New! Official Blue Beanie Day 2011 page, with banners and instructions.
Category: Web Standards
“Mobile development firm appMobi is launching a new HTML5-powered browser for iOS on Monday which will bring additional capabilities typically found only in native apps to the mobile Web. The MobiUs Web App Browser, as it’s being called, works both as a standalone browser alternative or in conjunction with Apple’s mobile Safari, similar to the way browser extensions work on the desktop Web.
“…The browser integrates two full sets of APIs from both appMobi and from PhoneGap (1.0) to give the Web apps a native look-and-feel, plus the ability to access all the hardware features of the smartphone.”
More: New MobiUs Browser For iOS Makes Mobile Web Apps Act More Like Native Apps | TechCrunch.
ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS of the second annual 10K Apart contest (“Inspire the web with just 10K”) presented by MIX Online and An Event Apart.
Responsive apps under 10K
Last year’s 10K Apart challenged readers to create the best application they could using no more than 10K of images, scripts, and markup. We wanted to see what you could do with HTML5, CSS3, and web fonts, and you blew us away.
For this year’s contest, we asked you to step up your game by not only awing us with brilliant (and brilliantly designed) apps built using less than 10K of web standards and imagery, but we also insisted you make those awesome apps fully responsive.
(If you found this page by accident, responsive design accommodates today’s dizzying array of notebooks, tablets, smartphones, laptops, and big-screen desktops—and anticipates tomorrow’s—via fluid design experiences that squash and stretch and swell and shrink and always look like ladies. Ethan Marcotte pioneered this design approach, which takes standards-based progressive enhancement to the next level, and which achieves its magic via fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries. But I digress.)
We worried. Oh, how we worried.
We worried that demanding responsive design on top of our already tough list of requirements would kill the contest. That it was just too hard. Maybe even impossible. Silly us.
Once again, you overwhelmed us with your out-of-the-box creativity, dazzling technical chops, and inspiring can-do spirit. During the few weeks of our call for entries, people and teams from 36 countries produced 128 astonishingly excellent apps. With that many great entries, judging was a beast! Fortunately we had excellent help. But enough about us. On to the winners!
Grand Prize Winner
The mysteriously named L&L has won the 10K Apart Grand Prize for Bytes Jack, an HTML Blackjack game that is totally fun to play—unless you have a problem with gambling, in which case, try one of the fantastic runners-up: Space Mahjong by Toby Yun and Kyoungwoo Ham (Best Technical Achievement); Sproutable, by Kevin Thompson (Best Design); or PHRASE: Make Lovely Circular Patterns Based on Text Phrases (People’s Choice), by Andy Gott.
L&L will receive a paid pass to any An Event Apart conference event, a $3000 Visa Gift Card, and copies of Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design and Aaron Gustafson’s Adaptive Web Design.
In addition to these four winners, there are twelve honorable mentions that will delight any visitor—and astonish any web designer-developer who tries to figure out how these wizards worked their magic in under 10K. See all the winners or view the entire gallery and decide whom you would have awarded best in show.
P.S. We love you
An Event Apart thanks our hard-working, insanely inspired friends at Mix Online.
The 10K Apart hearkens back to Stewart Butterfield’s 5k Contest of yesteryear. Back then, Stewart challenged web designer-developers to create something magical using less than 5K of code and images—and the community responded with a flowering of creativity and awesome proto-web-apps. Stewart, we salute you!
I’VE TWEAKED the layout here with ITC Franklin Condensed from Webtype.
It’s funny. My daughter always asks what’s my favorite color, and I can never answer, ’cause I love them all. With color, it depends on context and it’s all about combination. But a favorite font? You bet I’ve got one. It’s Franklin Gothic, and especially Franklin Gothic Condensed. Has been for years.
For several years now I’ve used a licensed Franklin Gothic web font by someone other than Webtype here. It was good but not perfect.
Webtype’s Franklin Condensed is as close to perfect as web fonts can come in October, 2011. (And as they improve it, the look and feel here will improve as well.) The font is so good that it emboldened me to apply it to other parts of the page that formerly had to make do with Helvetica. See, for instance, my footer. It’s not a work of art, but it’s now much more pleasant to read in every environment I’ve tested.
