Mavrck » Development

The online checkout experience in real life

bill — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:28:07 +0000

Google produced a video a while back that really resinated with me. I think we as digitals (designers, developers, ux, etc.) all fail to look at the bigger picture sometimes. I’ve had all of the described actions in the video happen to me during past checkouts.

The answer to this requires us to retain the reasons why we’ve made the current system (security, accuracy), and apply them against a low barrier, pleasant experience. Here’s a few things that I’d like to see happen:

No timeouts for non e-commerce actions. Example: Browse through the Verizon site. Viewing new phones? It times out if you leave it open.
No usernames. Solution: email and passwords for authentication.
No CAPTACHAs. We’ve discussed this extensively at DYNAMIT. They’re a burden to users and they don’t stop spam.

CMYKilla will help you with your Photoshop problems

bill — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 18:05:48 +0000

Can’t add much, just watch it.

Story Telling Sites

bill — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:46:56 +0000

As with most other developers/designers, I’m constantly bookmarking sites for reference and inspiration. Here’s a short list of those I’ve run across in the last few months that are great at telling stories:

Are there any sites that you believe tell a great story? Post them for all to see…

Worth a look: CoffeeScript

bill — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:14:12 +0000

I recently came across CoffeeScript and thought I’d quickly share a backround video from Future of Web Apps. Thanks to my dynamit coworker John for the link.

FOWA London 2010 – Interview with Ryan Singer

Project Page/Read More: http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/

Can you really set the bar that low?

bill — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:03:32 +0000

Perhaps I’m confused or misread the text. At least I hope I did.

When reading the Cnet article “Microsoft modernizes Web ambitions with IE9” something dumbfounded me. As of today, the preview version of Internet Explorer 9 scores a “55″ on the Acid 3 test and (more importantly) this is something Microsoft is happy with. For a frame of reference- older versions of IE scored in the 20′s and other modern browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera) currently score in the 90′s. Last time I checked a “55″ is still a horrible failure regardless of your last score. Is the bar really so low at Microsoft? We can only hope (and sadly dream?) that Microsoft can make it into the range of the competition by the final release.

On behalf of all internet users- Microsoft/IE please get your stuff together and raise your standards.

Quick Facebook Insights

bill — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:12:32 +0000

In following the flow of socal media news, two Facebook articles jumped out at me today.

First, it interesting to see the dominance in traffic Facebook continues to build. The traffic of the top sites is staggering. Secondly, it’s interesting to see the evolution Facebook has taken with advertising throughout it’s lifecycle. As much as I hate shady marketers, the information presented is interesting to consider. Is shady advertising really part of a normal growth pattern? His opinion is interesting, even if you don’t agree with him.

Changes are a coming

bill — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:23:22 +0000

This is just a quick heads up to everyone that I plan to expand this blog outside of SEO and development based topics in the near future. I’ve been spending more and more time working on new strategies for up and coming media (read: bands), and lessons learned with marketing and management. You may even catch a concert photo or two as the tour continues on. This feels like a natural extension from where I’m at currently, and will hopefully also help make posts more frequent.

Alternatives to Google Analytics

bill — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:45:02 +0000

Google Analytics has become the fast, free and first choice for metrics for many sites. The sites I produce are no exception. But what happens when your client/boss doesn’t want to use Google? Check out these sites with worthy offerings:

What alternatives do you use?

File Naming Conventions

bill — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:12:52 +0000

Recently I’ve been working behind the scenes trying to come up a file naming convention that will receive formal support. I could play on the “designers are unorganized” stereotype here, but I won’t. Working in a mixed designer/developer shop you come to better understand the varying mindset that we all have in naming our files. Some of us use version numbers to differentiate documents, others use dates or letters. At this point the naming is dependent on the designer(s) assigned to the project. This can become a real issue when many designers come and go on a project, as well as when multiple designers work concurrently together. Can we always rely on the “modified” date? Of course not. The mobile nature of files, being copied from station to station removes this possibility.

So with the stage set, I am leaning on proposing a format similar to the following:

...
01.00.mockup-a.psd

Coming from the code side, this is something that makes sense to me. I’m likely to modify this structure as I continue to talk to some of the designers, but I think it’s a good start. I see some clear benefits, including: automatic sorting and identification of latest files, removal of useless/confusing information like the designer’s name and date, and standardised document names (mockup, home, etc.).

While this process is sure to drag on through a number of dicussions and revisions, I’m looking forward to getting a standard in place and moving on to my next push – PhotoShop layer comps.

Auto tuning a developer is a bad idea

bill — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:12:28 +0000

On vimeo.com via sbahns.com

Auto Tuning from Casey Donahue on Vimeo.