CSS-voodoo-master turned WordPress hacker to the stars Chris Casciano has launched a new version of his Chunky Soup.net complete with microformatty (hCard and hAtom) goodness. So get over there and check it out, yo!

I know I only used the new IE7 for a couple hours, but it has to go. To be fair: the CSS support has gotten much better than the last build I tried. But the simple fact is: everyone sending me bugs here at work is most likely using IE6, so I just need to be having the same experience as them to figure out what’s going on.

In other news: giving the new Firefox 2.0 alpha 1 (what kind of name is “Bon Echo” anyway?) a quick spin and liking it so far (hat tip to WaSP).

So Ether.com has launched their service which they describe as “paypal for time”. Essentially you sign up and give them information on your area of expertise, then set your billing rates you want to use for your time. Then they set you up with a toll-free number and an extension that points straight to you so that people who need help with something can call in, agree to your rate and get in touch with you. (Obviously they let you schedule available times and aim where you want the calls to go to and all that sort of good stuff, and you don’t have to take the calls right away, you can give a call back within a window of time.)

Conveneiently I’ve been approved as a beta user so if there’s anyone out there who needs some deep web-techy nerd action you can give me a call. Either by checking out my Ether page or by calling my number directly at 1-888-MY-ETHER ext. 01379886.

New IE7 Build Available from MIX06!

Today is the first day of the MIX06 conference. Internet Explorer team members are presenting this week on much of the work we’ve done for IE7. [snip]

One of the other items on the CD is an updated build of IE7 for MIX06. This is build 5335 of IE7. In order to give something to those of you who didn’t attend the conference and to address concerns or bugs that have been reported, we’ve made an updated IE7 build available to the public. This is actually an update from the build we put on the CD for the conference so it is the most up to date build available anywhere. It is build 5335.5 and it is now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7/. This build is for Windows XP Service Pack 2 and shows the current state of IE7.

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You’ll see how accessibility, content, CSS, information architecture, JavaScript, usability, visual design, and XHTML create better experiences by working together rather than alone.

Notes

• Everyone should be involved in all processes
• Educating, communicating and sharing between all team members is critical
• If all team members understand what each other does and how then they’ll have an easier time respecting each other and their roles in the project.
• Everyone needs to understand timelines and their dependencies. If one task is late all tasks will be late.
• Information Architecture the team used for this project:
  • Goal-Oriented IA docs- “this page serves X purpose”
  • wireframe layouts- “this page needs to have X elements”
  • page description diagrams- “of the things that go on this page this is most important, this is less important, this is least important”

Links

• Plazes.com
• Presentation slides and redesigned site screens
• Carl Sieber
• Eris Stassi
• Garrett Dimon
• Jason Santa Maria
• Shaun Inman

So after things at the convention center died down yesterday I stashed my backpack at Alex’s hotel. Conveninetly Alex had significantly more stamina for the night than I did so it wound up staying there until the end of the day today (sunday) and I wound up scrounging a notepad and pen from vendors in the trade show room since even my beloved moleskine was inside it. (Thanks O’Reilly [pic] and Vancouver Film School, respectively.)

So without further adieu, here’s what I’ve got scratched in my various notepads here.

From the How to be a web design superhero session (for which i promise to clean up my notes soon):

• The idea of Web Standards as a virus. Usually one person in a team will start to become interested in standards and working on projects in that way which will slowly move across to more and more members of the team learning about it (so they can at least know what’s going on) and eventally working in that way themselves.

From the keynote speech by Jim Coudal and Jason Fried:

• Splitting processes across multiple divisions or people with rigid limits on who does what (building an assembly line type of process) typically just leads to cross-team resntment. The designers demand greater precision when their mockups are built out because they don’t understand the build process, and the developers don’t appreciate the way things are designed because it’s not done with an eye for how things really work once it’s built.
• Design is not just about making exsting content pretty!

Miscellaneous other bits from Saturday:

• Do post-mortem reviews for everything. Site launches (what could have been better?), client meetings (how can we explain things to them better?), job interviews (how could we more effectively get the information we want to know?).
• As long as you learn from it, failure is a good thing.
• Doing things with a small team means it’s easier for you to change direction if you need to. Agility is more important than brute force.
• It’s usually more important to find someone who is passionate about the work they do and interested in learning more than it is to find someone who meets a (typically less-than-reasonable) laundry list of “job requirements”.
• On the subject of home offices and working from home:
  • You have to know when to stop: at some point your time should totally stop beig work time and should start being just yours (or your family’s but you get the idea, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).
  • Make sure work feels like work. If it doesn’t you’ll be more likely to wander off and let your attention and motivation slip.
  • Seperate your workspace from your living space. Make sure there is a distinction between the two.

