Tag Archive for 'web design'

Ronin

Apr 14, '10  ·  10 Comments Tags: , , , .

Yes, people of the planet Earth and outlying satellites, I am as a matter of fact a ‘free agent’, even if this blog seems as inactive as ever, which would be because I spend my days basking in the sun, reading long-overdue books and experimenting with various outlandish fruit combinations for smoothies that’ll blow your socks right off and send tears of joy rolling down your cheeks.

Alright, so I’ve started reading some books, the other stuff I’ve only dipped by toes into. But I’m working on it.

But a I am a free agent, having had the opportune fortune of ending my 6+ year stint at Io Interactive by being escorted out the door along with some 30 other people who for various reasons found themselves down and out in Copenhagen on the single most beautiful spring day in a decade or more.

No, I’m not entirely sure what happened. I don’t think any of us are, including friends and colleagues left behind, but considering that I’m the least experienced of the developers let go — most of them having 10 years or more behind them — I’m left to wonder on my own what the overriding idea was…

But, as is always the case, the bad memories fade and the good persist, and much as I’ll miss the excitement of working on large-scale games like the Kane & Lynch series — where I spent most of my time — I’ll miss my friends there infinitely more. The banter, the heated TF2 matches, the coffee trains and the overarching eagerness to prove our meddle and just create great games.

So hurray for Facebook, Twitter, blogs, mail and Skype. These things truly shine when you suddenly find yourself going it alone.

Lucky for me, I’ve had it in mind to quit for quite some time, having made several preparations for doing so, and this quite literally couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time. Add to that the timing of having spring making its way into Denmark and me getting to soar my oates on some of those vanity projects I’ve been wanting to do for years, while Io continues to pay me for a few months more…

Things could be a lot worse.

Beyond that, my plan is to hook up with friends of mine for a pretty cool project we’re all very excited about. After that I’ll go the way of the modern-day ronin: The Freelance Web Designer.

Hopefully, this also means I’ll be able to find the time to blog some more, not to mention bringing out the next version of K2 within a foreseeable future.

Oh yeah, and then Red Dead Redemption is coming up in May, so…

I’ll expound on my plans in the near future; for now I just need to get them more organized as well as learn this new routine of not having an office to go to for a little while, which is probably the hardest part about not being employed. It’s surprising how fast time flies when you’re just milling about the house.

Goodbye Io, and thanks for all the fishcake.

Where Were We?

Jan 2, '10  ·  5 Comments Tags: , , , .

Even though I intended to blog some more over the holidays, I instead spent most of the time glued to the computer working in various capacities on K2.

I feel I squandered the trust of the community, by having been too casual about K2 in the past. K2 has been first with a whole bunch of features and functionality, we had a rather large and very active community and a solid codebase, yet mostly due to me having other priorities it’s atrophied somewhat.

The good news is that we put out our 1.0 and subsequently our 1.0.2 over the holidays.

And the great news is we’re already up to having nine languages1 in our new localization repository which puts us well on our way towards the 1.1 release which is of course geared towards localization. We’ve got some pretty cool ideas in the pipeline for the roadmap after that, but more on that later.

Meanwhile, it’s been a while since I did any web design of significance, and I think I’d forgotten a little bit how fun it is (as long as Internet Explorer isn’t invited to the party that is). This has also meant getting reacquainted with the tools of the trade, old and new, and where I used to use TextMate for pretty much everything, I tried switching to Coda (I had a license, even though I’d hardly ever used it), and I’m now a full convert. Those Panic guys know a thing or two about software.

Cinch is another little app that’s been making my life a lot easier, especially since Chrome for OS X still doesn’t have the same functionality that the Windows version has had for a year or more, and since Apple refuses to acknowledge the need for a maximize button.

Now if only I could find a great app for resizing windows in a sane manner.

  1. Danish, german, spanish, latvian, norwegian, dutch, polish, swedish and turkish, with a russian translation on the way. We’re still looking for more, so if you’re interested, read this and give me a shout. [↩]

The OS & Fluid Designs

Aug 13, '08  ·  Closed Tags: , , , , , , .

In laying down this new design — Kalamari — I decided to try and go with a fluid-width layout for once. Traditionally I haven’t held it in particularly high regard; but I experiemented with it for a few hours, and ended up somehow finding it a natural fit alongside the ‘book-like’ typography.

Continue reading ‘The OS & Fluid Designs’

To Read Old Stuff, Go Left

Aug 9, '08  ·  Closed Tags: , , .

Please, fellow interface designers, look into your hearts and face the fact that pagination navigation has newer stuff on the right and older stuff on the left. Not the other way around.

Consider a blog like a diary. You start writing on the first page and then go towards the right. And since the first page of a blog is the latest entry, to go to the older entries, you have to press the arrow that points to the left.

Left = Old.

Except if you read rtl, in which case:

Please, fellow rtl interface designers, look into your hearts and face the fact that pagination navigation has newer stuff on the left and older stuff on the right. Not the other way around.

Consider a blog like a diary. You start writing on the first page and then go towards the left. And since the first page of a blog is the latest entry, to go to the older entries, you have to press the arrow that points to the right.

Right = Old.

Thank you.

Habari Design

Dec 1, '07  ·  3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Early this year, I spent some time with a bunch of other people setting up a direction for Habari’s administration interface. It was mostly blue-skying, but loving interface design as I do, it felt like time well-spent.

In fact, it felt good.

It was a little early to start implementing stuff like that, when the platform itself hardly even existed at the time. So I went off and spent most of my time on K2 instead. But now that K2 is nearly done, I’ve started working on Habari designs again, and just submitted my first major patch (with no assurance it will be accepted of course).

Habari is like the promised land in terms of the kind of interaction design I’ve wanted to see in WordPress for years. It’s like a digital catharsis to finally apply these thoughts and frustrations.

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Semantics 101

Jan 23, '07  ·  20 Comments Tags: , , , .

Now I don’t personally use the visual editor in WordPress. I like me some Textile and control. But it is in there, and I think non-tech users are better off overall because of it.

And now with WordPress 2.1, you can even switch between WYSIWYG and code views. Great!

Yeah, well it is great, but what in the hell is going on with those buttons?!

WordPress in Safari

Continue reading ‘Semantics 101’