Grade Your Website

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Do you build Web sites and pages? Do you toss and turn restlessly in bed at night, wondering if your code is XHTML-valid, accessibility-compliant, and current-browser-friendly? Do you gnash your teeth and rend your garments when you get an e-mail complaining that there’s something wrong with your Web site?

If so, you need to ease up a little.

In the meantime, you can use some of the 31 Free Online Tests compiled in one handy-dandy post at Aviva Directory. The 31 tests are broken into 5 categories: Code Validation; Accessibility; Speed; Browser Simulators; and, Search Engine Optimization.

Now you have no excuse for non-valid, non-compliant, non-friendly, gnash- and rend-inducing code.

Thinking and Making

This transcript is from
William Drentell and Jessica Helfand's talk
given at the '03 AIGA Conference "The Power of Design."

Maybe you've already seen it, felt it, know it...
I ran across it the other day while digging around and realized
I LIKE using my head AND my hands...what about you?

Pie Charts of the World

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Have you heard of COLOURlovers? Yeah, me neither. At first blush, it seems to be a site where people discuss, well, colour trends (or here in the U.S., color trends). But, it’s not the esoteric discussions of ‘which beige is the new beige?’ that brought COLOURlovers to my attention. No, it was this:

Flags of the World by Color Usage

Now that, my friends, is a worthy usage of Microsoft Chart. (Ron, Roland, I challenge you to figure out which chart is for the RP—I got it in one try.)

A Few Campus Aerial Panoramas

Hold on to your Aeron, these panoramas may have you looking for your landlegs. As Kathryn wrote, "It's wild, if you get the photo spinning. Don't drink and eye at the same time." :)

Stanley Hall of Biosciences, under construction in 2006
A brief index of more campus and local panoramas

I'm suddenly a huge fan of kite photography and the work of this Berkeley professor/photographer. Have fun!

Client woes

Here's another site along the lines of AdVerbatims that may cheer you up if you think dealing with your client is a challenge. ClientCopia.com

chats within blogs about new 3D mice

B: I just got a cool demo of something you should post on the design alliance site
it's a cool 3D mouse that is especially cool for using the new 3D features in Photoshop. The thing to post would be the idea that, increasingly, stock photography may become less useful to designers than stock 3D objects. There's so much free 3D stuff out there that it's practical start thinking in terms of 3D images rather than still images. For example...
...say you need a shot of a football. You look all over and find a lot of stock photos of footballs, but none of them quite match your design. Instead, you get get a stock 3D model of a football, and position it exactly the way you want it.
2:45 PM
K: Does Getty One, et. al. have those 3D models you're talking about?
B: http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/
that's just google. There are lots and lots of other stock model places
K: So the mouse lets you drag things around in a "3D" space? Instead of using clicks to switch dimensions?
B: In Photoshop now, you can bring a textured 3D object into a photoshop document. It sits in its own layer and you can rotate and move it in 3D space. This mouse thing that they gave me provides a VERY intuitive way of navigating 3D space and manipulating 3D objects.
2:50 PM
K: Nice. Thanks!
Oh, how much is it?
B: (3dconnexion.com) // 59 bucks
K: Even nicer.

An Incomplete Manifesto

Bruce Mau's "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth"
is an inspirational guideline for creativity...

and browsing back through the rest of Bruce Mau Design and Massive Change's site might partially satisfy Roland's desire to see designers get more involved in designing the world...

fer•ma•ta

The 37th Annual University of California, Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition opened Friday at the Berkeley Art Museum gallery.

Though I admit to mostly talking and drinking wine at the reception and so have minimal to say at this point about the art itself, I intend to return to BAM to check out more seriously the work of Berkeley’s most recent crop of artists graduating from Art Practice.

One artist completing the MFA program this spring, Ali Dadgar, was previously featured on the cover of the Promise of Berkeley Winter 2007 issue (PDF available). For his MFA exhibit he has reconfigured a computer printer to print with silkscreen inks on found and generated materials exploring “decorative censorship” in multiple cultural contexts.

