Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
NEW! Take A Shot Tell Two #homebussiness
Learn more about the simple that every baby boomer can do.
Simply take a shot and tell two.
NEW for 2011 and ready to explode.
See this Amp at http://bit.ly/gO8aWA
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
“What Font Should I Use?”: Five Principles for Choosing and Using Typefaces
For many beginners, the task of picking fonts is a mystifying process. There seem to be endless choices — from normal, conventional-looking fonts to novelty candy cane fonts and bunny fonts — with no way of understanding the options, only never-ending lists of categories and recommendations. Selecting the right typeface is a mixture of firm rules and loose intuition, and takes years of experience to develop a feeling for. Here are five guidelines for picking and using fonts that I’ve developed in the course of using and teaching typography.
1. Dress For The Occasion
Many of my beginning students go about picking a font as though they were searching for new music to listen to: they assess the personality of each face and look for something unique and distinctive that expresses their particular aesthetic taste, perspective and personal history. This approach is problematic, because it places too much importance on individuality.
The most appropriate analogy for picking type. (Photo credit: Samuuraijohnny. Used under Creative Commons license.)
For better or for worse, picking a typeface is more like getting dressed in the morning. Just as with clothing, there’s a distinction between typefaces that are expressive and stylish versus those that are useful and appropriate to many situations, and our job is to try to find the right balance for the occasion. While appropriateness isn’t a sexy concept, it’s the acid test that should guide our choice of font.
My “favorite” piece of clothing is probably an outlandish pair of 70s flare bellbottoms that I bought at a thrift store, but the reality is that these don’t make it out of my closet very often outside of Halloween. Every designer has a few favorite fonts like this — expressive personal favorites that we hold onto and wait for the perfect festive occasion to use. More often, I find myself putting on the same old pair of Levis morning after morning. It’s not that I like these better than my cherished flares, exactly… I just seem to wind up wearing them most of the time.
Every designer has a few workhorse typefaces that are like comfortable jeans: they go with everything, they seem to adapt to their surroundings and become more relaxed or more formal as the occasion calls for, and they just seem to come out of the closet day after day. Usually, these are faces that have a number of weights (Light, Regular, Bold, etc) and/or cuts (Italic, Condensed, etc). My particular safety blankets are: Myriad, Gotham, DIN,Akzidenz Grotesk and Interstate among the sans; Mercury, Electra and Perpetua among the serif faces.
A large type family like Helvetica Neue can be used to express a range of voices and emotions. Versatile and comfortable to work with, these faces are like a favorite pair of jeans for designers.
2. Know Your Families: Grouping Fonts
The clothing analogy gives us a good idea of what kind of closet we need to put together. The next challenge is to develop some kind of structure by which we can mentally categorize the different typefaces we run across.
Typefaces can be divided and subdivided into dozens of categories (Scotch Modern, anybody?), but we only really need to keep track of five groups to establish a working understanding of the majority of type being used in the present-day landscape.
The following list is not meant as a comprehensive classification of each and every category of type (there are plenty of great sites on the web that already tackle this, such as Typedia’s type classifications) but rather as a manageable shorthand overview of key groups. Let’s look at two major groups without serifs (serifs being the little feet at the ends of the letterforms), two with serifs, and one outlier (with big, boxey feet).
1. Geometric Sans
I’m actually combining three different groups here (Geometric, Realist and Grotesk), but there is enough in common between these groups that we can think of them as one entity for now. Geometric Sans-Serifs are those faces that are based on strict geometric forms. The individual letter forms of a Geometric Sans often have strokes that are all the same width and frequently evidence a kind of “less is more” minimalism in their design.
At their best, Geometric Sans are clear, objective, modern, universal; at their worst, cold, impersonal, boring. A classic Geometric Sans is like a beautifully designed airport: it’s impressive, modern and useful, but we have to think twice about whether or not we’d like to live there.
Examples of Geometric/Realist/Grotesk Sans: Helvetica, Univers, Futura, Avant Garde, Akzidenz Grotesk, Franklin Gothic, Gotham.
