I’ve been exceptionally busy at work, we’re beginning to finish up a much needed, much discussed by librarians, redesign of PubMed.  We’ve put a ton of user interaction effort into this project, as well as a good sprinkling of graphic design (watch out, I even did some parts!)  I think people will be really positive about these new changes.

[Just for the record, if someone happens to stumble upon this from the librarian community, yes, release date is still end of summer, and yes, there will be a Beta period, so no need to worry about a short timeline to update your class or instructional slides.  We do listen!]

It’s also been exciting that we’ve brought a few new people on board.  Always exciting to have new hires, despite the fact that it’s a lot of work… and all of the trainings I have to do.

What else…  I’m planning on attending the DelveUI masterclasses this week in Brooklyn.  It will be interesting to see what some of the heads of state have to say about the field.  I’m a little excited, this masterclass format isn’t the usual boring no-content fluff that you hear at most conferences. I get the feeling that there will actually be code present!  My thanks to the lovely Jina “Sushi & Robots” Bolton for the opportunity for the free ticket.

I’ve been reading… way too many things.  I’ve been reading Learning jQuery 1.3, jQuery UI 1.6, and jQuery in Action and you’ll see the reviews of those two books very soon.  (Can you tell that we’ve switched to jQuery at NCBI?)  I’m a little behind with that reading, but I’ve been working hard on other things.  Additionally, I went on an Amazon spree, and started reading Programming the Semantic Web, An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists, To Mock a Mockingbird, 101 Things I learned in Architecture School, Code Complete 2.   Last but not least, I’ve also been reading any photography book that I can get my hands on.

Yes, that is a lot of books, and I haven’t had much time for them.  I’ve been working hard at work, and I want to relax a bit when I come home.  Once summer ends, things will return to a slightly more regular pace.  I’ve been learning so much on the job, that I’m not very worried about falling behind in reading.

It’s the summer, so I have been riding… not a ton, but some.  I wish I had time to do more, but I don’t have time for everything.  I have been taking long-ish 7 mile rides home, and then going out to play some basketball with my roommates.  That’s a good time.  As soon as I finish this post, I am going to go and fix my fixie… my favorite Bianchi… I somehow mashed the pedals hard enough to shear off part of the thread of both the crank and the pedal, so there go the original cranks and some lovely MKS Sylvan Track Pedals that were on there. I’ve got a new, generic replacement crankset and new Sylvan’s.  Also, I’m moving from a 42×15 to a 46×17, but with the change in crank length (172.5 down to 165mm) I’ll have the same gear ratio as before.  I’m interested in seeing how the shorter cranks feel.

Not to mention le Tour this year… I was captivated.

And then I’ve been taking some photos.  Still have been good on my New Year’s resolution of taking a photo every day… with the exception of Jan 20 (yes, Inauguration Day, the day more people in my Washington DC area took photos than any other this year).

I also got an iPhone.  While I was in California for Joel and Olga’s wedding, I dropped my phone of more than 5 years on a rug, and the antenna that had been barely holding on for a few months finally fell off completely.  I had previously told myself that I would try to wait until my phone broke before getting a new one. So I was going to buy one at the first sight of antenna problems, until it was suggested that I wait for a new version.  Well, my phone’s demise and the new version’s release coincided, so now I have a 3GS.  Really the thing I like most is having my calendar with me at all times.  The only other part I really like is the speaker, so I can listen to music while on my bike for the first time.

Alright, so that’s about that for the moment. Go out and do something summer-y, that’s what I’m doing.

“Forms suck.  If you don’t believe me, try to find people who like filling them in.”

Are you kidding, I paid for a book that begins like that?  My first reaction was that I could have written that!  Well I didn’t write it, and I also feel that I got my money’s worth out of Web Form Design, Filling in the Blanks, by Luke Wroblewski.

