Being Mr. Kenny

Today I started work on a new website design! It’s what I’ve been doing most of the day. I’m really pleased of late: I seem to be becoming a morning person. And by that I don’t mean someone who stays up till the wee small hours!

Digs4Students is a company a group of friends of mine are setting up. It’s a student accomodation setup which aims to put landlords in touch with tenants.

The design is still in the early stages — I think the header could do with a little work, and maybe some of the spacing, but I’m really pleased with the content area. It’s really nice typography, nice bullet points, nice spacing, nice colours.

Check it out at digs4students.com. Comments welcome, but if I don’t like them, they’ll be deleted, so there :P

Disclaimer for Ailis: Sorry, geek post again!

Mentioned these sites in a previous post a while ago:

• Jeffrey Zeldman: XHTML 2 and all that
• Mark Pilgrim: Semantic obsolescence — this one links to about a million more things to read

I have decided that the new stuff that XHTML 2 will bring will outweigh any negative side-effects (and at the moment I don’t see too many anyway). Still, the above sites are interesting reading if you want to see the other side of progress on the web.

I do think that XHTML 2 will be a bit more tricky to use — or at least it introduces a lot more functionality into XHTML that isn’t as easy as the more basic stuff. But I’m all for it!

(For those that haven’t had a glance at it yet, the new draft recommendation for XHTML 2.0 is available for reading: http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/. Have a good poke around, it’s quite enlightening…)

Update: A list of all the XHTML 2.0 elements and their attributes can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/elements.html

I am always surprised by the endless creativity that is found in web design. If I had half of some people’s talent, I would be ecstatic, and probably fairly rich. Anyway…

I found these two variations on the standard “guestbook” you see on a lot of pages. The first, the guestblock, is really pretty and dinky, which is something I am a huge fan of on websites (pixels are the best medium!). Plus, it doesn’t flash! — not that I have anything against flash, I’m just always impressed when something so neat doesn’t use it :D

The second is simply stunning. I particularly love the way the pointers buzz round the tree like insects when replaying the day’s messages. The site is run by a Japanese environmental organisation, Ecotonoha, and one tree is planted for every hundred messages left!

1. The guestblock
2. Ecotonoha’s message tree

Jakob Nielson’s Alertbox

If you make websites, read everything this guy writes, it’s like the Bible. And if you don’t make websites, but just use them, have a read anyway, because it’s good to hear that someone, somewhere actually cares about how users use websites instead of just making money of the internet. Jakob Nielson: long may you reign over us.

Also, have a look at this page, it’s the top ten mistakes of web design made in 2002. It has cartoons! See if you indentify with them. When you do (and you will) you will know why I get so annoyed when a website does something stupid, annoying and downright immoral.

The Myth of Good Webdesign (PDF!)

I am so pleased to find someone else! I have always hated Times New Roman, let’s look at it in action:

Hello, I am the most disgusting font in the world. Look at me! I make everything on the web look ridiculous. When you see me, it makes the page look hideous, plain and boring.

Bleh. It’s so ugly! I’ve got my browser set up so that when it encounters a setting of “serif” it changes the font to graceful, elegant Trebuchet MS.