Samurai Coder

I noticed that Daring Fireball is very readable in Opera Mobile in my mobile phone except for the unrecognozed HTML entity for em-dash —. Shame on you, Opera.

Brian Suda:

The thing is, creating a great web experience for users of mobile devices is much easier than you might think. In this article I’ll introduce seven fundamental steps that, if followed, will help you avoid the pitfalls that have caused many other mobile sites to fail. By the end of this article you’ll know exactly where to focus your efforts in order to build a successful mobile site.

A sitepoint article for mobile web designs. The situation here in Japan is fairly different. Good to learn what’s happening oversea.

Secrets. Learn two things:

• A great tips you can run from Terminal.
• A hellish deisgn. Useful information impossible to search and find.

Jason Beaird:

Let’s face it: the core purpose of all web design is communication. Whether we’re talking about an online ecommerce store, a web presence for a Fortune 500 company, or a profile for a social networking site, typography is a vital component. For most people, typography is simply about arranging a familiar set of shapes to make words, sentences, and paragraphs. Having the ability to set type with only a few strokes on a keyboard has allowed us to forget about the creative and artistic possibilities of this medium.

Typography matters. I emphasize this point at every interview, but no one takes it seriously.

9 CSS Ethics Every Designer Should Have.

I don’t support 1). I have never seen CSS written with hierarchical indents.

Penny McIntire:

Just as great artists must understand their tools, great Web designers must understand the technology behind their art. In Visual Design for the Web, author Penny McIntire demonstrates to novice Web designers how to use their tools—including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—in conjunction with the principles of aesthetics and usability to become masters of their craft. Chapters on site analysis, navigation, layout, color, graphics, typography and forms start with the basics by teaching the terminology and techniques of Web structures, but continue on to demonstrate how to apply the rules of design to create great sites.

Now Available on O’reilly Safari. You realy shouldn’t use the word “modern” in your book title. I can imagine in two years you get comments saying “This book is very old” in Amazon. Every good web design book now has typography section. Navigation and page layout aren’t enough to cover the entire design.

lynda.com:

Accessibility on the web has been an issue for over a decade, and it remains a crucial—but often overlooked—element of web design. Instructor Zoe Gillenwater explains the concept of accessibility as it applies to the web, and describes how it affects the audience. She also covers how to set up accessibility testing, and how to apply accessibility principles to new and existing sites using standards-compliant markup and CSS. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

I wish I had money to throw out to learn accessibility.

Nitram+Nunca, Shiira’s designer’s website, got listed in “60 Elegant and Visually Appealing Designs” in Smashing Magazine.

All the websites listed are perfectly splendid.

Steven Frank:

I’ve personally always been a fan of SubEthaEdit, due to its lightweight, friendly UI, and killer collaboration feature.

But if you take their screenshots closely, .js files seem to be associated with TextWrangler. Panic is a company who takes care of details. Sigh. You could associate text files with SubEthaEdit or, even, Coda.

The name “Mike Zornek” comes to my mind everytime I think about websites that advertise shareware. I’m not as much impressed with Panic’s website as with Billable’s page. I don’t know why Mac developers don’t blog much about his screenshots and screencasts.