Sunday’s notes later, I need to get to sleep to make sure I’ll be able to survive going to Jemma, Dustin and Curt’s presentation in the morning. (I got to listen in on their planning this morning and it made me realize just how shoddy my design education is. Stupid Studio Art degree.)

* building big things with small teams
* less can be an advantage
* “hey baby, i’m building a web app”
* does the best design work need to be independent of the client?
* small groups can learn quickly and change direction more easily
* building residual value into the work you do
* coudal: we won’t take a new project if we don’t think we can learn something new about the way.
* fried: how do you take your skills, interests and curiousity and turn that into a business?
* people are ususally intimidated by starting something new, especially a new business.
* don’t quit your day job and go get VC. start a side job.
* mentions: del.icio.us and basecamp, jewelboxing, blinksale
* advantages of starting on the side
** obscurity- if you fail and nobody sees it’s easier to get back up.
** less- “less is a huge competitive advantage”, it’s a very cold war mentality to try to outspend the competition, making things easy will make them more enjoyable for yourself.
*** making less requires less time.

crap, my battery is dying, more later

these are some quick notes from this session, i’ll clean things up later on.

* backstory- notmany people set out to be a superhero or a web designer, something happens that makes them one.
* moral code - belief in what’s right and wrong on the web and to fix bad web design
* selfless- share knowledge and experience freely
* motivation- to be a web design superhero you need to be driven. web design isn’t just a “day job” thing.
* secret identities- you may be familiar with someone’s work but not with them as an individual
* secret hideaway- fortress of solitude, batcave
* easily identified by logos/symbols
* day life vs. secret life- day jobs are seperate from web design motivation
* sometime for groups
* some people aren’t innately skilled, but are good with a tool or set of utilities (think batman)
* trademark weapons- batarang, lasso of truth, text editor, flash
* superpowers
** super speed- need to keep up with trends and new technologies, constant learning and fast reaction and turnaround times
** elasticity
** telepath/clairvoyance- figure out what people mean and want from people who don’t have the vocabulary to fully describe what they mean
** mind control- show clients that they don’t need everything they may believe they do.
** empathy- understand the end users who will be using a site, and to be able to understand their needs.
** danger sense- seeing when problems will be coming with a project or client and developing a plan to deal with them.
** precognition- able to see what the future holds and be able to build with that in mind
** x-ray vision- see what the semantic markup requirements of a lout should be rather than just trying to recreate a layout visually.
** invulnerability- accepting feedback from clients or other commenters.
** invisibility- “where are the women in web design?”
* sidekicks and supervillains

Okay, it took about 10 hours longer than expected but I’ve made it to Austin!

Now I’m going to wait for room service and pass out. Tomorrow should prove interesting.

I’ve been in Houston for several hours now. The airport is by far one of the largest most “gleaming sci-fi utopia” buildings I’ve ever seen. Peoplemovers and vaulted glass walls and plasma displays about.

Which doesn’t stop me from being on the verge of collapse from being up so long, but I’m almost there (in another hour).

On the plus side I did get to watch a woman go from “nearly ready to throttle someone” to “verge of tears” over missing her earlier connection that was supposed to take her to Austin. When the going gets tough, take pleasure in the misery of others.

So my flight schedule was set so that I’d get up at the crack of dawn (actually, significantly before, but I digress) and then reach Austin by noon. But thanks to the magic of modern technology (in this case a delayed flight), I missed my connection to Austin and instead will be flying through Houston to Austin (after I leave here, that is) and will arrive in Austin around 8pm.

Let the good times roll.

Giving Performancing another shot on my dad’s laptop. Have to wait and see if it will hold up enough for me to use it while I’m at SXSW.

Anyway, a couple more SXSW links…

• Free things to get at SXSWi
• I get around at SXSW
• South by Northwest party

From a conversation with Chris.

Me: so i’ve been hacking away at ekwipment some more.
Me: and i came to the realization
Me: that if i had seen this much JS when i started out on the web
Me: i would have vomited blood and never come back
Chris: yeah
Chris: html, js, css, ajax, rails, php
Chris: no wonder people use flash

37 Signals: Every time you add something you take something away

Without a clear understanding of the limits and boundaries of your product, the product will morph into something you no longer recognize. Or worse, something you can no longer manage or control.