simurai

What is Responsive Web Design?

Sun, 06 Nov 2011 19:07:00 +0100

Yesterday I tweeted this:

My excitement for Responsive Web Design is fading a bit. It’s great for simple websites, but not enough for more complex web apps.

On mobile you don’t just wanna shrink and hide some stuff.. you wanna change behaviour.

It caused some discussion and confusion. What I meant was that next to using media-queries to adapt to different screen sizes, we should also consider other aspects that improve the User Experience. Like changing behaviour trough JavaScript, optimize for a different input method like touch and be responsible with the often lower bandwidth. @fofr came up with a great hack to link Media Queries and JavaScript.

I think the problem is that in @beep’s original post, it mostly was described as a media-query, flexible-layout thing: “Fluid grids, flexible images, and media queries are the three technical ingredients for responsive web design”. But @danielmall notes that it’s an approach and not a technology and @vasilis sees responsive design as using client side techniques to optimize the experience.

So if you’re also one of those less educated people like me: The term ”Responsive Web Design“ has either evolved in its meaning, or we didn’t understand it from the beginning.

Another angle on skeuomorphs

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:42:00 +0200

There is a good post about skeuomorphs titled Skeuomorph, Pt III.

Next to touch and smell, there is another problem with skeuomorphs on digital screens. Changing the angle you look at it. Moving your head doesn’t change the 3D perspective, holding your tablet in a different angle does change the shadows and highlights. It just feels not as real.

Maybe one day we can add a bump map to create more dynamic shadows/highlights and a screen surface that sticks out. We might also get multiple light sensors so we can adjust according to our real light sources. How cool would it be to move your tablet closer to your lamp and see the shadows and highlights change.. woaaahhh…

I’m not entirely against using Skeuomorphs in our designs. I do it too. Without being able to use textures and fake 3D it would quickly get boring. But maybe something to keep in mind: Using Skeuomorphs on desktop screens are way less problematic than on tablets or phones because on desktops you don’t touch it with your finger and you mostly keep a straight angle.

Update: @apexsier points out that such a directional light sensor is called Light Field Sensor and already in use by the Lytro camera.

tlk.io is a simple web chat. The idea was to create an open chat...

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:58:00 +0200

tlk.io is a simple web chat. The idea was to create an open chat without having to signup or login. Chat channels are owner-free and you can invite new people by sharing the URL. The coding is done by the great @antstorm, I did the design.

It’s just a start, there’re lots of ideas how it could get improved. But for now.. Happy tlk.ing..!

Space CaCSS - Animated CSS3 background patterns. Let’s get...

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:28:04 +0200

Space CaCSS - Animated CSS3 background patterns. Let’s get trippy.

Tried to make a Brushed Metal style in CSS3. The texture is done...

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:55:00 +0200

Tried to make a Brushed Metal style in CSS3. The texture is done by using 3 repeating-gradients with different length. That makes it look somewhat random. For the linear version, browser support is pretty ok, but for the radial one it’s not quite there yet. I think only in Safari 5.1 and Chrome Windows.

In addition I tried to add a conical gradient for the circle with just faking it with ellipse gradients. It’s ok for low contrasts and if you cover the middle part with an icon or so.. hehe.. ;-P A much more real looking technique is used in this experiment, but I believe it currently only works in Safari and Chrome Windows. Let’s hope that CSS4 will add support for real conical gradients.

See live Demo.

Force Lion's scrollbar back

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 14:51:00 +0200

“Anyone figured how to force the scrollbar in Lion with css/html/javascript? i.e. without sys prefs“ @andyshaw85

As soon as we thought we settled the “above the fold” discussions, with Safari on Lion it’s back, more than ever..!!! ;-(

Personally, I prefer the hidden scrollbar, but in case you bump into a more “conservative” client and he really demands it, you can just overwrite the default and force the srollbar back like this:

::-webkit-scrollbar {
    -webkit-appearance: none;
    width: 7px;
}
::-webkit-scrollbar-thumb {
    border-radius: 4px;
    background-color: rgba(0,0,0,.5);
    -webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 1px rgba(255,255,255,.5);
}

See the demo.

PS. And as an added bonus, it gets rid of the ugly scroll-track in Chrome and makes it look more consistent.

PSS. If you only want it on Lion, here with a JS sniffing script added.

IMDb redesigned

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:12:00 +0200

Redesigned an IMDb page. It still feels a little like a half backed exercise, but wanted to post it before it gets forgotten somewhere on my hard drive. It’s less about the visual look and more about the process, content/IA, UX and business model.

See the redesign.

