rabbit hole. The end result is usually a nice, happy medium that looks good.

Another option is to try to get into their head and find out why he/she likes the sparkling animated American flag so much. You might find that what they really like is the concept behind the ugly pic rather than the pic itself. In this case the client may just want to show patriotism as a major theme. Work with them…talk with them…and find out the “whys”.

As with all of the issues around dealing with a client, in the end it all comes down to the relationship. With new clients it is important to show that you know what you are doing and are not some fly-by-night. Once that relationship is built, then you will be able to direct them in terms of style much easier than before.

So have any of you ever run into this problem? How did you deal with it? What advice would you give new designers/freelancers when it comes to clients with strong design opinions?

Last week I introduced a super simple cms system that I created for a client. Ever since I completed it, I have been toying with the idea of expanding it a bit and releasing it as an open source tool for other freelancers, developers, and designers to use.

The “business need” is simple…as a freelancer, I want to make my services as valuable to a client as I possibly can. A good “value add” is a CMS system so that I can pitch to a client “you can update your own static pages”. I have been successful with this because in the long run it saves the client money because they don’t have to pay a designer/dev every time they want to change a word or two. Its a win/win.

So I was thinking…I know I am not the only freelancer doing this so why not take my little CMS and expand it to suit that exact need? A basic CMS that can be deployed to a client quickly and easily, but then gets the heck out of the way and that I, the designer/developer, have complete control how it looks and behaves.

I have noticed that since I wrote the original article I have gotten a good bit of interest on the subject so it seems like there is a market for such a product. The question is…what are the basics?

When you think of CMS what are your requirements?

Here is an obvious one…Add/Update/Delete pages…

Not much of a CMS if it can’t do that, but what other features are required?

Another way to ask it is “If you were to create your own simple CMS for a client, what would it do?”

The good folks at Warpspire have spent a few days with the YUI and they (or rather he) was not all that impressed.

I have written about the Yahoo Interface Library in the past so I was interested in what he had to say about it.

Overall, I think Kyle gives a thoughtful argument and it definitely appears that he has gone more in depth with the framework than I have. However, in his review he gives the YUI a serious kick in the nuts. And while I am usually for a swift nut kickin’ when it is called for, I didn’t think it was warranted here.

In my experience, the YUI has always been a pretty cool framework to work with, so in an effort to stand up for it, I decided to “critique the critique”.

So here is my take on his take… Read the rest of this entry »

So the other day I was playing around with the whole XHTML thing. Now normally I go the whole “transitional” route with my pages. Its a bit more relaxed and yet it keeps everything nice and neat.

However, on this particular day I started playing with “strict” (here is a nice article on the differences between strict and transitional). What hit me right away is the fact that strict does not allow you to target in a hyperlink.

I other words…this is illegal:
<a href="http://www.creativeui.com" <strong>target="_blank"</strong>>Link Text</a>

Now some people get around this by using a bit of javascript such as this:

function externalLinks() 
{
    if (!document.getElementsByTagName) 
         return;

    var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
    for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) 
    {
         var anchor = anchors[i];
         if (anchor.getAttribute("href") && anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external")
              anchor.target = "_blank";
    }
}

window.onload = externalLinks;

This will work, but it seems to go against the spirit of the Strict definition…I mean, if you are gonna open up a new window, you might as well just go with Transitional.

If you have been a reader for very long, you have probably noticed that I typically use target on all external links. I do that because I personally like when sites do this for me. I don’t know why, but it irks me when a link keeps me in the same tab. Most of the time I just avoid it by right clicking and say “open in new tab”.

However, after thinking about it and talking to other designers it made me realize that I was taking choices away from the user, because if you use target and the user wants to stay in the same tab, they can’t…

Since UI design is all about enabling the user, this doesn’t seem right. So, I am leaning towards not using target in my links in the future. What do you think? Do you prefer when sites open tabs/windows on external links (especially on a link heavy page), or would you rather be in control?

So as regular readers know, I love looking ahead and talking about what’s next in the world of the user interface, and more broadly, how people interact with computers.

I have been fascinated with the concept of multi-touch computing for a while. In all honesty, I didn’t think it was going to be a reality for a good while. Watching Jeff Han do his thing, I always get the feeling that the consumer is not going to get their hands dirty for a long time. I still love his stuff, but who needs an 8 foot touch wall? Certainly not the everyday consumer. Also, getting a completely new paradigm (like getting rid of the mouse and keyboard) to take hold, A LOT of different industries have to get together and play nicely. In order to get a lot of companies chatting will take a major player…enter Microsoft.

Microsoft has just unveiled Surface, their take on the multi-touch interface. Now before you read anything else, you owe it to yourself as a geek to go watch the videos on the Surface site. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you…

Read the rest of this entry »

So earlier this week, Microsoft dropped the a couple of Fat Boys on open source software companies saying that they are violating 235 of their patents. If they decide to detonate that nuke by actually suing someone, then the effects could be far reaching. IBM is the 40,000 pound gorilla in the patent world, so it begs the question. If Microsoft throws the first volley, does IBM fire back? I would bet good money the Microsoft is violating at least a few of Big Blue’s patents.

Read the rest of this entry »