If you haven’t read “Don’t Make Me Think”, you’re an idiot. Ok, not an idiot. Just not-educated in web usability. I recently purchased his new book, “Rocket Surgery Made Easy”, which is his expansion his chapter on usability testing on a budget, and I’m excited to get through it.
I spotted this video on Lukas Mathis’s ignore the code blog, and I thought it was worthwhile re-posting it here.
The HTML5 people say that the new <aside> element is named such because <sidebar> is presentational.
To which I present a DICTIONARY as a counter argument:
side·bar (-bär?)
noun
1. a short article dealing with a sidelight of a major news story and printed alongside it
2. a discussion at the bench between the lawyers and the judge, conducted outside the hearing of the jury
Coming from a newspaper design background, that is how I have always thought about sidebars.
I wish I had this when I posted my gigantasaurus list of bookmarks earlier, because this is stinkin’ cool.
The folks at iHwy made the jQuery ListMenu Plugin available to help people tame their <ul> and <ol>lists, which is what my mega ordered list was.
It basically takes this:
and turns it into this:
Pretty sweet. I’m going to have to try it out some time.
The W3C has just released a working draft of a NEW box model for CSS, to complement the already existing box models of CSS 2.1/3.
Called the “Flexible Box Layout Module” it is practically ripped straight out of the user interface methodology of Mozilla-based projects such as Thunderbird and Firefox called XUL.
My co-worker had some smarmy comments to make about it, which realistically are not out of line:
that means we can use SOME parts of it, broken, in IE in 2013. 
While the world moves on ahead, something in our guts tells us that Micro$oft is going to continue minding their own business, to the detriment to the web as a whole. IE6 is almost dead, but its descendants keep tilling much of the same ground their forebear left behind.
Regardless of MS, having more box model to play with is sweet. You want to be able to make operating systems redundant? The ability to create stable and usable User Interfaces is key. That’s why I love my Macs. The UI is peerless.
Giving the entire web the ability to make UI similar to Firefox is certainly a Good Thing™
Illustrator, how I love thee. I’ve missed you so much over the years.
I must apologize for being tempted by your more popular sister, Photoshop. Alas, I even dared to peek into your step-sister Firework’s pantry, even knowing full well that I would never love her.
I remember the days we spent making ads together, back in our younger newspaper days. Fondly, I recall the level of control you allowed over my designs, making my borders, swashes, and backgrounds a thing of beauty.
But, I left you when things got good. Because everyone was more familiar with Photoshop, and because all of the tutorials use her rasteriffic philosophies, I turned a blind eye to your best qualities.
With you, I can make a perfect box, line, border, or shape and always know that modification is only a matter of grabbing a control point. None of the messiness involved in masks or other such nonsense .
But now, after trying out her wares, I return to you, downtrodden and sorry. You make my life complete, and your artwork scales well.
May I never neglect you again.