Web Design and Development

Keeping abreast of technology updates has always been a formidable job. As always, there are all sorts of options for consuming the fire hose of news. For me, RSS feeds (I use Feedspot for my reader now) from some trusted sources remains a favorite, and I'd like to share a couple of gems that have been really fantastic for a number of years now.

Both of these are design-oriented sites, focusing on UI technologies, techniques, and reviews as well as design theory, layout reviews, and the like. Given my typical focus on back-end design and architecture, these sites are a great way to bolster by front-end perspective and give me some tools to jump-start UI work. I've been following both of these sites long enough that I honestly can't remember where I found them, but I'm really impressed with the track record for both.

Honkiat.com (odd name, I know, but it's good stuff) is a real grab-bag of articles, so be prepared to filter out some topics you may not be interested in. If you sift through to topics that are of interest, though, there are some really good resources. In most cases, these articles are annotated link collections, so don't expect to find source code here. Do expect to see examples of UI tools and technologies put to use with links to source sites where you can learn more. A quick flip through recent articles shows topics like these:

Smashing Magazine tends to cover fewer topics more deeply, with more of a focus on their own content, vs curation of content from other sources. This is a great source for tutorials and backgrounders, and they've published a number of books based largely on rolled-up content from the site. Again, not everything will be of interest, but the quality of the content that's here is really high. Here's a quick sampling of some recent articles from Smashing Magazine:

If you're looking for a couple good streams of design inspiration, give these two a look, and if you've got any other favorites, let me know!

Have you ever experienced a cascading menu that seemed to run away from you as you navigated it? This is one of those subtle usability failings that can lead to a disembodied hatred of a site or application. Very few people will notice what's actually going wrong, let alone what should be done to fix it.

Ben Kamens noticed when Amazon got this right. Not only did he notice, he wrote up what he found and developed a jQuery menu you can use on you own site to achieve the same fix. The improved implementation, by the way, has its origins in noticing what direction your mouse is moving -- if it's headed toward a sub-menu, this implementation gives you a chance to catch it.

The moral of the story? When you get this stuff right, most people never notice the details, but they'll notice the feeling of quality in the product. Nobody loves an Apple iAnything because the edges are chamfered exactly so or because the icons are rounded just a bit, but they notice that it feels solid and sorted out. I'll bet you'd have a hard time finding people who can tell you exactly why a BMW feels better than a Chevy, but most of them will agree that it does.

As a designer, it's important that you do, in fact, notice the little stuff, and that you understand how these details contribute to the quality of your product. With any luck at all, you'll work for an organization that also gets this stuff, because you'll also find it pretty frustrating to try to explain details like this to a bean-counter that hasn't got any awareness of this relationship.

Tag: Web Design and Development

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