W00t! Happy to say I've been accepted as a speaker at the upcoming D2W Conference in Kansas City. I'll be talking about using Adobe Fireworks to wireframe and prototype mobile applications and web sites. It will be my first conference of the year, and I'm very excited to hook up with friends and make new ones. D2W is a designer/developer mobile workflow conference, it's goal being to improve communication and share workflow ideas between designers and application developers. 

Now in it’s second year, it’s definitely gaining in popularity and has attracted a great range of presenters, including yours truly.

Early Bird Pricing in Effect

If you book the conference before April 1, 2011, you’ll receive a $95 Early Bird discount on conference registration.That’s right, until April 1, the conference fee is only $200! After April 1, the registration fee increases to $295 (still a great deal), so you’re saving practically 30% by confirming by the end of March.

And if you’re looking for more in-depth sessions, D2W has them as well:

• Introduction to Adobe Fireworks CS5 with Dave Hogue
• InDesign to iPad Workshop with Pariah Burke
• Creating a Portfolio With WordPress with Justin Seeley
• COOP Hands On with John Farrar

These hands-on sessions will run on Thursday July 14 as a pre-cursor to the conference, which begins on Friday. What a great way to whet the digital appetite!

So if you’re a digital professional and you’re hankering for a fantastic way to network and learn at the same time, reserve yourself a spot at D2W this July.

So there's been a pretty decent sized debate going on through the webosphere. Designers should know how to code. Developers should know how to design (or shouldn't need to design). I considered weighing in on the 37 Signals blog -- but the comments were already closed. Call me slow (yes, I've been on the road, had a birthday, and had my mom visiting with her birthday. ;). You'd be right. Oh well.

I do have one thing to say. Well, I probably have more than one, but I'll start with that. I recently did a couple sessions at the HOW design conference. One was on "Mistakes Print Designers Make on the Web." Yes, I definitely agree there are common mistakes from the print paradigm. Many times I can tell how people's brains work when they ask for help on lists. I can tell they don't understand the web or come from a print background. However, that does NOT mean I think they are useless. Do I think they should know how the web works? That the web is a fluid, not static medium? Am I willing to help them learn (if they're going to be in my "designer stable")? He77s yea. I am willing. Because I think they are very important to our industry.

Do I think that coders should not use a graphic medium. Lord no. "Designing" (or so they call it) using the constraints of "what's easy to do with code" is really a sad, and less attractive, way to work. I say bring on the tough comps -- we'll work it out, or we'll ask for a small revision. We'll come up with a way to make it work accessibly. A way you might not have thought of before -- but a way that is equally lovely. But lord knows I think you design types are valuable. I quit designing years ago. Why? I'm a tweakaholic. I make more money hiring people that are more creative, better trained and faster. My clients save money with those same people. The designers are freed to be their creative selves -- but yes, it's nice for me if they understand the web. It's nice if I don't have to lead, guide, explain. That said, because I know my craft, I'm willing to help them at the beginning. And no, I don't expect them to know how to code. Just to have an overall understanding that the web is not print. Everything will not have line breaks where they want it to. It won't be glued down. But I, with my experience, will guide them through what can and can't be done. In time, they will be one of my favorite designers. They will understand, but they will send it to me to code. Because that's what I do best.

Do you create the site with HTML? Do you create it without a graphic program? Well, gawd bless you. But I'd venture to say your designs are likely boring. I think 37 signals rawks in usability. I have no bad words to say about them. But what I'm seeing from their recent blog posts in this area is just silly. And no, I've never seen a super creative design come out of that group (at least that I KNEW was from them. I'm certainly not barring it).

Personally, I welcome the challenge of the design minds. I find that if I create the site IN HTML, I do what's easiest to do with HTML/CSS. I don't challenge my abilities. I don't push the envelope.

Yes, the site is about the content -- the message. People are generally looking for information on the web. I teach that all the time all over the world. But there's another side of it. There's the package that same content comes in. Is it readable and usable? Good. That's important. Does it work when the text size is large. Does it work with assistive technology. Excellent. Accessibility is even more important. But goodness knows that a majority of your readers are going to be influenced by what it looks like. Yes, even the colors. Study color psychology. Look at eye patterns. Immerse yourself in usability and interaction. Heck, watch your mom try to navigate things -- I just did. It's eye opening. How it looks is important. Sorry, that's just the facts. Why do you think company's spend so much on their Superbowl commercials?