I’m still conservative about web fonts (primarily because of bandwidth issues); this site’s body text is still set in Georgia, one of the world’s most beautiful screen fonts as we all agree. This morning, simply to break away from the herd, I tried replacing Georgia with Palatino, an engaging, readable, widely available font that comes with Windows 2000/XP (“Palatino Linotype”) and the Macintosh (“Palatino”). On its own, the Palatino was lovely. But it couldn’t stand up to the heavier elements of this site’s somewhat cartoonish look and feel. So back to Georgia I went.
The site is overdue for a redesign: the last redesign (e.g. the current look and feel) was a retro tribute to the site’s 1990s look. A new look is coming, but for the interim, I’m grateful to my friends at Webtype for their craftsmanship.
AS EVERY WEB DESIGNER not living under a rock hopefully already knows, The Boston Globe has had a responsive redesign at the hands of some of today’s best designers and developers:
The spare Globe website has a responsive design that adapts to different window sizes, browsers and devices, and it has a built-in Instapaper-type feature that saves articles for reading off various devices on the subway. The overhaul has incorporated the talents of Boston design firms Filament Group, and Upstatement, as well as a large internal team, and pre-empts the need to build separate apps for each device.—New York Observer
As the first responsive redesign of a “real” website (i.e. a large, corporately financed, widely read newspaper site rather than some designer’s blog), the site has the potential to raise public awareness of this flexible, standards-based, multi-platform and user-focused web design approach, and deepen perceptions of its legitimacy, much as Mike Davidson’s standards-based redesign of ESPN.com in 2003 helped convince nonbelievers to take a second look at designing with web standards:
In a major step in the evolution of website design, the Boston Globe relaunched their site today using a Responsive Design approach. For a consistent experience across mobile and desktop browsers, they redesigned the site to add and remove columns to the layout based on the width of your browser window.
This marks the first major, high-traffic, content-heavy website to adopt a responsive design. The lead consultant behind the project is none other than Ethan Marcotte, the designer who wrote the book on responsive design. Much as ESPN changed the way we worked by being one of the first to launch a fully CSS driven site a decade ago, the Boston Globe’s redesign has the potential to completely alter the way we approach web design.—Beaconfire Wire
More work remains to be done. Some sections of the paper have not yet converted, and some site architecture has yet to be refreshed, so it is too early to call the overhaul a complete success. But it is clear that Ethan Marcotte, author of Responsive Web Design and creator of responsive design, together with the geniuses at Filament Group, Upstatement, and the Globe’s internal design/development team have managed to work beautifully together and to solve design problems some of us don’t even know exist.
Congratulations to the Globe for its vision and these designers and developers for their brilliant work.
HERE IS a fine collection of articles, frameworks, and other tools for a “mobile first” approach to (mainly responsive) web design. Well done, Mr Haidara. The Multi-Size Web: a Computing bag by Eric Haidara at Bagcheck.
IN THIS ENJOYABLE interview, beautifully conducted by Lullabot’s Jeff and Jared, we discuss the history of web standards; how SEO sells accessibility; the art of collaboration; the three major inflection points of design on the web; mobile, responsive, and adaptive web design; and much more.
LET YOUR NERD FLAG FLY! Now there is a Flickr group for A Book Apart readers. Come one, come all. Share beauty shots of your A Book Apart collection. Share unboxing photos. Share pictures of your fine self interacting with our awesome books. If you love reading our brief books for people who make websites, we want to see and hear from you.
IN HIS TALK at An Event Apart in Atlanta, GA 2011, Jason Santa Maria outlined the current state of web fonts and how to approach typography online. Here’s my notes from his talk: LukeW | An Event Apart: On Web Typography.
DIBI Conference in the press via Gavin Elliot on Flickr. And a good time was had.
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An Event Apart Atlanta 2011
YOU FIND ME ENSCONCED in the fabulous Buckhead, Atlanta Intercontinental Hotel, preparing to unleash An Event Apart Atlanta 2011, three days of design, code, and content strategy for people who make websites. Eric Meyer and I co-founded our traveling web conference in December, 2005; in 2006 we chose Atlanta for our second event, and it was the worst show we’ve ever done. We hosted at Turner Field, not realizing that half the audience would be forced to crane their necks around pillars if they wanted to see our speakers or the screen on which slides were projected.
Also not realizing that Turner Field’s promised contractual ability to deliver Wi-Fi was more theoretical than factual: the venue’s A/V guy spent the entire show trying to get an internet connection going. You could watch audience members twitchily check their laptops for email every fourteen seconds, then make the “no internet” face that is not unlike the face addicts make when the crack dealer is late, then check their laptops again.