50 Logo Design Tutorials

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I’m not suggesting we go all willy-nilly making logos. On the contrary, I think the UC Seal, Berkeley signature, and University Oldstyle typeface are the only key elements we need to represent virtually anything related to the campus (yeah, yeah, send all complaints, flames, etc. to calixton@[thatplaceweallworkat].edu). But, it’s good to see how other creative-types do their work, what their process is, etc.

E Logo Design has compiled a list of “Top 50 Logo Design Tutorials” on their site. Some of the logos are great. Some of the logos are hideous. Some of the logos aren’t actually logos. Same for the tutorials (great, hideous, not tutorials, etc.). But, why just sit here and read about the list? Judge for yourself.

Speaking of accessibility...

via forwarded e-mail by Lucia Greco, Assistive Technology Specialist,
UC Berkeley:

Subject: Oracle sued by blind workers in Texas

The National Federation of the Blind and three blind State of Texas employees filed a lawsuit this week against Oracle and the State of Texas. The suit claims that they were not provided adequate access to software used in their employment functions. Despite a state law and guidelines requiring accessible software and after several complaints and requests for a remedy, the State of Texas and Oracle did not take adequate measures to provide screen reader access to the Oracle software that is required in the plaintiff's employment.

This lawsuit is somewhat different from the Target lawsuit. This case focuses on the accessibility of software, not specifically web content. However, it may provide a test of state accessibility legislation that requires "the same access to electronic and information resources as state employees and members of the public without disabilities." It is interesting that both parties of the State of Texas and Oracle are named in the suit. This may suggest that Oracle overstated it's accessibility and that the state did not adequately meet it's own internal policies in the state procurement process.

For more information, see: webaim.org/blog/2007/02/07/oracle_lawsuit.

For more about the Target lawsuit, see the NewsCenter's interview of the UC Berkeley student who filed the lawsuit here. (Be sure to read the informative sidebar.)

Web accessibility 101

via Debra Goldentyer, Webnet:

Join us on Tuesday, May 29, for what's sure to be an interesting conversation on Web Accessibility.

Date: Tuesday, May 29

Time: 12 noon to 1:30 pm

Place: 150 University Hall. NOTE ONE-TIME CHANGE OF VENUE

Speaker: Dianne Walker, Project Engineer, IST, and the Web Accessibility Group

Topic: Web accessibility at Berkeley

Why does it make sense to (re)design your website with accessibility in mind early in the process? In the words of one campus web developer:

• You're going to be changing all that code anyway as part of the redesign; why not do it the right way, and start from the ground up with accessible practices?


• Adhere to web standards, and accessibility will be almost automatic. Plus, your site will be far less likely to encounter problems with current or future web browsers.


• Making your site as accessible as possible to disabled visitors also means improved accessibility for web crawlers, spiders, and bots. The likely result: Improved rankings with Google and other search engines.


• If you follow best practices like semantic markup (using the proper HTML element for each type of content) and separating content from design (via CSS), you may have a higher learning curve at the beginning if you've not done this in the past. But future site changes will be vastly easier because of the structure you will have put in place. In fact, if you plan things right, you could completely change the appearance of your site next year or next month without having to open and modify any of the pages; just tweak the CSS stylesheet.

Easier site changes? Less time and therefore less expense? Yes. And you get accessibility too? What? Doing the right thing saves money? YES! So, why not make your website accessible?

WebAccess, the campus web accessibility group, will review Section 508 standards and W3C guidelines on web accessibility as well as the campus commitment to technology accessibility. Then they'll take you though a WebAccess clinic, where they'll be evaluating a newly designed campus website from an accessibility point of view.

Helpful links to get you started:

(Re)designing your website with accessibility in mind:
istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Spring2007/993.html

Tips for improving web accessibility:
istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Fall2006/927.html

Tips for improving web accessibility — round 2:
istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Spring2007/991.html

Got a conflict? Can't be there? Contact Dianne Walker, WebAccess Lead, for more information.

