Julie Larson-Green - Diving into the new Office 12

Julie Larson-Green - Diving into the new Office 12

Get a look at the new Office UI with this video.

R.I.P. WYSIWYG - Results-Oriented UI Coming (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

R.I.P. WYSIWYG - Results-Oriented UI Coming (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)

Interesting article from Nielsen about UI design becoming more goal orientated rather than the actions needed to get there. Which makes sense when you think about it inline with usabilitiy design.

Currently I think you get some of the most interesting interfaces in creative products such as Painter or Poser. Which take a bit of getting used to as they are not what we are used to, but are easier to learn and much more effective thereafter.

OpenLaszlo

OpenLaszlo

An Open Source RIA development platform. I'll keep this short as I'm still learning about what they offer. But in a similar vain to Flex, making it easier to create RIAs.

Flash: what is it good for?

Flash: what is it good for?

After revisiting the Adobe site in light of the Flex beta I was forced to reconsider the pros and cons of Flash versus AJAX.

At this stage though I've little practical experience with Flash in the last two years (something I want to change) so I'm looking to someone else to provide some insight on when it's best to use AJAX and when to use Flash.

I also want to look at Flex, it's interesting how development tools are offering more complex interface widgets for RIAs and I wonder if/when I'll move from coding XHTML and CSS into working in more rich interface application tools.

I like controlling my code and understanding how it works, but as long as the code produced is of a good quality I feel no need to hand scribe everything. Generally the problem with such automated tools is the code is much heavier than required. If you need an example of that look at the still awful Macromedia implementation of rollovers in Dreamweaver.

Yahoo! User Interface Library and Design Patterns

Yahoo! Design Pattern Library

Yesterday Yahoo released a User Interface Code Library, which includes some very handy little Ui widgets. The integrity of which remains to be seen, but they certainly seem to have the right idea.

This could make it alot easier to create stunning looking and functional web interfaces. Hooray.

eHub: Design 2.0: Minimalism, Transparency, and You

Emily Chang - Strategic Designer: Design 2.0: Minimalism, Transparency, and You

Interesting snippits from interviews that looks at some of the recurring themes in web 2.0 design.

There is a lot on the lines of "less is more" which is something that has always struck me with product development. I mean how many new features does Photoshop really need. Perhaps the next version could hog less resources or take less time to load?

I think it is far too easy to concentrate on the masses of functionality that can go in, rather than finding the really useful functionality and making sure it works really well.

Ma.gnolia - del.icio.us as I wanted it to be

Ma.gnolia

Magnolia might still be in beta, but you can see Zeldman's handywork has paid off. This is del.icio.us as I would have liked it to be. All the great benefits of online bookmarking and tagging, but with a gorgeous interface and the ability to rate the URL.

Plus I can use a nifty little Greasemonkey script to transfer links from Del.icio.us to Ma.gnolia, or I can import my bookmarks. I've just about got used to del.icio.us but I think I shall make the effort to move across to Ma.gnoloia, since the ui is so much more pleasant to use.

Edit:
More investigation has shown me that it brings the best of del.icio.us, Digg and Flickr together. As well as being able to rate URLs, you can join groups and post URLs to them. There is already a library 2.0 group too.

Organising Fonts and the need for something new.

If ever there was a need for information management, then my fonts are it, closely followed by my pictures. The advantage I have when looking for a picture is that Windows supports thumbnail images of at least some file types that allow me to get an overview of sorts.

Fonts however can only be seen by either opening them or previewing them through software for managing fonts, and even then it tends to be slow. The other difficulty is that fonts have far more subtle changes than photgraphs, since unless they are a dingbat they need to represent a recognisable letter of the alphabet. So the only real way I have of organising my fonts is within the Windows folder structure, which isn't great since quite often fonts will fit into several descriptive catagories, but you don't want to keep multiple copies of fonts. Also at a granular level fonts need to be kept in families, which in themselves will likely stretch across different catagories as the different weights and italics change the feel of the font.

There is no standard for organising fonts either, so every designer has their own way of sorting out their fonts. The power to add my own meta data to fonts, to tag them, would be amazing, as then I could desribe a font as well askeep it within it's family.

Flickr's framework is not appropriate, because it is not as easy to create fonts as it is photos and sharing fonts is breaching copyright, but I do think it could be used on a local basis and add masses of value.

Default Font Size: The Battle is Won »UsableType » UsableType: Web Typography Guide

Default Font Size: The Battle is Won »UsableType » UsableType: Web Typography Guide

The defacto answer on font sizing for the web? Not really, but it looks at how we have forced a trend of smaller text as designers, versus the usability of allowing the user to decide.

REcently in contrast though a lot of more modern websites are increasing their font sizes again. Not to the always to the default size, but larger than the micro fonts that were cool about 3 years ago.

I wonder if this is because of XP's ability to render fonts nicer to the masses and because of higher resolution monitors.

Morality and User Interface Design

Another Useful Blog: Morality and User Interface Design

Interesting look at UI design and where is has moral impact. Although it's not widely discussed, mainly because it is far to easy to sound like you are trying to "big yourself up" it has to be acknowledged that interface design does has a level of ethical responsability.

I notice this on a daily level when looking at accessibility within my design. I'm motivated by a personal desire to make sure technology is accessible as possible; especailly when it can offer a real life line to people. Within the context of library software, it is completely inline with a libraries objectives; to make sure that everyone in the community can access the information (the internet holds).

I may not be designing interfaces for medical applications, but I do feel a lot better about working on designing a great OPAC than I would working for an insurance firm or bank.

User Interface Research Videos

Buxton Research Videos

Not the most atractive site, but the videos on here, especially the ones areound Alias are really interesting. Making great observations about the way expert users work and how to use that to make them expert users of the software, quickly.
Also a great point about menus and how you have to look to select a linear menu, but directional menus can be chosen with your eyes closed.

Great research and thought provoking stuff.

Web design 2.0

Naked IT

An interesting blog on design trends in Web 2.0. It holds particular interest with me because I was writing a report on this, before I got dragged off to design three blogs for work.

It's taken a slightly different approach to my thoughts on it, but picks up some really good points like the major resurgence of Arial, I hated Arial but I found myself using it more and more recently.
Rounded corners have been about for a while, but with the iPod becoming such a design icon it has only become more popular.
If you are in any doubt of the validity of this blog just check out TechCrunch the ultimate Web2.0 blog and you can see all the checklist items are there.

The biggest dispointment is the lack of understanding from the author about getting the code right. He knows it is important but doesn't understand the value of using semantic code.

However I can now feel confident that my new designs should give hit the nail on the head as I've already picked up on these trends, if only subconciously, and have already reflected them in the new designs.

The real challenge is to find my own style for my website which remains uninspiringly average at the moment.