Candyhog blog

What's right with this picture?

Several things!

1. As always, Gmail themes
2. Conversation view turned off
3. Priority Inbox

Other great Gmail things not seen in this image:

1. Labs: Undo send enabled
2. Labs: Default Reply all enabled
3. Labs: Advanced attachment options enabled

Joe the Unkind-to-eyeballs

When I read that Joe the Plumber had an awful website built upon his stupidity and the style trends of the fetal Net, I had to hie over there. Wow! It's worse than a bad report can prepare you for, but I encourage you to read them anyway: there are some very, very good writers out there practicing ethical savagery.

Try HuffPo  and Wonkette ... or if you prefer a drier approach in French, Le Monde serves it up well in its Americana blog, tagline "Choses vues en Amérique."

— Abigail

OK, so I'm obsessed

I also meant to note in my last post that while the Obama site is so much cleaner, if you scroll down, there's quite a lot of stuff that you can access from the landing page. Contrast that to McCain's site, where there are multiple nav menus and layers of drill-down, despite the page looking cluttered. Web design at its worst.

Oh, and for some mystifying reason there is a lot of urgency around the McCain Gear now...get it while you can. (What happens after August 31, when it will no longer be available?!)

Even my 9 year old son Walter can tell this is a cheap setup to get you to push some money his way ASAP — yet the arbitrary deadline raises red herring questions...

— Abigail

Another look at a visual wreck and its opposite

McCain's site: Static, mismatched, off-balance (beauty shot of Biden??); each element is bad-looking, and they look bad together. It's a generational thing for sure, to a certain degree, and I think that's important when think about how a candidate is oriented toward the world, at home and abroad.

Contrast with that with the lean, clean, dynamic Obama site.

You begin with a topical screen devoted to announcing and welcoming Joe Biden. You're given a prominent opportunity to send a welcome note to Joe— and a second tier prominent opportunity to donate.

The panel Welcoming Joe then changes, rotating between a car magnet/donation panel, an "out of touch" panel about McCain, a "fight the smears panel, and then back to the first (it changes every ten seconds or so, rotating different messages without cluttering up the page).

Also, you may have noticed that at the top of the page I am welcomed by name, and given the opportunity to register and log in. Slick.

And how about another  contrast with the McCain site: In the same real estate, McCain asks people to Get involved, which he makes synonymous with donation, thanks to a big green button. Obama asks people to organize for change instead, keeping the ideas of contributing financially and through grass-roots organizing distinct.

— Abigail

How to know if you're in Bellevue or Redmond

So, I'll be spending the next year — starting Monday — at Microsoft doing usability analysis/reporting for Expression Blend UI and Web design software. It's rumored (to put it kindly) to be full of holes in its Beta form, so I guess they really need me to get frustrated as I try to do topnotch design work and hit obstacles. And to give a high volume of useful feedback.

I'll be in Building 42, which has something of an interesting history:

Lots of space, tons of conference rooms, and a great view of the Cascade Mountains. It is also a little unique in that it straddles the line between the cities of Redmond and Bellevue. This was apparently something of a challenge when getting planning permission — since Redmond had a town ordinance that prevented buildings from being more than three stories tall, while Bellevue allowed an unrestricted number of building floors to be built.   

Microsoft wanted the new Building 42 to be a nice four stories tall — but despite the fact that 2/3rds of it would have lived in Bellevue, the planning permission folks in Redmond apparently insisted that it not be more than three. After a lot of wrangling, they finally reached a compromise whereby the 1/3rd of the building that lived in Redmond was built to be 3 stories tall — and the 2/3rds of the building which lived in Bellevue was built to the full 4 stories in height.

If you are ever driving past campus on 156th Avenue, you can spot the exact Redmond/Bellevue city border by seeing where an otherwise normal, professional looking building suddenly changes height. 

I'm reminded of my friends Jordan and Pat, who live in a house that is in Oakland but has a Berkeley postal address. Their roofline, however, is normal.

– Abigail

P.S .> Did you read the bit in the linked article about how 25,155 Microsoft people move offices each year?!

Is everything going to be iPhony?!

Wow. So I'm starting to see that all design for the forseeable future is going to emulate the look of an iPhone. Gird your loins. I'm not against the iPhone — au contraire — but I'm against the "*.* do you want to *.* today?" and "Got *.*?" type of advertising/promotion/design.

– Abigail

Remaining focused on user benefits

This post by Jack Peterson goes over how big a step forward it is for Web designers that they can now incorporate Flash into a site without creating something opaque to search engines.

This means that I have fewer legs to stand on as a Web designer (with production skills that don't include Flash development) with ambivalent feelings about Flash in Web pages. It was a matter of time. My excuse for staying away from Flash entirely has been ripped out from under me, Thanks Adobe, Google, and Yahoo!

So now I have to really think about which applications require Flash elements that are not distracting and annoying to be their most effective.

I'll also be thinking about whether I think Craigslist should allow HTML or if that would open the floodgates of  less democracy, less usability. I don't want to be a tech Luddite OR a pizzazzy-for-pizzazzy's-sake type of gal.

– Abigail

iPhone as culprit

It's totally boring to write about iPhone lust. And I'm someone whose phone died early this year and — despite its god-awful UI — surprised herself by buying another Razr rather than an iPhone.

But when I have the cash, whether my new Razr bites it or not, I'll be buying an iPhone. Part of the reason is the Internet usability. Things are quick and easy to find and read. It truly is a good receptacle for delivered content.

So it's not surprising that analysts are saying that the iPhone is contributing to the ongoing demise of print media (Steve Rubel/MicroPersuasion).

– Abigail

The virtual fold

A friend of mine, a former colleague, just published a good article on his site about defining and designing around a "fold" when creating and maintaining Web sites. People like me who design, produce, and write for the Web have to juggle SEO, usability, aesthetic appeal and audience tone can easily forget stuff like the fold and it's good to have a reminder and a concrete definition.

– Abigail