2. Humanist Sans
These are Sans faces that are derived from handwriting — as clean and modern as some of them may look, they still retain something inescapably human at their root. Compare the ‘t’ in the image above to the ‘t’ in ‘Geometric’ and note how much more detail and idiosyncrasy the Humanist ‘t’ has.
This is the essence of the Humanist Sans: whereas Geometric Sans are typically designed to be as simple as possible, the letter forms of a Humanist font generally have more detail, less consistency, and frequently involve thinner and thicker stoke weights — after all they come from our handwriting, which is something individuated. At their best, Humanist Sans manage to have it both ways: modern yet human, clear yet empathetic. At their worst, they seem wishy-washy and fake, the hand servants of corporate insincerity.
Examples of Humanist Sans: Gill Sans, Frutiger, Myriad, Optima, Verdana.
3. Old Style
Reference: http://ping.fm/TWSUw
Monday, December 13, 2010
What To Do When Your Website Goes Down
Have you ever heard a colleague answer the phone like this: “Good afterno… Yes… What? Completely?… When did it go down?… Really, that long?… We’ll look into it right away… Yes, I understand… Of course… Okay, speak to you soon… Bye.”
The call may have been followed by some cheesy ’80s rock ballad coming from the speaker phone, interrupted by “Thank you for holding. You are now caller number 126 in the queue.” That’s your boss calling the hosting company’s 24 hour “technical support” line.
An important website has gone down, and sooner or later, heads will turn to the Web development corner of the office, where you are sitting quietly, minding your own business, regretting that you ever mentioned “Linux” on your CV. You need to take action. Your company needs you. Your client needs you. Here’s what to do.
1. Check That It Has Actually Gone Down
Don’t take your client’s word for it. Visit the website yourself, and press Shift + Refresh to make sure you’re not seeing a cached version (hold down Shift while reloading or refreshing the page). If the website displays fine, then the problem is probably related to your client’s computer or broadband connection.
If it fails, then visit a robust website, such as google.com or bbc.co.uk. If they fail too, then there is at least an issue with your own broadband connection (or your broadband company’s DNS servers). Chances are that you and your client are located in the same building and the whole building has lost connectivity, or perhaps you have the same broadband company and its engineers have taken the day off. You will need to check the website on your mobile phone or phone a friend. To be doubly sure, ask your friend to check Where’s It Up? or Down for Everyone or Just Me?, which will confirm whether your website is down just for you or for everyone.
If the website is definitely down, then frown confusedly and keep reading. A soft yet audible sigh would also be appropriate. You might want to locate the documents or emails that your Internet hosting service sent you when you first signed up with it. It should have useful details such as your IP address, control panel location, log-in details and admin and root passwords; these will come in handy.
2. Figure Out What Has Gone Down
A website can appear to have gone down mainly for one of the following reasons:
- A programming error on the website,
- A DNS problem, or an expired domain,
- A networking problem,
- Something on the server has crashed,
- The whole server has crashed.
To see whether it’s a programming error, visit the website and check the status bar at the bottom of your browser. If it says “Done” or “Loaded,” rather than “Waiting…” or “Connecting…,” then the server and its software are performing correctly, but there is a programming error or misconfiguration. Check the Apache error log for clues.
Otherwise, you’ll need to run some commands to determine the cause. On a Mac with OS X or above, go to Applications → Utilities and run Terminal. On a PC with Windows, go to Start → All Programs → Accessories and choose “Command Prompt.” If you use Linux, you probably already know about the terminal; but just in case, on Ubuntu, it’s under Applications → Accessories.
The first command is ping, which sends a quick message to a server to check that it’s okay. Type the following, replacing the Web address with something meaningful to you, and press “Enter.” For all of the commands in this article, just type the stuff in the grey monospaced font. The preceding characters are the command prompt and are just there to let you know who and where you are.
C:> ping www.stockashop.co.uk
If the server is alive and reachable, then the result will be something like this:
Reply from 92.52.106.33:
bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=53
Ping command from a Windows computer.
On Windows, it will repeat four times, as above. On Linux and Mac, each line will start with 64 bytes from and it will repeat indefinitely, and you’ll need to press Control + C to stop it.
