‘design’ archive

I’ve just been perusing Khoi Vinh’s article over on subtraction.com and realize there is a lot of merit to his opinion. As a web developer, I have a strong urge to fight back. After all, aren’t online applications the direction software is heading?

But he’s got a point: some things are still lacking in web apps. And regardless of how fast internet connections get, there will always be the sporadic downed line at home or dns error. There is a convenience to the speed and accessibility of a native application.

As developers, I think we need to start pointing ourselves even further ahead than the rising online SAAS model. Software available online is brilliant. But we need to strive to blur the line between online and native apps. I believe we can create applications with all the advantages of both.

Imagine a word processor that was installed natively, and saved local copies of your files, but also updated itself instantly every time it opened, and kept a copy of your files on a server, accessible from any computer. And if you lose connection for a few days, you could just continue working on the local files and it would see the differences and sync the online copies to match when you reconnected.

This may even be where the next generations of web browsers should point themselves: to be flexible window management programs. We’ve already jury rigged them to do that with AJAX, and it does a pretty remarkable job. Now we just need to find a way to create a closer tie between the JavaScript tools of Google Docs and a faster, locally-stored version of the same program.

This is not a personal blog, but I feel inclined to a) share the news and b) apologize for and explain my lack of writing.

First of all, I’m engaged! Thus I hope you can pardon my absense. I’m also switching jobs and preparing to move from Spokane, WA to Portland, OR. I will try to write at least once in the month ahead while these things are going on. I should be settling into a new home, and be getting comfortable with my new job (working from home!) by the first week of July. At that point, I plan on resuming my bi-weekly postings to Elucid Blue.

Until then, Cheers!

This… ’stuff’? Oh… ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean. You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets?

And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

Did I just throw a quote at you from The Devil Wears Prada? I did, in fact. It’s a quote that stuck in my head after I saw the movie several months ago. And while I hope it’s safe to consider myself a moderately fashion-conscious guy, I’m more interested in how the same principle applies to the web.

You may not know this, but the colors that are popping up this year—colors in new furniture, wall paint, even kitchen appliances—were pretty much pre-determined. And even designed to coordinate with one another.

There is actually an association called the Color Marketing Group that exists solely for the purpose of tracking and helping to unify color trends.

So whether you want to fight the trends or follow obediently in line, here is what they predicted to be ubiquitous this year (and seeing how it’s late April, I think you’ll agree these have already become noticeable):

Natural Colors and Rich Accents

Greens and Blues. Not the wild and flourescent colors of “Web 2.0″, but botanical greens and natural sky & water blues are taking over. Earthtones are also becoming increasingly popular, especially browns (did Microsoft actually get this one right with the brown Zune?!), but also keep an eye out for tans, beiges, and softer greys.

CMG also notes that rich, ethnic accents are great offsets to these mellow naturals. Think reds and oranges like rust, ochre and russet. These colors, reds especially, are expected to really take off in 2008, diverging both lighter—deep pinks like coral— and richer—deep raspberry-like hues.

To see these colors in action on the web, take a look at Alazanto (rich reds and browns), AndyLim Creative (understated greys with beige overtones), Cap Estel (blue accents on mellow tones), and the WebVisions conference (earthy greens). Let’s go paint the web!

I know: I’m throwing around a buzzword. (Or is it a buzzphrase?) But it’s one that matters to me, and I haven’t yet thrown out my two cents on the issue, so here goes.

As I see it, this is the crux of the problem: People are lazy. I don’t mean web developers. I mean users. The average user goes out, buys his new computer, and then uses it as it is. Since about 93% of home computers are PCs, they come bundled with IE, and this is what gets used. Even users who are familiar with Firefox and would even acknowledge it as a superior browser are often too lazy to bother fiddling with a pre-installed setup that “works.” But this is, slowly, changing.

Currently, about 60% of web surfers use Internet Explorer, while the remainder goes mainly to Firefox followed distantly by Safari and Opera. At the current rate of growth, Microsoft’s browser will fall below the the 50% mark sometime late next year, and Firefox could surpass it about a year thereafter. And once Microsoft’s not the one setting the pace, we can hope they will finally realize they need to fall into line and start rendering CSS properly.

So we are getting there. When I first set about writing this, I thought I’d be writing a “woe is us, nothing is ever going to change” rambling. But the numbers do seem to be looking up, and moving a lot faster than I’d previously expected. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.

Well, after who knows how many months of piddling around, I’m finally live! A few odds and ends are still missing, and should fall into place in the next week or so.

This is my new venue to explore, explicate, and exhibit my venture into the world of graphical web design. It has been a hobby of mine since the mid-90s, thought only recently have I realized it is exactly the career path I’ve been looking for. I hope by forcing myself to explore it and write about it here, I will grow to be what I can be at the art.