Update: Lukas Mathis has a great post about unsolicited redesigns. And yes, he’s right. It’s easy to just put a new skin on top if you don’t know how the bones work.

The Cursor Monster is a little CSS3/JS toy that you can play...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:15:42 +0200

The Cursor Monster is a little CSS3/JS toy that you can play around with. Using cursor:none can be fun, but also super confusing if you abuse it. So be careful. Update: Apparently Chrome will disable it in a future release, so enjoy while you can.

Feed the monster.

The Letter-Heads is a Firefox 4 demo that lets you experience...

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:22:00 +0100

The Letter-Heads is a Firefox 4 demo that lets you experience interactive shadow art. Meet different characters made with letters and text-shadow. Animated with CSS3+JS. It’s mainly inspired by shadow artist Kumi Yamashita.

My role: Concept, Art direction, Illustration, Design and Code.

Project: Firefox 4 Demo
Client: Mozilla

ZEN is a HTML5-CSS3 Audio Player. I’m really happy how the...

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:15:00 +0100

ZEN is a HTML5-CSS3 Audio Player. I’m really happy how the little details turned out. Like how it morphs from a circle to a square button and the swirl at the beginning.

But what I like most.. At the beginning, there is just a big simple button. You click it, and it shows its fancy pants. You click it again, back to the simple. It’s like the visuals match the sound. From a relaxing Zen garden into a crazy club and back.

See the demo.

Cycle Button is a little UX study where I’m trying to...

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 02:01:00 +0100

Cycle Button is a little UX study where I’m trying to figure out if those buttons that cycle trough a couple options are of any use in todays UIs.

See the result.

:toggle - A while ago I worked on a project where I needed just...

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 17:56:59 +0100

:toggle - A while ago I worked on a project where I needed just a simple toggle button to show and hide some content. The obvious way would be to use JavaScript for that functionality. But then I thought: Is it possible to create a toggle button with only HTML and CSS3?

See the result: Live Demo.

Happy 2011 everyone.

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0100

That’s all.

PS. Yes, no big new year’s resolution from me.

Thanks again to Drew Wilson for his Pictos Contest. His big boy...

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 15:17:00 +0100

Thanks again to Drew Wilson for his Pictos Contest. His big boy shall be taken care with lots of love. I just hope the little boy can soon accept the new family member. ;-)

Update: R.I.P Nov 12. 2011

Beautiful Pixels wrote an artist profile about me. Thanks a lot,...

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:17:00 +0100

Beautiful Pixels wrote an artist profile about me. Thanks a lot, turned out really nice. Although it feels a little strange, seeing your own picture up there.

ps. Thanks for letting the dog pee at my name. ;-)

My flirts with CSS3

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 23:07:00 +0200

At my day job I mostly work with Flash, AfterEffects, Photoshop. About a year ago I wanted to try something new and created Shitty Day using HTML, jQuery and CSS. And a couple months later, after I discovered that CSS3 can do animations, I did a photo-only tumblr theme called Organ. Nobody really cared until Cameron Moll (thanks) posted it on his blog and I got asked to create an official theme. It got featured in the theme garden and I was like.. wow.. it seems people really like this CSS3 stuff. So I kept on experimenting and created some more CSS3 demos.

I’m really happy that most people enjoy them. But there are also some concerns. If you look at all the demos, you’ll see that most of them only work correctly in -webkit and some just in Safari. And they also lack a graceful degradation. There are people like Paul or Divya that have been pushing me to make them more cross-browser. Thanks and sorry, for letting you down so often. I can understand that some say: If it’s not cross-browser it doesn’t “count”. And Web Designers have a responsibility and so on..

Well, this is just a hobby for me. I do it only for fun. Doing cross-browser support is the exact opposite of fun. Some might get a kick out of it, but for me, I would just be kicking the wall non-stop. That’s why I usually don’t even try and jump right to the next demo. Or call me lazy, that’s fine too.

But I guess the main reason why all my experiments work best in Safari is the tool I’m using: CSSEdit. If you don’t know about it, there’s one killer feature that changed everything. I would say, if it wasn’t for that feature, I probably would’ve never started doing CSS. It’s the Live Preview! Every change you make in your CSS get’s instantly updated. It’s like Firebug. Because I like to try out new stuff, I don’t know upfront how to do things.. I kinda just throw properties in there and start tweaking the numbers till I get to some interesting result. Without Live Preview, I would have to save the file, switch to the browser, refresh, switch back to the editor and start over. For the basic stuff you get things usually right without having to see a preview, but not if you’re trying to do Photoshop-like styles with CSS. Can you imagine having to save for web your Photoshop design just to see your changes? Insane right? So because CSSEdit uses Safari to render the Live Preview it automatically will work best in Safari, so there you have it.. blame them. ;-)

Unfortunately I’m still waiting desperately till CSSEdit get’s updated to support CSS3. I’m puzzled what they are waiting for, if browsers already start dropping prefixes. They could have such a nice head-start before the big guys like Adobe start to add it. Heck, there are tons of online CSS3 generator tools and there is even and app for the iPad. But nothing for desktop? WTF?

