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10 QUESTIONS: Jeffrey Zeldman
Some good stuff in this interview with The Man, especially where it relates to Internet Explorer.
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Zeldman: XHTML WTF
After reading the comments on Jeffrey’s post, I’m surprised and a bit dismayed that people are shocked to hear XHTML2 is dead. It’s been dead for quite some time — just not officially so. As I’ve been saying for the past couple years, HTML5 is the way. XHTML was a nice way to get us all thinking about writing better code, and it helped the Web Standards movement by giving us something to latch onto, but it’s time to let it go, guys. Relax. It’ll be okay.
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Zeldman
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Cogaoke judges
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Jeffrey Zeldman: Web Standards Test: Top 100 Sites
I still have a hard time seeing any good reason to ever validate someone else’s code, but I guess maybe research for a book is one. Still, I don’t understand the point of posting the results here. Jeffrey says himself, “If all the home pages of the top 100 sites were valid, it would not mean that the pages beneath the home page level were valid, nor would it prove that the sites were authored semantically,” and “nothing causal or predictive can be determined from these results.” I agree with him, and that begs the question: then why post it at all? Because I know enough about Zeldman himself, I am guessing the answer is simply, “I thought it was interesting,” but I’m afraid it feels like the point is simply to publicly praise some and berate others.
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Zeldman: 20 signs you don’t want that web design project
Until you’ve worked at an agency, these all sound very funny. Once you’ve worked at an agency, they all sound very true.
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A List Apart is changing
As well it should. Good luck with the new direction, ALA team!
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Zeldman: The lessons of September 11, 2002
Jeffrey Zeldman is not Jeffrey Zeldman because he’s such an amazing web designer. Jeffrey Zeldman is Jeffrey Zeldman because he can communicate better than just about anyone I know. This piece is a great example. So perfect.
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Zeldman on web design
From Jeremy Keith’s live blog of Jeffrey Zeldman’s talk at An Event Apart San Francisco:
> It’s hard being a web designer. The unmotivated need not apply. You have to constantly educate yourself. There are plenty of tutorials out there on using web design tools like Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and so on. But teaching Excel is not the same as teaching business. Knowing how to use Photoshop and Illustrator doesn’t make you a web designer.
Yes. Yes. YES!
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School of Visual Arts NYC Announces New MFA in Interaction Design
Wow. This is awesome. Liz Danzico and Steven Heller have put together a MFA program with a faculty that includes the likes of Christopher Fahey, David Womack, Jason Santa Maria, Karen McGrane, Khoi Vinh, Paul Ford, Matt Owens, Rachel Abrams, Jeffrey Zeldman, and more. The program will launch in the Fall of 2009. Only one question: where were you guys in 1994?!
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Zeldman: The vanishing personal site
Zledman talks about the changing personal site, which is more and more being “offloaded” to third-party services (Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.). I like to think I’ve got the best of both worlds, here at jeffcroft.com. I definitely do miss the old school personal site, though — I talked about this with Paul Boag on a forthcoming episode of Boagword.
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Respect panel
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A List Apart: Version targeting, take two
Jeremy and Jeffrey have a bit of a shoot-out regarding the IE version targeting mechanism in the latest ALA. For what it’s worth, I come drown more on Jeremy’s side of this one — the version targeting was a good idea; defaulting to the IE7 rendering engine was not. But, I also think this is ultimately not that big a deal. All we have to do is add a single meta tag to our documents, and all is well. No, we shouldn’t have to, but we do, and it will take us no time at all to do it. I just don’t see this as the end of the world. The only part I disagree with Jeremy on is that MS’s plan is “doomed to fail.” It’s not. Yes, people will object to adding the meta tag, but they’ll do it anyway, because the alternative is writing pages for the IE7 rendering engine.
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Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop. [EOM]
Jeffrey Zeldman puts it in perspective. Awesome.
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A List Apart: Understanding Web Design
Zeldman’s latest article at A List Apart shows (yet again) why he is still the industry thought-leader in an industry full of thought-leaders. A really great peice on the current state of our profession.
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Andy Clarke, Josh Williams, and Jeffrey Zeldman at FOWD New York
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Zeldman Presents: What crisis?