Outing Fake Steve Jobs

Well, this post is decidedly "loft-less". But I hope it is amusing for those Apple aficianados and culture vultures amongst us.

Insiders say they're closing in on the culprit behind the Fake Steve Jobs blog.

MacBump Speedbook

Would you like to do your computing-on-the-go a little faster? If you’re in the market for a new Mac laptop you can get in on the ground floor of the latest round of MacBook processor speed boosts (now at 2.0GHz and 2.16GHz). You can read more details at Macworld.

Oh, can faster MacBook Pros be far behind? I really, really hope so.

Comic Sans has a lisp?

It’s (still) Helvetica’s birthday! Following up on our posts about the BBC News magazine story and Helvetica the movie is this Sheldon strip by Dave Kellett.

Hmmm… what would Helvetica look like as a comic-strip character?

[first seen at Daring Fireball]

Drupal update

via Tao Starbow, Webnet

First the big news: Bowing to popular demand, we are moving the meeting time to lunch. This should allow a lot more people from campus to be there.

When: Wed., May 23rd, Noon to 1:30pm

Where: 290 HMMB (directions)

What: The Berkeley Drupal Users Group (BDUG) is a place to come learn, teach, and network about the Drupal content management framework. Everyone is invited, both on-campus and from the local community. (I am still looking for a good place to post an announcement where students will see it. Any suggestions?)

For more information: see drupal.citris-uc.org (work-in-progress)

The first BDUG meeting went very well. There was a good mix of skill levels and communities (on-campus users, IT support folk, local contractors, etc). We spent some time going around the room and introducing ourselves, then had an open Q&A period, and then had a couple of impromptu presentations. Seems to be a good format, and we will stick with it until something better comes along.

We might be able to swing some food for the meeting, so please RSVP if you are interested in lunch.

See previous post here.

Last of the CS3 reviews?

Are these the last of the Macworld reviews of CS3 products? I’ve actually lost count. In any case, read up on Fireworks CS3 and Contribute CS3 for Mac OS X. (If you know of reviews on the Windows version, put ’em in the comments.)

Interesting university web sites

via Allison Bloodworth on Webnet

Just ran into this really interesting website on university website designs that I thought might interest folks: www.edustyle.net.

Click here to go directly to Cornell University's home page.

Social Relevance within the Design Alliance

In today's Design Alliance Board meeting, there was much discussion about how relevant we want to be as an organization. We developed a "loftyness" scale ranking what our relevance should be to the broader UC Berkeley Design Alliance constituency.

The scale began with the most basic "Down to Earth" needs like: Design 101, typeface use, and competency within our respective offices.

The next "Not So Lofty" level contained those topics that would most inspire our ranks: SF MOMA exhibits, a treatise on Helvetica, and paper choices supporting sustainability.

The uppermost "Lofty" level cited our social responsibility to ourselves and to our environment, and our commitment to be agents of change.

As promised (and as a means to further this discussion) I am including here the essay questions that prospective Art Center students are required to answer as part of the application process. Clearly our professional peers are thinking about this too.

_______

Undergraduate and graduate students: Who do you believe to be are the three major artists and designers who are shaping the discipline you are interested in pursuing or who have influenced you? These should be individuals who have brought relevence to the world or to you in some social, political, emotional, economic, or other meaningful context. Explain why you feel they are important. In what ways do you want your own work to contribute to or make a difference in the world?

Undergraduate students only: Choose one of the essay questions below and respond in a personal and thoughtful way. We are especially interested in the depth of your thinking, as well as the quality of your writing ability.

1. The ability to think critically and to approach the classroom with curiosity is vital to success at Art Center and in the professional world. Explain something that you once believed to be true that you have since come to question.

OR

2. Taking a risk comes more easily to some than to others, but for most it will be an important part of becoming an artist or designer. Explain a risk you've taken in your life that has paid off—exploring something new, confronting a fear or problem, or taking a stand on an issue.

_______

How would each of us answer these? Should we care?