Wait a minute.. online tools. Online? Damn, that’s it! This will solve everything! A complete HTML/CSS editor in the browser with live editing. Something like jsfiddle, but with auto-complete and a GUI. Things like box-shadows, text-shadows, gradients just scream to be manipulated with sliders. But the best part by far.. you could do your cross-browser hacking right there in any browser you want to support. Maybe such an online editor is technically not possible with older browsers? Or extremely hard to do. Or just have limited features. I have no idea. But trying to add all possible web rendering engines into a desktop editor sounds way harder. The term designing in the browser would get a whole new meaning, because you’re literally designing in the browser.

Also all files are kept in the cloud. After doing changes, you could just save it, push it to your live server or commit it to something like GitHub or so. Also some kind of SVN or collaboration feature with co-workers could be build in.

Who is gonna do it? Is somebody already working on it? Is that why CSSEdit doesn’t get updated? Or maybe Adobe? Will they move to a subscription model with a “Dreamweaver Live”? I also would love if 37signals would give it a try. They have the cloud experience, they do web stuff, they have the customers already paying with a subscription model. And how awesome would that be with some integration with their current products. Let’s see.

Thanks for reading. Tweet your Comment.

PS. What’s next? There probably won’t be any new demos for a while. No, not because I gave up on CSS3.. because I’m already working on the “next big thing”. ;-)

Update: Here a couple tools that go into that direction. Thanks for sharing. Symbiote, LiveReload, CSS3 auto-complete for CSSEdit, Akshell

May I invite you to dribbble?

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 22:57:00 +0200

For the first time I had some dribbble invites to give away. YAY! Here are the lucky ones:

It was pretty crazy.. in just one day I got like 50 shots. I loved to look at all of them but hated to just pick 3.

Didn’t get picked? Don’t worry, your stuff is still awesome. I might just have a different taste. Also, a funny thing is that the above samples are not the ones they submitted, but when I went to check out their work I really liked the rest and thought they deserve an invite.

Below some more shots that I really liked but mostly they didn’t have many more examples or a portfolio. If you just started out, I have no doubt that sooner or later I’ll see your shots front-row on dribbble. All the best and thanks to everyone for your submissions.

Update: Santa Paul kindly donated 2 of his invites to:

umbrUI is a demo of HTML input elements made with CSS3. So far...

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:52:00 +0200

umbrUI is a demo of HTML input elements made with CSS3. So far they include a range slider, checkbox and radio button. I’m pretty happy with the outcome. They just use minimal markup, no JavaScript and thanks to the Pictos Font Icons, no images.

The sad part, so far only Safari can render it correctly. Chrome looks ok but without the 3D perspective. I haven’t tried the rest of the browsers. I guess for now, using images is still far easier and gives you less headaches. I also tried to add animations, but unfortunately they don’t work on :before/:after pseudo classes and on the range slider, they don’t even exist. Also trying to animate gradients, box-shadows, text-shadows, borders is still really buggy.

See the demo (Safari or Chrome).

Guess the Stars ★★☆ is a little game demo using some 3D...

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 00:13:00 +0200

Guess the Stars ★★☆ is a little ~~game~~ demo using some 3D perspective, animation and reflections. They are just flat images from IMDb that get rendered with CSS3 into DVD cases. Unfortunately it only works in Safari. And sometimes even a little buggy.

Anyways, another interesting thing.. the :target pseudo class. Notice that when you click on a movie it stays in that state. You can also use the back button and deep linking works out of the box. Copy/Paste the URL into a new window and it will open at the same state all without any JavaScript.

See the live demo or if you don’t have Safari, here a screenshot.

BonBon Buttons - My goal was to create good looking CSS3 buttons...

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:58:36 +0200

BonBon Buttons - My goal was to create good looking CSS3 buttons with minimal markup. They use only one PNG for the background noise, everything else is rendered by the browser.. well, so far only Safari, Chrome and Firefox. I’m quite happy how they turned out, but of course, the lack in cross-browser support makes them just another demo.. for now. ;-)

If you are interested in more details, I wrote some sort of tutorial and of course you can click them. See them live.