And let's not leave out how you interact with the database -- how well that content dynamically appears. How much sense it makes. How usable the interface is. There are many things to think about. The root of my story and my point is -- it's the rare individual that has all the strengths needed for one web site. It's the team that matters. Should everyone have a basic understanding of the other member's jobs? How they work? What they can accomplish. Oh yes. Absolutely. Should they be able to do them? That's just ludicrous. Absolutely not. Surround yourself with people more brilliant than yourself. Always learn. Work hard. You, and those around you, will be enormously successful.

Ciao.

A web buddy has just hipped me to This.

See that item down in the left corner? Safari now has a shiny new version number, and it works on the PC too. So old Stevie has entered the PC Browser Wars, eh? That should stir the pot a bit.

You may have noticed the release of the CMX mobile/handheld device CSS reference resource yesterday. With mobile access becoming an increasingly important area of our work. and information in general on CSS support for mobile browsers being scarce we thought it would be good to have an open source mobile reference point, a place where you can search for mobile device/browser information and also add devices to the resource.

When designing for the mobile internet you need to be aware that not all handheld devices' browsers support the handheld media type, many only see the screen media type which means your small screen design needs to be carefully planned out to ensure that you get the display you need. Further to this some handheld browsers read both the screen and handheld media style sheets so you need to be fully aware of the rules of specificity and how to implement them to deal with these browsers correctly.

Don't get caught in a trap where you think just declaring a handheld media type is good enough, it isn't.

You can access the desk top search interface here: http://www.communitymx.com/mobile/mobileD/ For info on handheld browser support you would be best searching for the browser name.

You can add your device to the database for others to reference by visiting here: http://www.communitymx.com/mobile/ this is only accessible by handheld devices though. If you do add your device please complete the CSS reference point checks.

An article on using and how the data collection works is available here: http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=AA8A9

Look forward to hearing any comments you may have.

Announced just yesterday! MAX details:

When: October 23 - 26, 2006
Where: Venetian Resort Hotel, Las Vegas, NV

Adobe will have over 90 different hands-on and workshop sessions presented by Adobe experts and other industry leaders on best practices and coming technologies. Currently, there are six tracks:

• LiveCycle and Acrobat
• Web Development
• Rich Internet Applications
• Mobile and Devices Applications
• Vertical Market Solutions
• Web Design

It doesn't appear you can register just yet, but you can sign up for email updates to notify you as information is available.

Out of all my friends, I was one of the very last to get a cell phone. Then, 2 years later, I was one of the last to upgrade (yes, at MAX two years ago, people laughed at my phone openly). Cell phones have always been, to me, a phone. They make and take calls. I'm happy.

This year, right before MAX, we reupped our plan and replaced our phones. I wanted one that would go online so I could start checking sites and such. The only one my carrier (SunCom) sold that fit the bill was a Nokia 6670.

It's been quite a transition to remember that I can do things other than talk on it. I admit, I've barely tested any web sites on it, but recently, I began to remember occasionally that I could take photos (I even put a few up from my recent ski trip on my Flickr page).

Today though, I learned something really useful. I wanted some less boring ringtones, so I went to the Suncom site. They were simply awful. Hokey. I was complaining to my friend, Jesse Rodgers at the University of Waterloo, about it (he has the same phone) and he came back with a profound statement. "Just load an mp3 over to it." Huh? How in the world would I do that? Turns out that with Bluetooth, which I use to get the photos off my phone, I can put MP3 files on my phone. Who knew! :)

Thus began a slightly frustrating journey that Jesse helped me through (did I say "thank you" Jesse?). I'm sharing it here in case someone else wants to do the same thing.

1. Find the song you want to send over from your computer. Make sure it's in MP3 format.
2. Under your bluetooth menu, select "Send file..." Navigate to the file, click Send, and choose your device.
3. You'll need to then click OK on your phone to accept the file.
4. Nokia accepts this file as a text message and thus, it will appear in your Messages > Inbox. You must move it to your memory card for it to work as a ring tone.
5. It will likely start autoplaying. Hit stop. Click Options (on the bottom left) and choose Save. Place it on your memory card in the Sound Clips folder. Make sure to delete it from your Inbox to save space in the phone memory.
6. Now go to Menu > Profiles (either choose an existing profile to change or create a new one). Look for the name of the MP3 file you just saved in the list. Select it and Save.

Voila! Call yourself from another phone to hear your new ringtone. ;)