Apparently is prototyping elements day on jeffcroft.com. Here’s an awesome-looking PSD full of iPhone widgets. Via Wilson. Visit site »
EveryBlock added Seattle to its list of cities — as well as Boston and D.C. Sweet. Visit site »
EveryBlock takes over A List Apart for an issue, with Wilson Miner’s awesome piece on using web standards to create data visualizations like bar charts and sparklines, and Paul Smith showing you how to roll your own custom mapping interface. Great issue. Visit site »
EveryBlock has launched. Congrats to Adrian, Wilson, and the rest. Extremely well-done! Read their launch message. Visit site »
Adrian Holovaty, Wilson Miner, and their other partners are launching EveryBlock this afternoon. Those in the journalism industry have been waiting for several months to see this site, as it’s being put together by the core of folks that bought us ChicagoCrime.org, Django, Ellington, Lawrence.com, and some other very noteworthy web journalism projects.
I got myself a small sneak preview, and I can tell you: it’s worth the wait (at least if you live in one of EveryBlock’s launch cities). That’s all I’ll say, for now. Look for a review of EveryBlock here at jeffcroft.com in the coming days. Visit site »
Wilson has created a sweet little iPhone-esque Growl notification style. I love it! First one I’ve ever seen that convinced me to switch away from the Music Video style. Visit site »
Once again, the blogosphere’s trashtalkingest and most reprehensible fantasy football league, the IKNFL, is increasing its roster. If you like fantasy football, get over to Mike’s site and grab a spot.
I hesitate to mention the real reason you should go over to Mike’s blog post, for fear that someone may retaliate by posting Jr. High photos of me. So, I won’t bring up the hilarious photo of a certain ex-World Online and ex-Apple employee. Just trust me. You want to read this blog post. Visit site »
Blueprint is a CSS framework based very heavily on the work Nathan, Christian and I did at the Journal-World (and also taking some cues from Wilson Miner and Khoi Vinh). I’m happy to see it out there and someone else supporting it (since we never could have), but I do sort of wish I’d at least gotten a heads up that someone was planning to package and release it. I suppose Olav didn’t need to ask for permission, but it would have been the polite thing to do. We never really intended our work to see the light of day, but I’m not really bothered that is has. And, Olav does give credit where credit is due.
Anyway, it does look good. It’s got a few minor improvements on what we had built and is packaged very neatly. Give it a look, if you’re interested in this sort of thing. Visit site »
Ahh, Wilson. You have been missed. Here’s hoping you’ll return to your regular blog posting schedule of once a month or so. Hearing from you only four times in your entire tenure at that fruit company has been a bit too little Wilson for my taste.
Seriously, good stuff here. Check it out. Visit site »
Wilson Miner’s first A List Apart article has been posted, just in time for me to cop all the ideas for use in my upcoming workshop on web typography in London.
Wilson’s been working on this for quite some time, and it shows. The topic — aligning text to a baseline grid — is something I’ve been working on a lot myself lately. It’s not quite as simple on the web as it ought to be, but Wilson shows you how it can be done with the minimal amount of pain. And the result — well, the result is just a much more professional-looking page. It really makes a big difference.
Wilson ends the article with a note on sizing text in pixels, which bring me to a slightly related topic. Did you know you can actually resize text set in pixels with IE6? Yup, you can. You can have turn on the “Ignore font sizes…” option in the accessibility dialog, but it can be done. This led me to wonder (again) how much responsibility should fall on users (especially those with unique needs) to learn their tools. In a comment on Roger’s site, I said this:
I have neck and back problems, myself. Because of that, I have to buy a decent chair and take the time to configure it for the optimal support. If I don’t, I’ll end up in pain when I’m reading a book at my desk. If I choose to sit in a crappy chair, or I choose not to configure my chair the way that is best for me, or I simply don’t learn how my chair works — whose fault is that? I’d say it’s my fault. You can maybe make an argument that it’s the chair manufacturer’s fault, because they didn’t make it easy enough for me to use my chair properly. But I don’t see any way in hell you can blame it on the book I’m reading. Do you?
Go read Wilson’s article. It’s really great. Visit site »
Wilson reacts (in agreement) to my point from the SXSW typography presentation about why it’s not so bad to size text in an absolute unit (like pixels) instead of a relative unit (like ems). He also outlines a philosophy he’s been using lately, which I think is perfect:
The principle I’ve been operating from recently is to design for the first page load in an ideal environment, while allowing for flexibility in non-ideal, unintended and user-modified environments.
Love it. Welcome back to the blogosphere, Wilson. Visit site »