Designers often overlook the importance of the footer's navigational and customer support role because data shows that people don't use footers. And then we wonder why they go unused? Next time you're designing a footer, ask yourself how you can design the footer to meet and exceed your customers' expectations. Help them quickly and effectively navigate your site, engage them with interesting content to spark their interest in what you have to offer, and provide a clear path …
12. But Designers Shouldn't Be Pushovers
Designers shouldn't be just implementors. Clients and stakeholders don't just want someone who likes to be told what to do. They want problem solvers who can work through solutions that meet the needs of both the business and the user.
Solution:
Designers on a team need to ask questions, seek answers. They can't just accept a list of feedback. They have to think through that feedback, what it means and determine what's …
- Software by Rob: How to Find Your 4-Second Startup Pitch
- Intridea - Company Blog: CogConnect - Mobile Rehab for Stroke Victims
- Obie Fernandez: Steve Blank on when not to add features
- Calvin Klein: Calvin Klein Moso Leaves Bedding
- Lee Munroe: Designers, ask your client why five times
- giant robots smashing into other giant robots: 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Business: Our Hiring Process
…to very quickly store data, so you don't even need your own server . Perfect if you're a Designer like me who doesn't like managing servers and databases. On top of that, any data changes are real time .
It's just a matter of including the Firebase script on your page. Their documentation is very straight forward. Check out this 5 minute Firebase tutorial .
Results
There are a couple of tools that already enable code sharing, and there are even some real-time …
- New Relic: Five Non-Mainstream Databases for PHP Apps - Part 2
- Giles Bowkett: Node.js Miniapp: minim.al bit.ly
- Heroku: Polyglot Platform
- High Scalability: Is Node.js Becoming a Part of the Stack? SimpleGeo Says Yes.
- Engine Yard Developer Blog: Introducing Node.js and Engine Yard Labs
- SD Ruby Podcast: Episode 124: Build Your Api With Node.js
…MacBook Pro with Retina display, are fantastic and I highly recommend Designers invest in them.
More and more devices have high-res and if you want your product or website to look professional to users of these devices, you should put some thought into how they look.
My preference is to only maintain one version of each graphical asset instead of two (I'm lazy), so I'll typically have an @2x sprite that I resize for all users. I'll also try to save highly compressed images …
- mir.aculo.us: 3 low-hanging fruit for retina websites
- New Relic: Designing and building a UI that works for all of your users, in all contexts
- A Fresh Cup: Double Shot #897
- Signal vs. Noise: Backstage: Basecamp for mobile
- Global Nerdy: Hello! HTML5 and CSS3-Manning's Deal of the Day (Feb. 21)
- Trevor Turk: Links for 2-1-11
…Programmers, we're on call in shifts throughout the day, Support is answering questions, Designers are sketching away, and our System Administrators are usually brainstorming evil plans.
We used the new Basecamp iPhone app to post photos throughout the week. I loved seeing an internal live-stream of what was happening in and out of the office.
The highlight of the meetups for me really is just seeing and being around my coworkers. There's only so much you can get over …
- Signal vs. Noise: What was your first job?
…I was Doing It Right™. So last fall I took the Rails for Designers class at The Starter League . Obviously, the class helped me get better at programming. I wasn't expecting it to transform my design process — yet that's exactly what happened.
Before you can walk, you have to stand on your own feet.
An interface isn't just a series of static screens pasted together. It's a flow, with inputs and outputs. You can't truly evaluate an interface until …
- A Fresh Cup: Double Shot #951
- Ruby on Rails Tutorial News: Programmer training academies
- Viget.com Blogs: Server Maintenance Mode for Rails, Capistrano and Apache2
- CRAZ8: Seven Advanced Rails Fragment Cache Techniques
- giant robots smashing into other giant robots: Giving thanks
- Kalzumeus Software: Bingo Card Creator (and other stuff) Year in Review 2012
Viget's home turf. Designer Mark Steinruck , UXers Jason Toth and Lance Gutin , and again the almighty front-end developer Nate came together to make a festive, easy, and fun-to-use site. We leveraged the Dropcam already set up at each office to let users watch each Jinglebot right on the sight, and displayed a running list of the most recent messages as well as aggregate stats on the bots and messages.
Messages and tweets that came in were …
- Axon Flux // A Ruby on Rails Blog: Node.js beginner links
- Engine Yard Developer Blog: What Are Events, Why Might You Care, and How Can EventMachine Help?
- blog.webandy.com | Andy Atkinson: Rails Deployments
- Alex R. Young : The Open Tsunami
- New Relic: Node.js Love, PaaS Providers, Deploy - Part 1
- Labnotes: 2011 is year of the Server-Side JavaScript
Viget's home turf. Designer Mark Steinruck , UXers Jason Toth and Lance Gutin , and again the almighty front-end developer Nate came together to make a festive, easy, and fun-to-use site. We leveraged the Dropcam already set up at each office to let users watch each Jinglebot right on the sight, and displayed a running list of the most recent messages as well as aggregate stats on the bots and messages.
Messages and tweets that came in were …
- Labnotes: 2011 is year of the Server-Side JavaScript
- Axon Flux // A Ruby on Rails Blog: Node.js beginner links
- New Relic: Node.js Love, PaaS Providers, Deploy - Part 1
- Engine Yard Developer Blog: What Are Events, Why Might You Care, and How Can EventMachine Help?
- Heroku: Experimental node.js Support
- Alex R. Young : The Open Tsunami
Designers are a self-critical bunch. It's in our nature to critique and we are our own harshest critics. I see it all the time; myself, my friends on Twitter, the people I hold in high regard. It's a normal aspect of a creative field.
Don't worry! It's normal. It happens, and it will pass. Grab a cup of tea, read a book, go for a walk, put some new music on and relax. Let the storm pass and get back to it. No one expects you to be the best damned web designer this world …
Around 2010 is when responsive design started to become prominent. Designers were having to support multiple types of mobile devices, including the iPhone 4's Retina Display. Resolution independence is something that's been around since TeX, but the reliance on bitmap graphics in desktop and web design makes it difficult to use everywhere. Responsive design has given us web sites that are able to serve different images (or totally different layouts) based on the device's …
- Kalzumeus Software: Inaugural Kalzumeus Podcast: Japan, Startups, A/B Testing, And More
- Trevor Turk: Links for 1-13-11
- omgbloglol: From tl;dr to Techcrunch: my Rumble app's story
- Zach Inglis: Why Tumblr Sucks: Followup
- Giles Bowkett: I'm Totally Against Killing Hollywood
- ZURB: Pay More To Get More