Brit Mansell :: Life's Influence on Design » Development

BarCamp Birmingham is Coming!

brit — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:55:13 +0000

For those of you interested in anything Internet-tech related and local to Birmingham, you should check out BarCamp Birmingham. May 2, is the date. Signup is open now.

2010 King of the Hammers Photos I was lucky enough to get to attend the 2010...

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WordPress Love

brit — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 16:30:02 +0000

Andre Pene who runs the Faith Racers ministry contacted me yesterday evening about freshening up his website. After a brief discussion of what needs he has for the site, we settled on the WordPress platform. It’s amazing what you can do with WordPress in just a few hours.

Take a look at the new site.

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Finally, A New Laptop On The Way

brit — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 22:18:58 +0000

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally ordered a new laptop today. I know I have previously raved over the original Mac Book Pros, but I decided to skip the current Mac Book Pro model in favor of a PC laptop. Begin, the ultimate laptop search.I’ve scoured the Web for months looking for the perfect laptop for my situation. I’m traveling a lot more lately and working out of the office a lot more, so I wanted something more portable than the 15.4 laptops but I wasn’t ready to give up any performance. In comes the new Sony Z-Series. This thing has it all, even at 3.4 lbs. Highlights: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P9500 (2.53 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache), Genuine Windows Vista® Ultimate, Model Features: 4GB RAM, 128GB solid state drive, Hybrid Graphics System (1600 x 900 resolution), NVIDIA® graphics, HDMI out. The reviews on this model have also been great.

The key for me ordering one now is the drastic discounts that are currently available. I even found a $300 off coupon (coupon code Z590SAVE300) that combines with the discount already applied to the VGN-Z590UAB model.

If you’re in the market for an ultraportable with some great performance numbers, the Z-Series is worth checking out.

Oh yeah, and it has real carbon fiber, lots of it.

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Additional Displays on Mac Book Pro

brit — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:04:30 +0000

I have finally found a Mac driver for the UV Plus+ by EVGA. Now I’m not constrained to only two displays on my McBook. So, now for $99 (or less online) you can hook up an additional display to your laptop, or desktop for that matter.

More information: http://www.mostlygeek.com/2008/06/22/multiscreen-macbook-pro/

Download drivers here: http://www.displaylink.com/mac_beta_drivers.html

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Screen Readers and the Real World

brit — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:09:04 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making websites 100% accessible and W3C compliant, but I see this used as a crutch a lot of times in the web design world. Often times designers rely on the “it doesn’t work with screen readers” comment to sell their less than stellar designs; designs that are diluted to obtain W3C compliance or “accepted markup patterns”.

This post is out of frustration more than anything. I just read a great post from Smashing Magazing about vivid imagery in web design. To me, it is an inspirational post that sparked a deeper analytical look into this type of design approach. But, low and behold, the first comment posted (probably by a 12 year old who knows nothing about design) says, “some nice images… means nothing to screen readers.” If this was the first time I had seen this type of attitude I would have dismissed it as an ignorant comment from someone uneducated about the web design/business world, but sadly I see this being repeated by even some of the most notable designers in the industry today. This attitude is what I’m complaining about, not the comment on the post.

At the end of the day, we, as web creators, are here to serve our clients. It is our magically ordained duty to do the best job we can in helping meet their objectives on the work for which we are being commissioned. It is not our job to always cater to the lowest common denominator (visually impaired, color blind, etc.).

In the perfect world, all sites would degrade nicely into an unordered list of perfectly marked up content. But, alas, this is not a perfect world. WAKE UP PEOPLE! Why is it seen as such a travesty to cater to the majority of users versus the minority? Please don’t read this as me being insensitive to the needs of certain users, but please read this as me being proportionately sensitive to them along with those who are not impaired in any way.

For example, I race motocross, or did until this season. Last year I had a wreck at a race and dislocated my elbow (because I left it laying on the track for someone to run over). I had surgery on it a few months ago, but for whatever reason it hasn’t healed properly. I am unable to ride now, or at least for any longer than a few minutes. Should I go to the race promoter and other participants and demand that the race only last five minutes just to cater to me? That seems unreasonable, right? Why is this web design topic any different? My elbow injury is preventing me from doing something that I love and has been a big part of my life for the last 20 years, but it is my burden to bare, not theirs. They should not suffer because of my impairment.

If a client commissions my company to build a website, we will do our best to help them achieve their conversion goals. If one of the conversion goals is related to being 100% degradable and W3C compliant, then so be it, but we will not sacrifice performance, design, or functionality just for the sake of saying we’re a W3C compliant shop. In the end, we work for the client.

Please let me know your thoughts.

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Information Architecture on a Large Scale

brit — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:01:21 +0000

Information Architecture on a Large Scale from Isoaxis on Vimeo.

Presented by Dimitri Glazkov on July 11, 2008, at the IPSA meeting for July.
For more information on the Internet Professional Society of Alabama, please visit ipsaonline.org.

Filmed with a Canon XH-A1. The onboard mic was used for audio. I left one of the wires for the wireless mic at home. Don’t shoot me! Sorry for the bad audio.

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Adobe Flex and A.I.R.

brit — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:11:59 +0000

John Cook presented a few points about Adobe’s Flex and A.I.R. platform. If you are not familiar with these technologies, you should definitely take a look at this video.

Filmed with a Canon XH-A1 and Audio-Technica ATR288W Wireless Microphone.

Adobe Flex & A.I.R. from Isoaxis on Vimeo.

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iPhone 3G Will Win Because…

brit — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:58:38 +0000

Designers and developers now have a standard platform for which to develop mobile applications. They can develop one “flavor” of their application for the iPhone and reach more users than on any other single platform.

The various other operating systems, screen resolutions, browsers, and OS capabilities make it impractical for one application to be deployed out into the wild without a different version for each platform, until now.

There will be many applications that will only be compatible with the iPhone.

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Haml & Sass Video

brit — Fri, 02 May 2008 12:41:46 +0000

Haml & Sass from Isoaxis on Vimeo.

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