Forms are hard.  I don’t think I need to mention how hard they can be for users… nor do I need to mention what’s at stake if a user finds your form too difficult.  Every web developer who doesn’t have his/her head in the clouds should know that.  Forms, however, are also very difficult to create… correctly!  A well designed form requires a lot of careful, detailed thought.  You have so much to consider… usability issues, accessibility issues, and you usually don’t have anything to go on except for your personal experience.  This book will help you methodically approach form design, and give you the experience of an expert to guide your decisions.

Web Form Design is useful, because Mr. Wroblewski takes a very detailed approach to each aspect of form design.  Within each chapter, he thoroughly analyzes the major elements to consider when designing a form.   For example, the chapter on “Actions” is devoted to action items such as submit and cancel buttons.  One of the sub-sections discusses where to place these items on the page.  The author first presents the reader with the following image demonstrating all of the reasonable placements for the submit and cancel actions.

Using eye-tracking and usability data, he then discusses the pros and cons of each arrangement, without ever deciding one is better then all others.  This is key because it lets the reader, knowledge in hand, decide his/her own course of action.

The book is especially valuable because of the user data, eye-tracking data, and case studies presented within. Mr. Wroblewski’s backs his reasoning with either a summary of these tests or with an example culled from his experiences.  He reinforces his points with a number of demonstration images, all available from the book’s flickr page.  Then he includes a short “best practices” section to close each chapter, outlining what was discussed.  These can be used almost as checklists.  Interspersed in the text are sidebars which present real-life examples and perspectives from numerous field authorities.

Web Form Design is written well enough so that it can be easily read within a few hours.  However, it’s real place is beside you the next time that you have to design or write a form, so that you will be able to make intelligent design decisions, rather than just best guesses.

Looks fine in Firefox 2 for mac/pc. Opera, has a small problem, I think due to a varied em interpretation (it’s different on each platform). I tried IE6, and of course, things were missing, but the design as a whole stood up. So a few “non-lazy” changes should do the trick. Having only spent 30 minutes and using :before and :after pseudo attributes, I was surprised IE didn’t send my PC up in flames.

It just occurs to me, it would be nice if I could add a little javascript (for fun, not practical usage). Not sure what I would add it to, however. Oh well, placed on my to-do list after the real design.

Everyone should keep usability in mind while performing their job. While creating something (especially like a website), some aspects end up being unrelated—graphic design to programmers, implementation details to designers, etc—however usability should be an part of every aspect of the creation process. There are an unending number of uses to design for, the least we can do is succeed for one or two.

So the other day I was working on some trivial CSS, and found myself having to look up the shorthand for ‘list-style’ for the millionth time. I don’t know what in my childhood prevents me from remembering it, but… it must have been traumatic. Anyway, I looked over at my CSS cheat sheet, and it was absent. So I searched the webbernet for a cheat sheet. I found Dustin Diaz’s guide, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. It was filled with information, however I know the values–I work with them constantly. I just wanted to figure out the order and defaults… and put them on the wall.

So here is my CSS Shorthand Cheat Sheet.

This cheat sheet contains all of the cases (that I can think of) where a CSS property has a shorthand notation. I’ve even added the obscure and rarely implemented outline and outline variations, as well as the Aural pause and cue properties (respecting accessibility). I even threw in the color shortcut (#abc) in for good measure.

From a design perspective, there is obvious room for improvement. I haven’t really messed with InDesign since it was called Pagemaker, and I was doing my high-school newspaper. So that was interesting. I also wanted the design to look slightly disorganized… anyone who’s ever seen my yellow shoes will know why. There are saturated colors, but no heavy backgrounds. I wanted it to be printed, and I only have a grayscale laserjet printer. While on the subject, it looks somewhat faded when printed. I have to look into adjusting the colors for priting grayscale, but I’d prefer not to darken all of them.

Anyway, I hope that someone will find it helpful. I’m going to use it tomorrow.

Anyway, I will try to start a more formal “design” soon, but not likely before I start moving.