The food was good, our speakers (including local hero Todd Dominey) had wise lessons to impart, and most attendees had a pretty good time, but Eric and I still shudder to remember everything that went wrong with that gig.
Not to jinx anything, but times have changed. We are now a major three-day event, thanks to a kick-ass staff and the wonderful community that has made this show its home. We thank you from the bottoms of our big grateful hearts.
I will see several hundred of you for the next three days. Those not attending may follow along:
SOME IDEAS SEEM inevitable once they arrive. It’s impossible for me to conceive of the universe before rock and roll or to envision Christmas without Mr Dickens’s Carol, and it’s as tough for my kid to picture life before iPads. So too will the internet users and designers who come after us find it hard to believe we once served web content in boxy little hardwired layouts left over from the magical but inflexible world of print.
I remember when the change came. We were putting on An Event Apart, our design conference for people who make websites, and half the speakers at our 2009 Seattle show had tumbled to the magic of media queries. One after another, CSS wizards including Eric Meyer and Dan Cederholm presented the beginnings of an approach to designing content for a world where people were just as likely to be using smart, small-screen devices like iPhone and Android as they were traditional desktop browsers.
Toward the end of the second day, Ethan Marcotte took what the other speakers had shared and amped it to 11. Suddenly, we had moved from maybe to for sure, from possible to inevitable. Ethan even gave us a name for his new approach to web design.
That name appears on the cover of this book, and this book represents the culmination of two years of design research and application by Ethan and leading-edge design practitioners around the world. Armed with this brief book, you will have everything you need to re-imagine your web design universe and boldly go where none have gone before. Happy reading and designing!
Jeffrey Zeldman,
Publisher,
Responsive Web Design
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HTML5, CSS3, UX, Design: Links from An Event Apart Boston 2011
Meeting of the Minds: Ethan Marcotte and AEA attendee discuss the wonders of CSS3. Photo by the incomparable Jim Heid.
THE SHOW IS OVER, but the memories, write-ups, demos, and links remain. Enjoy!
An Event Apart Boston 2011 group photo pool
Speakers, attendees, parties, and the wonders of Boston, captured by those who were there.
What Every Designer Should Know (a)
Jeremy Keith quite effectively live-blogs my opening keynote on the particular opportunities of Now in the field of web design, and the skills every designer needs to capitalize on the moment and make great things.
The Password Anti-Pattern
Related to my talk: Jeremy Keith’s original write-up on a notorious but all-too-common practice. If your boss or client tells you to design this pattern, just say no. Design that does not serve users does not serve business.
What Every Designer Should Know (b)
“In his opening keynote … Jeffrey Zeldman talked about the skills and opportunities that should be top of mind for everyone designing on the Web today.” Luke Wroblewski’s write-up.
Whitney Hess: Design Principles — The Philosophy of UX
“As a consultant, [Whitney] spends a lot of time talking about UX and inevitably, the talk turns to deliverables and process but really we should be establishing a philosophy about how to treat people, in the same way that visual design is about establishing a philosophy about how make an impact. Visual design has principles to achieve that: contrast, emphasis, balance, proportion, rhythm, movement, texture, harmony and unity.” In this talk, Whitney proposed a set of 10 principles for UX design.
Veerle Pieters: The Experimental Zone
Live blogging by Jeremy Keith. Veerle, a noted graphic and interaction designer from Belgium, shared her process for discovering design through iteration and experimentation.
Luke Wroblewski: Mobile Web Design Moves
Luke’s live awesomeness cannot be captured in dead written words, but Mr Keith does a splendid job of quickly sketching many of the leading ideas in this key AEA 2011 talk.
See also: funky dance moves with Luke Wroblewski, a very short video I captured as Luke led the crowd in the opening moves of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”
Ethan Marcotte: The Responsive Designer’s Workflow (a)
“The next talk here at An Event Apart in Boston is one I’ve really, really, really been looking forward to: it’s a presentation by my hero Ethan Marcotte.”
Ethan Marcotte: The Responsive Designer’s Workflow (b)
Ethan’s amazing talk—a key aspect of design in 2011 and AEA session of note—as captured by the great Luke Wroblewski.
