simonelishman-blog

[simonelishman-blog]

SVG and JavaScript: What Is Possible, What To Consider?

SVG is beneficial compared to flash (frequently mentioned in this article) as it does not require a plugin. This is always one less thing to handle. It is also a lot more efficient when it comes to speed as it runs a lot faster. There’s nothing worse than slow speeds and if you are in a particularly bad place when it comes to getting signal, a SVG will certainly be more beneficial.

SVG has the ability to link JavaScript into its format making it very popular with Web Designers. In my opinion, SVG is ruining flash and taking over!

[simonelishman-blog]

Meagan Fisher - Conquer the Blank Canvas

Meagan starts with talking about how important it is when meeting with a client. She has a strategy that as a web designer myself, I completely agree on. Get to know the project that is being undertaken, develop a strategy, bring it to life and then make it shine. In terms of design, getting to know the project is arguably the most important thing. Without knowing the project, you really are starting with a blank canvas.

Meagan stresses that we really need to interrogate our clients. We need to be able to get every tiny bit of information we need so that we know what route the client wants us to take when developing their project.

Mission statements are also mentioned, I think mission statements are great and really help with a project process. Referring back to them regularly and using other website as inspiration to help implement new features can be nothing but an advantage.

Creating mock-ups using HTML instead of using a software helps you in the long run, you can show your client your work so far, beginning the project in the median it’s going to end up in. I personally agree with this, if you have the skills, help give the client a better understand and use HTML.

[simonelishman-blog]

Eric Meyer, "The Era of Intentional Layout" at W3Conf 2013

CSS isn’t a layout language but people do use it to layout their pages. CSS has elements that are useful like box models, but then also has things such as floats which can be dangerous. Floats were created so that they could put images to the side and texts around it. Positioning was made for layout, but wasn’t as responsive as people estimated it to be. It is very rare that you will see a website with equal height columns that didn’t use tables. A float is just as tall as its content, so positioning tags find ways to stretch the height of it, but there are many limitations to positioning so people were using it less and less.

Within the future because of recent developments we will be able to use systems that are actually designed for layouts and we won’t encounter these problems.

[simonelishman-blog]

Luke Wroblewski | Mobile First | live at An Event Apart

Luke stresses how mobile opportunities are exploding nowadays, I completely agree. In this day almost everyone owns a smartphone. “Mobile web growth is out growing desktop growth by about 8 xs. A year to a year and a half from now smart phone sales will be bigger than PC sales.” This example shows how much people really rely on a smart phone.

Screen resolutions can be a constraint with mobile devices, it is vital that the interface and interaction runs smoothly so thought needs to be put into screen resolutions when putting mobile first.

[simonelishman-blog]

Development is Design: Bradfrost 07/10/13

Brad talks about the divide between design and development and how companies do not recognise this. HTML and CSS development is DESIGN. Front end developers should also be involved in the design process, they are not restricted to just code. A lot of companies now a days do not realise this.

Brad talks about the wall between web designers and front end developers and how they need to come together. This is so true because each job role is required when making a brilliant website. The competitiveness need to be dropped!

[simonelishman-blog]

Responsive design, screens and shearing layers

Within this article Ethan raises a valid point about responsive design and how the slow system isn’t layout or interface, it is content. Content is one of the most important parts of a site, without it there is no real site. As long as content is accessible, it is irrelevant what type of devices they are using to access it. Consideration will be put into content more now as it is undoubtable the most important and it will need to be easy to adapt within the future.

[simonelishman-blog]

Laziness in the Time of Responsive Design 2016 - Ethan Marcotte

Ethan talks about how Frameworks are a really good resource for people who are new to web design. You can use something simple like bootstrap or foundation and build on a simple grid system. When meeting with clients you can show your prototypes designed on this to them and talk about your ideas.

A lot of time is being spent talk about Disney’s animation designs. Mark, who is the designer, brings the animations to life when colour is added to them. People said it felt ‘human’. When the characters moved from one end of the frame to the other, that’s when the users said the animation had really felt like they had come to life.  Animations really are a tough job in my opinion, and not only because I literally can’t even draw a stick man, but because they are such little amounts of design but have such a big job to deliver to their audience.

[simonelishman-blog]

What I learned about web accessibility by pretending to be blind for a week - David Ball

David speaks about how accessibility isn’t just about being disabled, it’s about being able to access information on the web. Web developers, when making a website don’t tend to remember or even consider the fact that disabled people also access the web and find it harder. David tells a valid story which makes me completely agree that it’s harder for disabled people to access the web. He talks about how his friend had changed his name on Facebook to his nickname and was shut out from his account by Facebook. He then had to prove he was who he says he was and to do this Facebook took some photos of the people he was friends with on Facebook and asked him who they were. David’s friend was blind, which would obviously make this an impossible task for him to do. For most people, this is a simple and quick task and could get them there accounts back within minutes. But this was not the case for David’s friend and he lost his account.

Accessing the web is harder for blind people so using screen reader is something that’s commonly used. Twitter is an example of dynamic content. When using twitter it’s set out in a list structure and you keep scrolling down, it’ll carry on loading older feeds. This would be so much easier for blind people but isn’t recognized enough by web developers. It’s easier because the blind user doesn’t have to load another page which would take them through the heading information and navigate through everything to get back to the content. The screen reader will be shown that you are dynamically loading the content.

This screen cast has been useful to me as it has shown me ways that I can create my website to become more accessible to blind people which is one thing that I have no considered. (Guilty) This screen reader based experiment helped give me a valuable insight into different ways I can make the web accessible to the blind.