David Emery OnlineArcade Fire meets HTML5
What would a music experience designed specifically for the modern web look like? This is a question we've been playing around with for the last few months. Browsers and web technologies have advanced so rapidly in the last few years that powerful experiences tailored to each unique person in real-time are now a reality.
File under “mind blowing” and “why didn’t I think of that”.
It reminds me of when Google first released Google Maps, playing around with the draggable maps and wondering how the hell they did it without using Flash. A little light bulb went off in my (and judging by the buzzword-ification of AJAX, a fair few other peoples) head about the possibilities it revealed were possible.
This is just like that.
Visit ➔Eric Schmidt’s Name Game Doesn’t Make Sense
He predicts, apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.
Assuming this reporting is correct, I think it’s incredible that someone in his position can be so shortsighted; in the future (actually screw that; it’s already happened) people are just going to deal with being Google-able, both from the employer and employee sides. It’s going to be the same for everyone, so it’s not going to be an issue.
Visit ➔Is the web really dead?
Without commenting on the article's argument, I nonetheless found this graph immediately suspect, because it doesn't account for the increase in internet traffic over the same period. The use of proportion of the total as the vertical axis instead of the actual total is a interesting editorial choice.
As you may have read elsewhere, Wired are currently running a ‘The Web Is Dead’ story in a fairly shameless attempt to get traffic (spot the irony). The key basis to their hypothesis is a graph of the split in overall internet traffic between web, video (which apparently includes YouTube, even though that’s a web site…), peer to peer traffic etc. However, as this Boing Boing post so clearly demonstrates, it’s an incredibly misleading graph as it doesn’t account for the fact that internet traffic as a whole has massively increased over the time period they’re graphing.
In other words, Wired are lying with graphics, and it’s pretty shameful and shameless.
Visit ➔Introducing BBC Dimensions
What’s a Dimension then? Well, basically what it says right there on the homepage: “Dimensions takes important places, events and things, and overlays them onto a map of where you are.”
More brilliant work from the BERG team.
Visit ➔I think iTunes is done.
I hated the media-creep of iTunes from the start. A dedicated ‘QuickTime Video Library’ would’ve been my preferred solution for Movies and TV shows, a rebuild of iSync to handle MobileMe and iPhone synchronization settings, and a standalone iTunes Store app (or, frankly, web site) for media purchases.
I have a real love/hate relationship with iTunes; I love the fact it has all my music in, and the power of smart playlists and the useful features it’s accumulated over the years, but simultaneously rue the fact it’s undoubtably the worst designed application Apple have.
I think it’s quite interesting that on iOS the functions iTunes does on the Mac are split out into 3 different apps (or 4 on the iPod/iPad with the Movies app) – “iPod” for media playback and organisation, “iTunes” for purchasing media and “App Store” for apps. I’d quite like to see something similar on the desktop, with the Finder handling syncing devices (don’t really need a separate app for that I don’t think).
Visit ➔Creating Digital Magazines
As mentioned, Adobe InDesign CS5 software is the central component of the workflow. Using InDesign CS5, design teams create layouts and add interactivity. With layouts in hand, production teams package the assets using the new Digital Content Bundler utility that allows publishers to import vertical and horizontal InDesign CS5 layouts, add metadata, (article title & description, issue number, etc.) and export them into a new “.issue” format.
I’m quite torn on this development from Adobe, which – when it’s finally released – will allow (relatively) easy eMagazine publishing, in the style of the Wired app, from InDesign. On the one hand easy publishing = a good thing, and I love the focus on design that this workflow provides. On the other, surely this stuff should be done in HTML?
Visit ➔Supersize that Background, Please!
These are exciting times for web developers, with all the browser makers working hard to implement upcoming technologies like HTML5 and CSS3. As a result, it’s time to start revisiting old techniques to see how the same things can be done in smarter, cleaner ways.
An interesting hybrid of techniques I’ve used for the large header images on this site – this latest version uses the CSS3 background-size property to scale it appropriately. Previous versions used javacript to switch different sized images in and out depending on how big the image was, and using media queries to do the same is pretty nifty, however I dropped it for this version as it turned out most people were ending up with the same size image anyway (as the majority of visitors had similar browser window size) and the file size savings weren’t that great.
Visit ➔BBC News website redesign
We have focused on design and navigation, looking to see how we can make all the existing content we produce each day easier for you to find, use and share.
It’s obviously a bit premature to judge a website from static screenshots, but this is looking very nice.
Visit ➔Swan Song
A couple of weeks back – it’s been a little too busy recently to keep up with blogging, as you may have noticed – at work we launched a new site for Vampire Weekend:
I’m happy with the way it’s turned out, which is fortunate as it’s liable to be the last artist site I do for a good while. Such is the way these things go I’m now no longer in the position where I do any actual design or development anymore. Not to say I’m not involved with all that – I certainly am – but the pixels are no longer pushed by my own hand. I’m sure I’ll keep on doing the odd job on the side (I’m not just going to stop designing, perish the thought) but certainly I’ll be doing it a lot less. Hopefully that doesn’t mean I’ll start redesigning this place even more though…
With vampireweekend.com being my swan song then, I thought I should try and make it a good one.
My favourite element is the homepage with it’s fullscreen scroll-y carousel, and particularly the ‘Contra’ page within it, which you can drag around like a google map to reveal the lyrics to all...
Read more ➔I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths
I hope ebooks usher in a world of ideal book lengths. I.e., detached from the burden of having to be "book-sized"; less filler, more focus.
A great idea – after having now spent a bit of time reading on the iPad (2 books so far) I firmly believe this is the future of the medium, and it’s a lot more adaptable then paper ever was.
Of course, whether the publishers will get their heads around this sort of thing is a whole different question…
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