Design

Johan Johansson gives a great explanation of the three most popular ways to build a mobile Website, complete with pros and cons.

Alex McCaw takes a look at CSS transition, those little animations you see around the Web.

John Gruber on how he went about creating a Retina favicon for Daring Fireball.

In graphic design, nothing is what it actually is. Everything other than content is representative of something else. Additionally, much of the content is also merely representative of something other than what it actually is.

I skipped by this at first and then found myself going back and looking again and again. I knew it was something I had to share.

[Via Swiss Miss]

This isn’t something I’d use for The Loop, but there are plenty of Web sites that this type of slider would work very well. I like these when done right.

I like it when the user experience is “useful and pleasurable.”

The color scheme of the website is an indispensable part of ensuring a healthy and effective user experience. It is the color scheme of the website which determines its success or failure. You may have the best content possible on your website, may provide the most lucrative product deals and etc, but if the color scheme is not inviting and engrossing enough, you may better bid adieus to your aspirations for online business success.

I would argue that layout is equally important, but color choice is vital.

This is an older article, but still very cool.

Sacha Greif looks at Google Maps for iOS from a design perspective. He’s right that Google is finding its voice as far as design goes.

This is cool. I wasn’t all that impressed looking at the picture of the button, but the demo is much better.

SFGate:

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to give pint-size apartments a try, approving legislation that would allow for the construction of hundreds of 220-square-foot residential units.Up to two people will be allowed to live in the micro-apartments that are estimated to go for $1,300 to $1,500 a month.

How much space do you think you really need to live in? Would you give up a lot of space in order to live in a desirable area – say downtown San Francisco or New York City?

A new letter every day to vote on. I mostly chose calligraphy.

Emerald, a vivid verdant green, enhances our sense of well-being further by inspiring insight as well as promoting balance and harmony.

I like purple. They should have chosen purple.

Jenni Sparks:

Here is the hand drawn map of New York that I’ve been working on for what seems like FOREVER! Thanks to New York for being a great city and surviving Hurricane Sandy.

I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler so I’m always amazed at this kind of hand drawing. I was disappointed to not see the Bronx and Yankee Stadium (among other places) in this print but even without them, she still captured an incredible level of detail.

Alastair Johnston is not happy.

Ben Brooks takes an interesting look at some of the most popular sites for tech news hounds and how much of their Web site is dedicated to the reader and how much is useless junk.

Fascinating when you see all the things that go into making up a Web site design.

Some great looking stuff.

Kaleidoscope is one of the world’s best tools for spotting differences in images and text, and now it supports merging of files and folders, too. Kaleidoscope integrates directly with Git, Subversion, Mercurial, and Bazaar to fit perfectly in your workflow.

Go get it.

The more products Apple releases, the more widespread Retina displays become. So far we have Retina capable iPhones, iPods, iPads and MacBooks of various sizes, which together make up a pretty substantial audience. Let’s take a look at how you can create special retina graphics for your website so your design looks crisp, sharp and clear on those powerful screens.

This is something we’re working on too.

Harry Marks outlines a problem that we see far too often in Web publishing these days. It drives me crazy as a reader.

Dark Roasted Blend:

Chuck Palahniuk once said: “People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were scared of being alone”.

It won’t be very long before children will not be able to recognize any of these as telephones. I remember we had the above pictured one as a kid (we lived on a farm for a time and actually even had a Party Line – ask your parents) and we hated it when a phone number had too many zeros or nines in it.

There seems to be nothing that can’t be done with CSS these days.

I think that every site could do with some minimalism. You certainly don’t have to take it to the extent I did with The Loop, but even cleaning up and eliminating those elements that aren’t needed would make a big difference for the visitor.

As you might expect, I’m a “less is more” kind of guy. I don’t understand how some sites think the busy design works for its readers/customers.