Roland

Resources for inspiration

FOR THE LOVE OF THINGS MECHANICAL:

Those of you who are industrial design and car design fans, you are probably familiar with the work of Syd Mead. He’s a visionary and futurist who’s been around for at least 30 years (I first learned of his work for General Motors and US Steel when I was in art school in the ’70s). Besides being a great designer and draughtsman, he is an expert in gouache painting techniques, and does some fantastic renderings. He has worked for many movie studios, and designed all the vehicles for Tron and Blade Runner. Visit his site, and read about the new documentary on his work. Here is the blurb:

Check out the all new Syd Mead Documentary [Visual Futurist: The Art & Life of Syd Mead] by Director Joaquin Montalvan. This star studded documentary features in depth observations from Syd himself, but also the amazing cast of leading designers and producers around the globe. Featured are: Steven Lisberger, Richard Taylor, Bob Gurr, Chuck Jordan, James Knight, Gene Winfield, C. Orval Selders, Roger Servick, Paul M. Sammon, Michael Deeley, Katherine Haber, Nathan Proch, and Dyan Sublett. Listen to Syd Mead recall his influences and life tales of working on some of the largest projects the world has ever undertaken. Travel through the film projects such as Blade Runner and [Tron] with those who made the dream a reality behind the scenes.
www.sydmead.com/features/documentary/ • SYD MEAD, Inc.

FOR THE PAINTERS IN ALL OF US:

As a figure drawing fan from way back, I appreciate people who can draw and paint the human form. At the Addison Street Window Gallery (on Addison between Milvia and Shattuck, across the street from the Berkeley Rep, attached to the Parking Garage there) is a show of the work of Partners in Paint, a group of artists who have gotten together for many years to paint from live models. Check out the display of their various sketchbooks: beautiful, spontaneous work in ink and watercolors; fluid in nature, fearless, and full of vitality. Even the placement of the subjects on the page is nice. Wish I could capture that energy and imagination in my own art and design. Admittedly, not all the shows at the Addison Street Window Gallery are as good (in fact, some are downright embarrassing), but this display is worth the walk.
[City of Berkeley Press Release]

UC Berkeley site makes CA’s SOTW

This just came to my attention, but earlier this year UC Berkeley’s own department of Spanish and Portuguese Web site was picked for Communication Art’s Design Interact Site of the Week (Week of January 29th, 2007). You can read the Design Interact analysis in their Site of the Week archive, but from a UC Berkeley identity standpoint I was pleased to note the following:

• Use of University Oldstyle in the site’s logotype


• Use of the UC Berkeley signature


• Use of the UC Berkeley seal*

All-in-all the department of Spanish and Portuguese site looks great, is in line with W3C and usability standards, and for the most part includes the main identifying components of UC Berkeley’s identity guidelines. If only all our Berkeley sites—including this one—looked so good. ;-)

*Why an asterisk? Because the trademarked Berkeley seal is typically used for promotional and merchandising purposes. In the case of Web sites, the University of California seal in conjunction with the Berkeley signature should be used.

You've probably seen it a thousand times today. Why?

Fan's of type foundries may already know that this year is the 50th birthday of this Supremely Ubiquitous Font. Join today's BBC News magazine in a meditation on its influence, for good or ill. (Also impressive are the design-savvy Brits in the comment section.)

Standards-based design with CSS

via a handout from the March 20, 2007 Webnet presentation
by Caroline Boyden, a member of the LSCR Web Team

HTML and XHTML Frequently Answered Questions
www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq

W3C Recommended list of DTDs
www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

W3C HTML Validator
validator.w3.org

W3C CSS Validator
jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator

Web Standards Switch: or how to improve your Web site easily
www.w3.org/QA/2003/03/web-kit

Google Webmaster Guidelines
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

Where Our Standards Went Wrong
alistapart.com/articles/whereourstandardswentwrong

12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards
alistapart.com/articles/12lessonsCSSandstandards

How to Grok Web Standards
alistapart.com/articles/grokwebstandards

The Way Forward with Web Standards
www.maccaws.org/kit/way-forward

CSS Zen Garden
www.csszengarden.com

Layout Gala: 40 CSS layouts
blog.html.it/layoutgala

Still throwing tables
www.stopdesign.com/log/2005/07/27/still-throwing-tables.html

Flash! CS3! Review!