The four-part number in the example above is your server’s IP address. Every computer on the Internet has one. At this stage, you can double-check that it is the correct one. You’ll need to have a very good memory, or refer to the documentation that your hosting company sent you when you first signed up with it. (This article does not deal with the newish eight-part IPv6 addresses.)
For instance, my broadband company is sneaky and tries to intercept all bad requests so that it can advertise to me when I misspell a domain name in the Web browser. In this case, the ping looks successful but the IP address is wrong:
64 bytes from advancedsearch.virginmedia.com
(81.200.64.50): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=26.4 ms
Note that ping might also show the server name in front of the IP address (advancedsearch.virginmedia.com in this case). Don’t worry too much if it doesn’t match the website you are pinging—a server can have many names. The IP address is more important.
Assuming you’ve typed the domain name correctly, a bad IP address indicates that the domain name could have expired or that somebody has made a mistake with its DNS settings. If you receive something like unknown host, then it’s definitely a domain name issue:
ping: unknown host www.nosuchwebsite.fr
In this case, use a website such as Who.is to verify the domain registration details, or run the whois command from Linux or Mac. It will at least tell you when it expired, who owns it and where it is registered. The Linux and Mac commands host and nslookup are also useful for finding information about a domain. The nslookup command in particular has many different options for querying different aspects of a domain name:
paul@MyUbuntu:~$ whois stockashop.co.uk
paul@MyUbuntu:~$ host stockashop.co.uk
paul@MyUbuntu:~$ nslookup stockashop.co.uk
paul@MyUbuntu:~$ nslookup -type=soa stockashop.co.uk
If nothing happens when you ping, or you get something like request timed out, then you can deepen your frown and move on to step three.
What a non-responding server looks like in a Linux terminal.
Alternatively, if your server replied with the correct IP address, then you can exhale in relief and move on to step five.
Note that there are plenty of websites such as Network-Tools.com that allow you to ping websites. However, using the command line will impress your colleagues more, and it is good practice for the methods in the rest of this article.
3. How Bad Is It?
If your ping command has timed out, then chances are your whole server has crashed, or the network has broken down between you and the server.
If you enjoy grabbing at straws, then there is a small chance that the server is still alive and has blocked the ping request for security reasons—namely, to prevent hackers from finding out it exists. So, you can still proceed to the next step after running the commands below, but don’t hold your breath.
To find out if it is a networking issue, use traceroute on Mac or Linux and tracert on a PC, or use the trace option on a website such as Network-Tools.com. On Mac and Linux type:
paul@MyUbuntu:~$ traceroute www.stockashop.co.uk
On Windows:
C:> tracert www.stockashop.co.uk
Traceroute traces a route across the Internet from your computer t
Reference: http://ping.fm/Kkbsl
Friday, December 10, 2010
Why We Should Start Using CSS3 and HTML5 Today
For a while now, here on Smashing Magazine, we have taken notice of how many designers are reluctant to embrace the new technologies such as CSS3 or HTML5 because of the lack of full cross-browser support for these technologies. Many designers are complaining about the numerous ways how the lack of cross-browser compatibility is effectively holding us back and tying our hands — keeping us from completely being able to shine and show off the full scope of our abilities in our work. Many are holding on to the notion that once this push is made, we will wake to a whole new Web — full of exciting opportunities just waiting on the other side. So they wait for this day. When in reality, they are effectively waiting for Godot.
Just like the elusive character from Beckett’s classic play, this day of complete cross-browser standardization is not ever truly going to find its dawn and deliver us this wonderful new Web where our work looks the same within the window of any and every Web browser. Which means that many of us in the online reaches, from clients to designers to developers and on, are going to need to adjust our thinking so that we can realistically approach the Web as it is now, and more than likely how it will be in the future.
Sometimes it feels that we are hiding behind the lack of cross-browser compatibility to avoid learning new techniques that would actually dramatically improve our workflow. And that’s just wrong. Without an adjustment, we will continue to undersell the Web we have, and the landscape will remain unexcitingly stale and bound by this underestimation and mindset.
