xBlog: The visual thinking weblog
5th April 2001

urbanomic prototypes and development

“No guarantee that any of this will work! These are ongoing experiments, in search of new forms of digital life by recombining elements of Flash, PHP, Perl, Java and other bits and pieces. If you haven’t already got it, you may need to install the Flash 5 plugin.”

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5th April 2001

Developing User-Friendly Flash Content

“The original intent of this white paper was to provide Macromedia Flash developers with the knowledge necessary to create user-friendly Macromedia Flash experiences on the Web. The need for this paper has never been more crucial, since many of the most vocal Web critics have recently portrayed Macromedia Flash content in a negative light. The claims that Macromedia Flash content is bad for the Web or that Macromedia Flash and usability are polar opposites are both myths.”

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5th April 2001

Dr Leslie & The Composing Room

“Founded in 1927 by Sol Cantor and Dr. Robert L. Leslie, The Composing Room set out to be the cream of the crop in typesetting firms. Described in a promotional piece as ‘a shop where type is set intelligently for intelligent clients. Also promptly, reasonably, and with true professional enthusiasm. An outfit which plays up the art in every particular, and doesn’t and doesn’t miss the fun in fundamentals either.’”

posted in Graphic design | Permalink | Comments Off

5th April 2001

IE 6 Switches to Standards

“As long as there has been more than one browser in this world, there’s been a need for those browsers to agree about how they show Web content. And as straightforward as that sounds, it’s been an arduous journey. Over the years, official consortiums, industry watchdogs and countless online resources have been forced into existence out of sheer need to create standards, track their implementation, and make noise when things go wrong. With so many people working so hard, you’d think we’d be getting closer to a world of standards compliance, where developers can simply write code based on a specification and assume it will work in all browsers. Isn’t that what standards are for, after all? Good news, folks. We’re another little step closer.”

posted in Web design | Permalink | Comments Off

5th April 2001

InstantWap

“This may be the simplest and shortest ‘new technology’ article ALA has ever published. It concerns wireless markup, a subject that’s often confusing and more than occasionally controversial. No two developers seem to agree on the best way to serve the wireless market. But we think you’ll like the plan outlined in this article, since it involves no effort and requires no learning. How often can you say that about emerging web technologies?”

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5th April 2001

The Psychology of Menu Selection

“Designing Cognitive Control at the Human/Computer Interface: Menu selection is emerging as an important mode of human/computer interaction. This book, the first entirely devoted to this important form of human/computer interaction, provides detailed theoretical and empirical information of interest to software designers and human/computer interaction specialists and researchers.”

posted in Interface design | Permalink | Comments Off