Do you use Flash? Do you have an Intel Mac? Then maybe you’re interested in Macworld’s review of Flash CS3.

Actually, Flash CS3 is cross-platform… so there should be a review of the Windows version out there somewhere…

Ah, here’s one at CNET.

Okay, now we’re all fair and balanced.

Yearning for Titian, Seurat, Cezanne? Try Match Color adjustment.

After you've see those art exhibits and are all inspired, go home, launch Photoshop, load your images and apply this keen image adjustment. It may just bring them closer to the work of the master colorists.

Haven't tried it, but Unfocused Brain's blog page shows some pretty dramatic results.

Again, blog to blog's the way to go.

And the winner is...

11th Annual Webby Awards Winners:
(*) My favorite! AWEsome.

Activism
Green my Apple
http://www.greenpeace.org/apple

Art
Electrolux Design Lab
http://www.electrolux.com/designlab/

Best Copy/Writing
HowStuffWorks
http://www.howstuffworks.com

Best Home/Welcome Page
Sony.com
http://www.Sony.com

Best Navigation/Structure
IKEA, Dream Kitchen
http://demo.fb.se/e/ikea/dreamkit...

Best Practices
Flickr
http://www.flickr.com

Best Use of Animation or Motion Graphics
Jonathan Yuen (2006)*
http://www.jonathanyuen.com

Best Use of Video or Moving Image
Adobe CS2.3 - The Creative Mind
http://www.goodbysilverstein.com/...

Best Visual Design
Jonathan Yuen (2006)*
http://www.jonathanyuen.com

More>

You’ve heard of DreamWeaver…

…and there’s a review of Dreamweaver CS3 at Macworld. But are you familiar with Coda? I haven’t tried it out yet, but you can read up this “one-window Web development for Mac OS X” application at MacUser and Macworld.

You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares...

When you're having one of those days:

where you feel like pulling all your hair out...
and releasing that pent-up silent scream...
if you hear just one more inane remark about how to design...
what to move and where...
what's wrong with the font you've chosen...
or receive one more insane deadline...

then go to this comforting, sly site called:

AdVerbatims

And read what kindred souls have heard. Best of all, you can add your own accounts to the mix.

You're gonna be all right now.

Juried artist catalog for Fine Artists and Sculptors

If you're a fine artist or sculptor you might be interested in this. The announcement came through email from Open Studios Press, the creator of New American Paintings. Here it is:

The Open Studios Press, creator of New American Paintings, is pleased to announce a new series of juried artist catalogs called "Studio Visit."
Due to the overwhelming amount of interest in New American Paintings, and the limited amount of space available, we are pleased to offer artists a new and effective venue through which to introduce their work to a serious national audience of art world professionals.

Unlike New American Paintings, Studio Visit will be a nationally focused publication that presents all two- and three-dimensional work. Our current expectation is that each volume will include 150 – 200 artists, rather than the 40 who appear in New American Paintings. Each selected artist will be provided with one full page that will include a full color image, contact information and a brief artist statement. As with New American Paintings, each volume will be juried by a professional curator, produced to the highest quality standards, and can be used as a valuable promotional tool.

Once published, Studio Visit will be mailed to 1,500 of the nation's top galleries and curators and a growing subscriber base of over 500 collectors and art enthusiasts. Additionally, participating artists will receive 5 complimentary issues of the publication and will be able to purchase additional copies at a discount.

The competition is free to enter, however, artists will be responsible for a $185 production and distribution fee.

Volume One Juror: Michael Lash, Museum and University Arts Consultant and the Former Director of Public Art for the City of Chicago

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Call for entries -- ALL MEDIUMS (no entry fee)

Submitting work is FREE and easy!!! For more information on how to submit work, visit:
http://www.studiovisitmagazine.com

or email:

info@studiovisitmagazine.com