We're looking for a talented, experienced, detail-oriented person with an understanding of user experience, user interface design and information architecture. Familiarity with the Drupal content management system is desired, but not required.
This is a full-time position. We're looking for people living in the Boulder/Denver area.
]]>A DrupalCamp is being planned. One, maybe two days of code, design, chat, sharing, testing, patching, learning, maybe showing off a little, laughing.
Have a thought on what it should look like? When it should happen? What we might do? Edit the wiki!
See you there! (Where ever that might be.)
]]>What's perhaps more disheartening is that we see such backward-looking thinking in the top-line offerings from the king of design software companies, Adobe.
Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Standard
The basic toolkit for web designers and developers, Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 Web Standard software features all-new versions of the fundamental tools for creating and maintaining interactive websites, applications, and mobile device content. Prototype your projects, design assets, and build and maintain professional web experiences. Work on your choice of Mac or Windows®.Combines Adobe Dreamweaver® CS3, Flash® CS3 Professional, Fireworks® CS3, Contribute® CS3, Bridge CS3, Version Cue® CS3, and Device Central CS3.
As a web designer, I look at this offering and shrug with frustration. Aside from Bridge and perhaps Fireworks, I have no use for any of these applications. It's just not relevant to the requirements of web design these days.
When it comes to theming for Drupal or any other content management system or even basic blog system, what you need are decent graphic design tools (such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks...) and a proper text editor (BBEdit, TextWrangler, TextMate...).
If you're a student or just starting out in web design, my recommendation is to order the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard. Unless you're a Flash artist, the "Web Design" packages are just a waste of disk space.
]]>Building community online
Community building is more than just software, and more than just people. The nature of online communities is changing, no longer defined exclusively by bulletin boards or superblogs.
This is a session for everyone where we can discuss what it is that makes for a rich and robust community -- from the perspective of web developer, designer, evangelist, organization, member....
What have you done that has worked well? What have you seen elsewhere that you liked? What are people buzzing about? What Drupal modules (and/or other CMS or social networking tools) have you used in community sites?
Taking a broader approach, what do we mean when we say "community"? Can we even limit the concept to single sites?
The idea behind this is obvious to most: If you build it, will they come? And if they do, will they stay and participate?
I'm hoping that, should this proposal be accepted, a lot of people with rich experience in building and/or administering community sites will come and share their insights, especially about where we see things going.
If you're going to the Summit, maybe you'd like to express whether you're interested?
Greg, Ezra and I have also submitted a proposal for a session on theming for Drupal.
Theming Drupal: techniques, approaches, philosophies
A presentation panel on ways to implement web design theming in Drupal.
Drupal and its resplendent contributed modules push content of all kinds out to the web page. This session will start with a run-down on some of the various tags and pre-formatting Drupal generates by default, and easy ways to spruce up what comes "out of the box."
Next will be going over ways to change and customize the content presentation in more aggressive ways, using phpTemplate overrides and CSS. (And Javascript?)
Also addressed will be newer concepts of CSS usage and implementation, including semantic naming conventions, microformats and Transcending CSS when facing the challenges of coping with wide varieties of dynamically generated content in a CMS. (E.g., why, when and how to split up your theme into different stylesheets for different browsers and media.)
Finally, we will look to the future and where Drupal 6, 7, etc. are taking us in the next generation of Drupal templating.
The balance of focus between these areas may shift with questions, expressions of interests and levels of expertise in the room.
Related but probably not covered: Usability and Drupal.
So far, the voting on this has been favorable. It's more geeky in focus, which in a way makes me more nervous and yet more excited. I'm truly hoping for some help from others on this, especially when it comes to plans for the Drupal 6+ ways of templating, which I know enough about to be very intrigued but hesitate to speak about in any leadership capacity.
The last note in the description, about usability, really breaks my heart, as it has become a major passion of mine over the past year. Fortunately, theming wizard Steven Wittens has proposed a session on just design "from a geek perspective," where I can get my fix and we OSCMS geeks can (hopefully) collectively fill the gap in usability coverage.
]]>I've spent the last few days browsing the web, and learning some things — mainly that when viewing them on a handheld, the vast majority of websites out there not only look like (excuse me) crap but don't even work! On many sites, I would scroll all the way down through the page to the bottom, and never find the content. It was all off to the side, where (hello, Blazer designers!) the handheld's web browser will not scroll.
For the sites that worked, it was great. Google News and Yahoo! News are absolute delights on handhelds — tops on usability.
Ironically, very cumbersome were sites devoted to handheld applications downloads. Even Palm's own website was cluttered to the point of being utterly unusable. I can say with full authority now that it's very easy to get lost on a single web page with dozens of links filling the top of a page viewed on a handheld. The "semantic web" this ain't.
Yes, and I am certainly very late to the party on this one. Yes, I've heard the hype about handhelds and read the articles about handhelds. Leave it to some hard first-hand lessons in handheld web browsing to get the message through my (some would say "thick") head: for each website, be sure to create alternate page designs for handhelds! There's just no excuse not to these days.
So how to do it? Some Googling pulled up this great article on A List Apart from more than two years ago. In this how-to, Elika Etemad and Jorunn D. Newth give a brief run-down on some simple stylesheet best practices towards having a very presentable website for site visitors using handhelds.
ems and percentages, not pixels....But I would go further.
display: block; your table cells, but you can't change their order. Only with CSS-only layouts can you get your main content to the top of the page load for all of your various page designs.Of course, while it's relatively easy to keep design for handhelds in mind for new websites, new Drupal themes and new page templates, it's not so easy for existing sites. After all, when remediation involves not just an added stylesheet but also refactoring the page templates themselves, we're talking a bit of time and effort. (Handheld site visitors who are reading this article at the time of publication will note that this site itself is not very handheld-friendly. We're in the midst of doing a redesign, and plan to have an improved handheld experience here on pingv.com in the coming weeks.)
The additional upside of designing for handhelds is that accessibility is also improved.
The handheld explosion is happening on the web. It's time to design for them, even if you're creating your designs on the Mac 30-inch cinema screen.
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