An Event Apart: The Secret Lives of Links—Jared Spool
“In his presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jared Spool detailed the importance and role of links on Web pages.” No writer can capture Jared Spool’s engaging personality or the quips that produce raucous laughter throughout his sessions, but Luke does an outstanding job of noting the primary ideas Jared shares in this riveting and highly useful UX session.
An Event Apart: All Our Yesterdays—Jeremy Keith
Luke W: “In his All Our Yesterdays presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Jeremy Keith outlined the problem of digital preservation on the Web and provided some strategies for taking a long term view of our Web pages.”
Although it is hard to pick highlights among such great speakers and topics, this talk was a highlight for me. As in, it blew my mind. Several people said it should be a TED talk.
An Event Apart: From Idea to Interface—Aarron Walter
Luke: “In his Idea to Interface presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Aarron Walter encouraged Web designers and developers to tackle their personal projects by walking through examples and ways to jump in. Here are my notes from his talk.”
Links and Resources from “From Idea to Interface”
Compiled by the speaker, links include Design Personas Template and Example, the story behind the illustrations in the presentation created by Mike Rhode, Dribble, Huffduffer, Sketchboards, Mustache for inserting data into your prototypes, Keynote Kung Fu, Mocking Bird, Yahoo Design Patterns, MailChimp Design Pattern Library, Object Oriented CSS by Nicole Sullivan and more!
An Event Apart: CSS3 Animations—Andy Clarke
“In his Smoke Gets In Your Eyes presentation at An Event Apart in Boston, MA 2011 Andy Clarke showcased what is possible with CSS3 animations using transitions and transforms in the WebKit browser.” Write-up by the legendary Luke Wroblewski.
Madmanimation
The “Mad Men” opening titles re-created entirely in CSS3 animation. (Currently requires Webkit browser, e.g. Safari, Chrome.)
CSS3 Animation List
Anthony Calzadilla, a key collaborator on the Mad Men CSS3 animation, showcases his works.
Box Shadow Curl
Pure CSS3 box-shadow page curl effect. Mentioned during Ethan Marcotte’s Day 3 session on exploring CSS3.
Multiple CSS Transition Durations
Fascinating article by Anton Peck (who attended the show). Proposed: a solution to a key problem with CSS transitions. (“Even now, my main issue with transitions is that they use the same time-length value for the inbound effect as they do the outbound. For example, when you create a transition on an image with a 1-second duration, you get that length of time for both mousing over, and mousing away from the object. This type of behavior should be avoided, for the sake of the end-user!”)
Everything You Wanted to Know About CSS3 Gradients
Ethan Marcotte: “Hello. I am here to discuss CSS3 gradients. Because, let’s face it, what the web really needed was more gradients.”
Ultimate CSS3 Gradient Generator
Like it says.
Linear Gradients Generator
By the incomparable John Allsopp.
These sessions were not captured
Some of our best talks were not captured by note-takers, at least not to my knowledge. They include:
- Eric Meyer: CSS Anarchist’s Cookbook
- Mark Boulton: Outing the Mind: Designing Layouts That Think for You
- Jeff Veen: Disaster, DNA, and the Fathomless Depth of the Web
It’s possible that the special nature of these presentations made them impossible to capture in session notes. (You had to be there.)
There are also no notes on the two half-day workshop sessions, “Understand HTML5 With Jeremy Keith,” and “Explore CSS3 With Ethan Marcotte.”
What have I missed?
Attendees and followers, below please add the URLs of related educational links, write-ups, and tools I’ve missed here. Thanks!
SUGGEST YOUR FAVORITE sites, apps and people and celebrate the best of the web.
Nominations for the 13th .net Awards are now open at http://www.thenetawards.com. We want you to help us find 2011’s best of the web and there are 16 categories to choose from. This year there’s a renewed focus on emerging talent with new Awards including the Young Designer, Young Developer and Brilliant Newcomer Awards – presented in association with Happy Cog.
Last year the Awards clocked up more than 95,000 votes, and winners included Ravelry (beating Facebook and Twitter as Best Community Site!), Modernizr (Open Source App of the Year) and Typekit (Web Application of the Year). The mighty Jeffrey Zeldman, meanwhile, scored a hat-trick, bagging awards as Standards Champion and for Design Agency of the Year and Video Podcast of the Year (for The Big Web Show, co-hosted with Dan Benjamin).