Rainbow kitteh!

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BIG WEB SHOW EPISODE 32 is now online for your listening and viewing pleasure. Mandy Brown (Typekit, A Book Apart) joins Dan Benjamin and me to
discuss the value of customer support, the present and future of type on the web, font choice on reader platforms, what traditional print publishers can learn from the new breed of web-based print publishers, why you’ve got to write, and why the future belongs to editors.

Dan and I thank all of you for listening, watching, and contributing your questions and comments in the chat room during the live sessions. You’ve made our little show worthwhile. We promise more thought-provoking questions and more great guests in 2011.

Join us Thursday, 6 January 2011 at 1:00 PM Eastern for the live recording of Episode 33, as Dan and I talk with Dana Chisnell, co-author, Handbook of Usability Testing Second Edition (Wiley, 2008) about her election design usability project for the US Government, plus usable security, researching social interactions mediated by technology, whether UX is a female ghetto, and lots more.

Filed under: Big Web Show, Design, The Big Web Show, The Profession, UX, Usability, User Experience, Web Design, Web Design History, Web Standards, people, webfonts, work

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MANDY BROWN (@aworkinglibrary) is our guest today, Thursday December 23, 2010 in Episode No. 32 of The Big Web Show, co-hosted by Dan Benjamin and recorded at 1:00 PM Eastern before a live internet audience.

Mandy is co-founder and editor for A Book Apart and a contributing editor for A List Apart for people who make websites. A veteran of the publishing industry, she spent a decade at W. W. Norton & Company, an independent and employee-owned publisher, where her work involved everything from book design to web design to writing about design. She serves as Community and Support Manager for Typekit and writes frequently on the Typekit blog.

Named “Video Podcast of the Year” in the 2010 .net Awards, The Big Web Show covers “Everything Web That Matters” and records live every Thursday at 1:00 PM Eastern on live.5by5.tv. Edited episodes can be watched afterwards, often within hours of recording, via iTunes (audio feed | video feed) and the web. Subscribe and enjoy!

P.S. This is the last Big Web Show session of the year. We’ll be off next week. (Something about Christmas and New Year’s.) Thank you for watching and listening. We love you bunches!

Filed under: A Book Apart, A List Apart, Authoring, Best practices, Big Web Show, Design, Publications, Publishing, Real type on the web, Standards, The Big Web Show, Typekit, type, webfonts

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DREW McCLELLAN’S 24 WAYS IS THE ADVENT calendar for web geeks, publishing a daily dose of web goodness throughout December. This year’s 24 ways is being turned into a beautiful printed annual. All proceeds benefit UNICEF children’s charities. The sale ends December 31, 2010. Please buy this collector’s item and spread holiday cheer to those who need it most:

The 24 Ways Annual 2010 | Five Simple Steps.

Filed under: Code, Collectibles, Design, Fun, Gifts, Giving, content

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IN NOVEMBER, as part of the 4th Annual Blue Beanie Day to support web standards, we announced a web standards haiku contest, with prizes donated by Peachpit/New Riders (“Voices That Matter”) and A Book Apart. Entries were posted on Twitter with the hashtag #bbd4, with judging to follow in December. It should have been easy.

Unfortunately, searches on hashtags only go back a few days. Which means, when Designing With Web Standards 3rd Edition co-author Ethan Marcotte and I sat down to judge your entries, said entries were nowhere to be found.

Not even mighty Google was able to uncover more than a few of them.

We wrote to our friends at Twitter to ask for help, but they were too busy dating supermodels on a pile of money to get back to us. With existing entries sucked into the void formerly known as Twitter search results, and with all those great books to give away and all those eager participants to thank, we have only one choice:

Blue Beanie Day Haiku Contest Phase II—This Time It’s Personal

Instructions follow:

Attention, web design geeks, contest fans, standards freaks, HTML5ophiles, CSSistas, grammarians, bookworms, UXers, designers, developers, and budding Haikuists. Can you do this?

Do not tell me I
Am source of your browser woes.
Template validates.


Write a web standards haiku (like that one), and post it on Twitter right here between today and Friday, December 24th. Entries must be “postmarked” no later than 11:59 PM Eastern. Judging will be held the week after Christmas, with winners announced before the New Year.

FAQ

Can I re-post the haiku(s) I submitted in November?

Yes, please!

Can I create one or more new haikus?

Yes, of course.

How many entries may I post?

As many as you like. However, you can only win once. (In other words, if you post the best ten haikus, you won’t win ten prizes, you’ll win one.)

I can’t post my entry here. (I’m behind a firewall.)

Unfortunately, posting behind firewalls is disabled on this site. (By doing this, I remove 99% of comment spam.) Try posting from your phone, or from a location other than your current one.

Thanks and Praise

Thanks to our sponsors, Peachpit/New Riders (“Voices That Matter”) and A Book Apart, and to Doug Vos, co-founder of Blue Beanie Day.

Let the haikus commence!

Photo: Luke Dorny

Comments are now closed. Watch this space—winners will be posted soon.

Filed under: Advocacy, Announcements, Blue Beanie Day, Free, Gifts

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HEY, KIDS! GUESS WHO’s the keynote speaker at DIBI (pronounced “dibby”), the two-track Design It Build It web conference, June 7–8, 2011 at The Sage Gateshead venue in the Northeast of England? That’s right, it’s little old me. Join me for two tracks of design and development pleasure:

• Design It track speakers include Faruk Ates, Jared Spool, Mike Kus, Inayaili de Leon, Jeremy Keith, and Brian Suda.
• Speakers for the Build It track are Corey Donohoe, Blaine Cook, Lorna Mitchell, Bradley Wright, Rich Thornett and Jake Archibald.
• There’s also “An Afternoon With…” half-day session focused on start-ups. The afternoon session is free to all conference pass-holders.

Tickets go on sale 13 January 2011. Follow dibiconf for announcements.

Keep up with my comings and goings on Lanyard and this site’s new Appearances page (in progress), follow me on Twitter (@zeldman), and keep watching the skies at An Event Apart, the design conference for people who make websites.

Filed under: Announcements, Appearances, speaking

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Filed under: Community, music

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STYLE VERSUS DESIGN READS like it was written this morning. In fact, I wrote the original version in 1999, when I had a monthly web design column going at Adobe.com. In 2005, Adobe asked if I’d mind updating the piece. I changed a couple of words and they agreed that the revision worked. For although the web had changed tremendously between 1999 and 2005, the issue I addressed in my article had not. This afternoon, while importing some old Ma.gnolia bookmarks into Pinboard, I came upon Adobe’s HTML version of the 2005 revision to “Style vs. Design.” I read it again, and tweeted the link. Within minutes, designers were responding. Many thought the piece was new. For what I said in that article over eleven years ago still rings true, although there are now more designers who see things as I do. It’s nice that a piece of writing about web design could remain relevant for over a decade. But it’s also a bit sad. See what you think.

Filed under: Adobe, Design, The Profession, Web Design, Web Design History

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Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the game of all games, a design denouement one incredible year in the making, the ultimate test of two unlikely heroes with even less likely names.

Noper vs. Reyes. Layer Tennis 2010 Season 3 championship. Fought live, with live commentary by yours truly. Presented by Adobe CS5 via Coudal Partners.

The Match begins 1:00 pm Chicago time (2:00 pm in NYC, 9:00 pm in Bucharest).

See you there.

Filed under: Adobe, Community, creativity

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THE BIG WEB SHOW Episode 31 featuring Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, Inc. is now online for your viewing and listening pleasure.

Filed under: Big Web Show, The Big Web Show

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