“One of the touted benefits of CSS is that it reduces total page weight, and thus download time, both at first page load, and even more on subsequent loads due to style sheet caching. This is true, but often a sizable fraction of the first load savings is lost because of highly redundant CSS code. Well that’s all over. Now you will learn some ’secrets’ of efficient CSS coding, enabling you to pare that style sheet right down to the bare bones. To be sure, you won’t achieve huge savings doing this, but for some highly competitive sites every little bit counts. There are several areas where byte-busting can happen, including shorthand†properties, multiple†declarations, default values, inheritance, and white space.”

“Last Thursday Greg Storey posted an entry announcing a contest he was going to hold in order to obtain a logo for his friendís new business venture. Over 100 comments later it seems thereís a decently even split between those who agree with the contest and those who donít (I think I inadvertantly became one of the loudest proponents for the latter). I donít want to discuss the merits of the contest here (Iíve already been chided enough for trying to discuss it there) but I would like to approach one of the issues that the contest and all the subsequent discussion raises. And that is whether or not design contests that promise to make up in prestige what they lack in paying the bills are actually worthwhile.”

“I had lunch yesterday with Beth Tondreau; and as it usually happens when meeting a designer at their studio, I found myself waiting for her to get that one last file out. In this case, it was a PDF file of a cookbook cover. Making small talk, I asked her if she was familiar with The Gourmet Cookbook; to which she instantly replied, ‘The yellow?’ Yes. That notorious yellow.”

“we’ve hand-drawn 79 low-priced icons, great for websites or applications. they are approx. 16×16 pixels and in GIF format. own them for use royalty-free in your own projects! $40 only $30 USD until march 1st [2005].”

“So, I didn’t see Marissa Meyer speak at BayCHI about Google’s approach to user interface design, but Rashmi and Luke did, and I found some of what they related to be quite interesting. The thing that most grabbed me was this comment from Rashmi’s notes: ‘Marissa also addressed whether User Experience is a sustainable competitive advantage. Although analysts such as Gartner believe that User Experience is not a sustainable competitive advantage (because it can be copied easily) Google has observed that their competitors have not been able to catch up. Marissa thinks that since Google started from such a different point (a very bare interface), other companies have had a difficult time reaching that point (since they started from such a busy interface, and have so much paring down to do).’ Luke echoed this statement in his notes, with a slightly different emphasis…”

“Eight years ago we sold our darkroom equipment and moved our image editing to the computer. The image editing software we chose was Adobe Photoshop… Today we are making images that we could not even have dreamed of making before. Since then our expertise in Photoshop has increased many times over, and we continue to refine our workflow.”

“The most powerful technology A9.com invented for Yellow Pages is ‘Block View,’ which brings the Yellow Pages to life by showing a street view of millions of businesses and their surroundings. Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, and proprietary software and hardware, A9.com drove tens of thousands of miles capturing images and matching them with businesses and the way they look from the street. The whole process (except for the driving!) is completely automatic, making it fast and efficient. Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 20 million photographs. We are driving and at some point hope to cover the whole country.”

“Hereís the scenario: You have a great story with no art. The editor is insistent that this story MUST be the centerpiece or the cover story, the most important story in the issue. You donít have an illustrator on staff, and you have very little in the way of a budget for this type of thing. So, whatís the good designer to do?”

From ACM’s Ubiquity: “Mary Czerwinski is Senior Researcher and Group Manager Visualization and Interaction Research Group at Microsoft Research.”

“The jackpot is actually 12 jewels hidden in very public places around the United States. Think diamonds, think rubies, think the rarest, most perfect Kashmir sapphire. All you need to do to get any or all the gems is to decipher clues in the book ‘A Treasure’s Trove.’ The clues lead to a dozen 18-karat gold tokens. Author Michael Stadther, who hid each of the tokens himself, promises that they are all in public places where they can be easily accessed without digging, moving or disturbing objects or structures.”

“If you have ever looked closely at one of the P22 key charts you will notice several dashes, well, six to be exact. These dashes are the hyphen, minus sign, en dash, em dash, macron and underscore. Don’t stop reading! These dashes are found in every font because each has a specific typographic and grammatical use, but you’ll probably need to use only three of them.”

“Do you guys follow the graphic design field? I do, if in my usual half-assed, raggedy way. I know some designers; I’ve been through some histories; I have a shelf — a short shelf, but still — of books, some of which I’ve spent actual time with … Years ago I even took a couple of graphic design courses, learning the hard way how completely I lack graphic-design talent. I’m also a regular visitor over at the design blog DesignObserver. It’s become one of my favorite online hang-outs…”

“The Toronto Star unveiled a radical remake of their Sunday paper today, becoming much more magazine-like… I’m sure a lot of editors will be watching how this works. Especially those south of the border where many newspapers are losing Sunday circulation and are scrambling to figure out how to stop it.”

Lots of discussion here: “A long time Airbag reader and friend of mine has decided to cut his chain to the corporate desk and push out on his own to live the American dream. For those of you not familiar with this term, I’m looking at you Pierre, it means my friend has decided to start a business. And to kick this all off he’s decided to give away an Apple iPod Shuffle… ‘So, you’re basically looking for a cheap logo? $100 bucks or so? What a nice way to devalue the talent and skill of the design profession. These kinds of ‘competitions’ always rub me the wrong way.’”

“Ta-da makes it easy to… Keep track of all the little things you need to get done; Make lists for other people (co-workers, friends, family); Share lists with the world (’My favorite movies of 2004′); Subscribe to your lists in RSS so you’re always on track …and more!”