Lots of people are complaining about the W3C and related groups these days, and Zeldman wonders what all the fuss is about. I agree that it’s not a crisis, but the glacial pace of the W3C is annoying.
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Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards
BusinessWeek has a really nice profile of Jeffrey Zeldman, arguably the most significant individual in helping the web standards movement take hold. Good to see Z getting his due. In my mind, he’s got to be one of the top five most important people in the history of the web (which, by the way, would be an interesting piece for someone to write).
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Zeldman: Let there be web divisions
Zeldman, after going through some of the survey results from ALA, has noticed that very few companies have web divisions. Instead, most web sites are built out of either the IT or marketing departments — or by ad hoc groups made up of people from all over the company. He suggests this is a bad practice, and that instead, companies should have web divisions. I couldn’t agree more.
We talked about this a lot when I worked at K-State. The University Relations group (i.e. marketing) didn’t have the technical skills necessary to put together a good website. And even though they were good designers, they largely didn’t understand the ins and outs of designing for the web. I worked in the IT department, which technically had ownership of the website. The administration didn’t consider us to be designers (and to be fair, most of the group wasn’t). So, when a redesign was proposed, they built and ad hoc group (which, admittedly, was better than just having one group or the other do it). The results were okay, but I can’t help but think it could have been far, far better with a dedicated team of web professionals.
In contrast, The World Company (parent of The Lawrence Journal-World and a whole gaggle of other news media properties) built a web division (World Online) to handle its online properties, and the results were numerous awards, respect across the industry, and generally well-received sites.
I would assert that a dedicated web division has more hiring power than either an IT or marketing group, as well. I know I wouldn’t go to work again for an IT department — but I’d definitely go to an internal web team for a great media property or brand.
So, yes: let there we web divisions.
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Kristian Bengsston and Jeffrey Zeldman
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Bengsston, Zeldman, Messina, Wroblewski, and Danzico
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Bengsston, Zeldman, Messina, Wroblewski, and Danzico
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Kristian Bengtsson and Jeffrey Zeldman
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Kristian Bengtsson and Jeffrey Zeldman
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AIGA redesign
Wow, Happy Cog has been getting it done the last few months, huh? Most recently, they’ve redesigned the site for the American Institute of Graphic Arts, which is about as prestigious a client as you can get, if you’re a designer. Jason Santa Maria is responsible for the graphic design, Dan Cederholm took care of the markup and CSS, and Zeldman was the creative director.
I feel like this move could start to help AIGA have more cachet within the web design community. They’re a great body, but they’ve always come off as not particularly interested in the web — this move shows that view may be changing.
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Jason Santa Maria: Happy Cog Redesign
Jason, Dan, and the rest of the Cogs redesign the site for the Zeldman-run studio. Jason writes about the process. Predictably, some jackass insists upon berating them publicly over a single minor validation error (which has since been fixed) instead of focusing on the clever navigation, the great painting by Kevin Cornell, the well-written copy, and the lovely CSS typography. People seriously need a get a life, man.
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Zeldman: Web 2.0 Thinking Game
Possibly the most insightful thing ever written about “Web 2.0.”
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Selling Jeffrey Zeldman on Selling
Khoi shoots three quick questions a the Z and he gives wonderfully insightful responses, as per usual. Interesting topic, too — especially in light of recent discussion here and elsewhere about quality design versus the “hacks,” as I’m calling them. I’m willing to concede that part of the problem is that many of us quality designers don’t do a very good job selling ourselves and our services.
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Remove Forebrain and Serve: Tag Clouds II
Jeffrey’s says tag clouds suck. I agree. Tag clouds are an interesting visualization of what’s popular, but they are in no way suitable as a primary means of web site navigation.
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WDW2004 Sessions Online
Videos of WDW2004 sessions, including presentations by Zeldman, Goto, Fried, and others.
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Production for Use
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Jeff Croft
I’m a digital product designer and developer in Seattle, WA. I currently work with nGen Works, and recently co-founded Lendle, a Kindle book sharing service.
Some of my clients include Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Copious, The New York Review of Books, The Lawrence Journal-World, and the University of Washington.
I’ve authored two books on web and interactive design and spoken at dozens of conferences around the world.
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