18th June 2008

Khoi Vinh is posting regularly again, which I'm quite excited about. Of all the web designers I hold in high esteem, he is the one that I disagree with least. His comments are usually insightful and well written, and he often goes the extra mile by backing up his opinions with useful examples that highlight his key points.

He's just written a post 'Spacing Is Everything' where he talks about spacing between interface elements and uses Google's Gmail as an example.

Check out his post and form your own opinion, but I just cannot understand how people are disagreeing with the seemingly minor adjustments to the Gmail Interface. My comments:

The increased line height resulting in quicker scanning of subjects and increased target size resulting in decreased 'time to target' and increased accuracy should easily compensate for the time it would take to scroll down to read those eight extra emails.

I've often been dumbfounded by Google. I've used them as an example for good usability, but I cringe when I hear people use Google's sites to justify their poor design choices or aesthetic ignorance. (Is that a term or did I just coin it?)

Aside from the little niceties you've added, I would have thought that Google would at least adhere to the basic rules of typography, particularly the increased line height for longer lines.

4th November 2007

Almost all so called "CSS galleries" would be better labeled "digital art galleries".

There are exceptions, but for the most part these sites seem to be nothing more than a collection of slow loading, non-accessible, barely usable sites made by fantastic digital artists who unfortunately have no idea how to build a web site.

Don't get me wrong, I mean no disrespect, and there are some instances where it's more than appropriate to adorn every margin, button and headline with fancy ornaments and sparkly rollover effects.

Generally speaking though, these trinkets are not only superfluous, but end up being distractions that devalue the content on your site, further complicates it's learning curve, and conceals whatever it is that your visitors came for in the first place.

Most importantly, if you're using your site to sell something, directly or otherwise, chances are that these trinkets are costing you money.

The majority of these "CSS galleries" are encouraging 'look at me, look at how good I am' web designs whose only suitable application is portfolio sites. Unfortunately for the weekend web designer, and all those poor people that end up using their sites, this type of design is a hammer and every new website becomes a nail.

I'm holding all "CSS galleries" directly responsible.

Quit calling yourselves "CSS galleries" and start accepting desktop wallpaper submissions, or offer a little bit of variety. There are thousands of well built, accessible, valid, good looking, incredibly usable and functional web sites out there that just never get listed because they lack a few pretty pictures.

Oh, and don't take this post as me being bitter about not being listed on any "CSS galleries". It happens, although not as often as it would if I had a big fat photographic backdrop distracting my visitors from the carefully crafted entries that I'll arrogantly assume people came to read.

31st October 2007

Yesterday, I deleted all of my bookmarks.

Alright, I did leave the ones on my toolbar, the ones I click every morning, noon and night. But other than that, they're all gone!

There were some real gems in my bookmarks. I don't bookmark lightly you see, so when I do, it's because the site really has something unique to offer. The problem was that I've been bookmarking for so long, and they were all such quality that I had a hard time finding things anyway!

Because of this, I'd even bookmarked some sites multiple times...

I've had this bookmark overload problem in the past, so I've tried other things. A myriad of social bookmarking sites, carefully categorized link lists, named files containing related links that get deleted when they've served their purpose. I've even had a link submitter on my site that I used for some time.

These were all ineffective solutions. A far cry from the elegant, mess free system I was looking for. Was looking for? That's right, I've found a solution.

Earlier this morning I needed something from one of the sites I'd previously bookmarked. I actually thought twice about removing this particular bookmark because I knew I'd need this site again, I just didn't know when, and I certainly didn't expect it to be so soon.

I thought for a little while about how I could get back there. It wasn't in my history, I couldn't remember the name of the site, but what I did know was why I needed it.

I did a quick Google search. I found the site I wanted. First search, first result. Thank you Google.

Yes, I'm concerned about Google's world domination. No, not all links will be so quick to find. But thanks to their slowly improving ranking algorithms I'll probably find more relevant, recent and useful results doing a Google search than I would have done by simply visiting the sites in my bookmarks.

On top of this benefit, I feel so clean now. Never again will thousands of poorly categorized bookmarks come tumbling down from the Safari bookmarks menu every time I need a site I probably wouldn't have found anyway.