Adjustment in Progress
Sorry if any bubbles are bursting here, but we have to wake up to the fact that full cross-browser support of new technologies is just not going to happen. Some users will still use older browsers and some users will still have browsers with deactivated JavaScript or images; some users will be having weird view port sizes and some will not have certain plugins installed.
But that’s OK, really.
The Web is a damn flexible medium, and rightly so. We should embrace its flexibility rather than trying to set boundaries for the available technologies in our mindset and in our designs. The earlier we start designing with the new technologies, the quicker their wide adoption will progress and the quicker we will get by the incompatibility caused by legacy browsers. More and more users are using more advanced browsers every single day, and by using new technologies, we actually encourage them to switch (if they can). Some users will not be able to upgrade, which is why our designs should have a basic fallback for older browsers, but it can’t be the reason to design only the fallback version and call it a night.
Select[ivizr] is one of the many tools that make it possible to use CSS3 today.
There are so many remarkable things that we, designers and developers, can do today: be it responsive designs with CSS3 media queries, rich Web typography (with full support today!) or HTML5 video and audio. And there are so many useful tools and resources that we can use right away to incorporate new technologies in our designs while still supporting older browsers. There is just no reason not to use them.
We are the ones who can push the cross-browser support of these new technologies, encouraging and demanding the new features in future browsers. We have this power, and passing on it just because we don’t feel like there is no full support of them yet, should not be an option. We need to realize that we are the ones putting the wheels in motion and it’s up to us to decide what will be supported in the future browsers and what will not.
More exciting things will be coming in the future. We should design for the future and we should design for today — making sure that our progressive designs work well in modern browsers and work fine in older browsers. The crucial mistake would be clinging to the past, trying to work with the old nasty hacks and workarounds that will become obsolete very soon.
We can continue to cling to this notion and wait for older browsers to become outdated, thereby selling ourselves and our potential short, or we can adjust our way of thinking about this and come at the Web from a whole new perspective. One where we understand the truth of the situation we are faced with. That our designs are not going to look the same in every browser and our code will not render the same in every browser. And that’s the bottom line.
Yaili’s beautiful piece My CSS Wishlist on 24ways. Articles like these are the ones that push the boundaries of web design and encourage more innovation in the industry.
Andy Clarke spoke about this at the DIBI Conference earlier this year (you can check his presentation Hardboiled Web Design on Vimeo). He really struck a nerve with his presentation, yet still we find so many stalling in this dream of complete Web standardization. So we wanted to address this issue here and keep this important idea being discussed and circulated. Because this waiting is not only hurting those of us working with the Web, but all of those who use the Web as well. Mainly through this plethora of untapped potential which could improve the overall experience across the spectrum for businesses, users and those with the skills to bring this sophisticated, rich, powerful new Web into existence.
For Our Clients
Now this will mean different things for different players in the game. For example, for our clients this means a much more developed and uniquely crafted design that is not bound by the boxes we have allowed our thinking to be contained in. However, this does come with a bit of a compromise that is expected on the parts of our clients as well. At least it does for this to work in the balanced and idealized way these things should play out. But this should be expected. Most change does not come without its compromises.
In this case, our clients have to accept the same truism that we do and concede that their projects will not look the same across various browsers. This is getting easier to convince them of in these times of the expanding mobile market, but they may still not be ready to concede this inch on the desktop side of the coin. Prices might be adjusted in some cases too, and that may be another area that the clients are not willing to accept. But with new doors being opened and more innovation, comes more time and dedicated efforts. These are a few of the implications for our clients, though the expanded innovation is where we should help them focus.
In short:
- Conceding to the idea that the project will not be able to look the same across various browsers,
- This means more developed and unfettered imaginative designs for our clients,
- This could lead to increased costs for clients as well, but with higher levels of innovation and
- Client’s visions for what they want will be less hindered by these limitations.
For the Users
The users are the ones who have the least amount invested in most of what is going on behind the scenes. They only see the end result, and they often do not think too much about the process that is involved which brings it to the screens before them. Again, with the mobile market, they have already come across the concept of var
Reference: http://ping.fm/O9Hv5
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
