Link: Rails for Designers
Kevin Clark has just posted, Rails for Designers, a blog entry that gives designers a nice intro into Ruby on Rails.I’m reminded of a post by DHH last year titled Why are designers so excited about...
View ArticleAgile Interaction Design
I would like to start some dialogue with all of you…In a recent post, Jeremy Voorhis said the following about About Face 2.0 in his post announcing his Agile Book Club. About Face 2.0 isn’t bad; it’s...
View ArticleMatz on Considering Interface
...back in Portland after being in London and New York City for the past two weeks. It’s nice to be home. :-)I came across this interview with Matz earlier today. It was published almost three years...
View ArticleDo Your Views in Ruby on Rails need a cleaning service?
I’ve been working on a project with Graeme, and we’re spending some time cleaning up some RHTML views.He posted an article earlier, titled, Dirty Views? Clean them up!, where he asks the following.“I...
View ArticleHappy Birthday Allison
This morning was delightful. I woke up to find that 37signals had referenced our website on Signal vs Noise this morning. In particular, they referenced the Rails hosting order form on the PLANET ARGON...
View ArticleEmbracing Failure, part 1
I’m currently reading To Engineer is Human, by Henry Petroski and found the following applicable to software development and managing client and customer expectations.“As much as it is human to make...
View ArticleHug Your Designer Day
Amy Hoy, of slash7 fame, gave a talk titled, Rubber, Meet Road: Getting Designers Running with Rails, which provided a good overview of some of the problems that designers and developers face when...
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Hug Your Designer Day, part 2
In an effort to increase awareness of the importance of good Interaction and Interface Design in Web Development… I suggested that today be... Hug Your Designer Day.Designers Versus DevelopersAre you...
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AT&T Online Support could use some QA
So, I was trying to send AT&T wireless a support email through their online system and got stuck at the following screen.Come on guys… you can design a better form than this… and I’m now going to...
View ArticleRubyURL 2.0 on the horizon
RubyURL was a project that I built about 2 1/2 years ago as a late night attempt to see what I could build and deploy with Ruby on Rails in a night. It’s nearing 50,000 unique website links, has a Ruby...
View ArticleDesigners, Developers, and the x_ Factor
Our team is lucky enough to be in a position where we have both designers AND developers working on the same code base in parallel.Since Ruby on Rails adopts the Model-View-Control pattern for...
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RubyURL: new design and code base
Yesterday evening, I deployed the new version of RubyURL. This was a collaborative effort between Chris Griffin and I, which we’re happy to finally push live.There are a few things that we’re going to...
View ArticleZeldman on Web Design
In a new article on A List Apart, Jeffrey Zeldman writes:“Some who don’t understand web design nevertheless have the job of creating websites or supervising web designers and developers. Others who...
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Skitch... my favorite desktop application of 2007?
It just occurred to me that my first Skitch was on July 7th, 2007. 7/7/7. I’ve been meaning to post an article about how Skitch has changed the way our team approaches reporting bugs and communicating...
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Saying Goodbye Was Never This Hard
There was a post the other day on Signal vs Noise about the pain of opting out of mailing lists titled, Redonkulous unsubscribe delays, which I was reminded of after the following experience.Earlier...
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That Checkbox Needs a Label
As a user of many web applications, I often find myself noticing little things that slow me down. One such thing is the use of checkboxes in web forms. It’s not the problem of checkboxes itself, it’s...
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Review: FogBugz, part 1
Today, I thought that I’d give FogBugz a quick trial. A few of our Rails consulting clients use it and I’m hearing that others are as well.Along the way, I’m bringing one of my favorite tools so that I...
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Tip: Link to Unimplemented
Throughout our design and development process, we’re working around areas of the site that are not yet implemented but we also want to be able to allow our clients to demo their application. In an...
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Google Chrome: discuss
I’m sure that most of you heard the news that Google is releasing a new web browser named Chrome. Their comic for the announcement was very refreshing and entertaining read. Granted… nobody that I know...
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Launching Ruby on Rails projects, a checklist
Since publishing this article, I have given a talk on this topic at Rails Underground 2009. I invite you to checkout the slides. As mentioned in a recent post, I’m hoping to share some lessons that...
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