"Lazarus you are a life saver !".

"Lazarus you are a life saver !".

{ flickr.com/photos/dalltoramos/3216526968/}

Imagine this: you are filling a very long form in a website; may be shopping cart, search page, or any portal where long entry of fields is needed. When you submit, it yells : session out. please login again ! That's a bland situation when you had to type all over again. Some time it might be short, but you may not remember what you typed also.

This is purely the context-sensitive mistake of page design. Now a days, there are so many ways to retain non-important values using client side scripting. Some sites remembers what you typed and some do not. For ex: Gmail auto-saves what you typed as a draft. That's a neat thing.

What if, you loose lengthy form filling due to computer or connection error ? Here comes the life saver if you're using Firefox. 'Lazarus: Form Recovery extension'.

Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, "recover form", and breathe a sigh of relief. I am very glad that I got to know about this add-on. Many times I lost forms for different reasons (server suddenly disconnected, a key that I accidentally typed and got me out of the page, etc.). Now I feel confident that if this happens again I will be able to recover a whole form or just a field that was not saved, and save time | excerpt

Do give an attention to security related settings after install. After installing it appears in bottom right hand corner of Firefox. You can set password to retried details as well. Very handy feature.

>> Find Lazarus here

Boneware

Boneware

This is a beautiful piece of glass-filled nylon jewellery, which was a senior design project, from Molly Epstein of Temple University. For her senior project in 2002, Molly Epstein made a glass-filled nylon necklace that looks like a set of vertebrae. Epstein specializes in synthesizing jewelry and medical conceptions.

Click on the image to view in large size. If this kind of design and material evolves, I think it's time to think beyond platinum and diamond mafia :)

>> View more models of Molly Epstei

Vinay Ganapathy | illustrator

Vinay Ganapathy | illustrator

I admire his caricatures, sketches. They are simple, yet awe tickling & expressive in such a minimal details. I get to see his latest sketches in Facebook more often. I'm quite passionate about the fact that he is from Coorg !

"Born in southern India, raised in suburban Connecticut and formally trained in Syracuse, Brooklyn artist Vin Ganapathy, short for Vinay Somana Ganapathy, draws on multiple influences that inform his imagery and work.

I use to frequent Stuttgart sQuare in San Francisco, when I was working in California. It was eye treat to watch so many artists displyaing artwork in such a vast picturesque canvass of that square. Many artists do live sketches & quick caricatures of people moving around the sQuare. I remember how they keep absorbing in glance to sketch down all that they see in a short view. It's quite an intricate and difficult to achieve art, as subject never stays static :)

And Vinay has done so thought provoking sketches of that kind. This is where he hosts his work frequently: Motivation is necessary

I found some nice sites to visit art gallery's & artists in general:

1. Dexigner.com
2. Masala chai online
3. Start-drawing
   

Designing for Flex by Rob Adams

Designing for Flex by Rob Adams

{flickr.com/photos/photomishdan/2482468643/}

"Motion has been a key element of Adobe Flash since its very beginning. The ability to animate objects on the web is integral to the technology and was originally one of its main selling points. Flash originally used its animation capabilities to tell stories, whether to teach, to sell, or to entertain. But with Flex, the Flash platform has moved into application design, bringing all the communicative power of its motion technology with it.

Unfortunately, due to some high-profile mistakes, motion has received something of a bad reputation in application design and development circles. I say "unfortunately" because, when used properly, motion can be a powerful tool for making applications more useful, usable, and desirable. Using motion, you can eliminate the jerky jumps from screen to screen that disturb and deeply disorient users. However, improper use of motion will distract and annoy users, impeding them from reaching their goals.

The Designing for Flex series surveys new possibilities, techniques, and challenges designers and developers will confront when designing Flex rich Internet applications."

My fascination for design was yielded with Flash. And what a metamorphosis ! when flash-MX became Flash-2004, I was shot sure, Macromedia is upto something as the software was opening up for major AS programming. That's when Flex came into arena. Flex was a kind of doubtful kid when it was born, and now everyone wants it. Fortunately, I am with flex now :), flexing rich internet apps as client wishes.

>> An excellent series on designing for Flex by Rob Adams

Bend it like fire !

Bend it like fire !

I've always wondered the designs of fire flares and fire balls made by fire blowers. The way fireballs get clouded, moulded, moved, waved are awesome. They become so intricate designs yet they are not designed to be like that deliberately :) They are so natural, dangerously lovable !

Watch this amazing, lovely & breath taking 'slow motion' fire dancing with cool music in background at
>> Napalmdragon.com

Subway maps design

Subway maps design

"Organizing functionality and content into a structure that people are able to navigate intuitively doesn't happen by chance. Information architecture (IA) is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems"-That's about 'Information Architecture design' an important usability process for designing computer based applications.

What if 'Information Architecture' is used for design of Subway or Tube map.

If you've seen such interesting transport maps in Singapore, Bangkok, California rail and London. I'm sure it's not easiest task, it's quite an innovative mind at work as massive physical navigation to be designed.If you've seen Subway maps, they are not just another city map. They've lot of inter-connections, information, visual cues which are part of intelligent design.

When I first got into London underground Tube in 2007, I just loved the simplicity and effective design of 'Tube Maps' of London. Color, mapping, context points are well designed by Harry Beck at 1933.It has become the iconic signature of London too.

I've observed many media houses using tube map design to convey the common meaning of the product advertisement. London has a massive commuters who uses underground tubes for daily travel. They not only speaks English & all possible languages and many don't even know to read English. Designing a navigational route to such 'diverse audience' must be a challenge.

I found an interesting read on the conceptualization, ideation, design and evolution of such maps design at the World's Most Impressive Subway Maps

Monalisa, just using Microsoft-Paint

Monalisa, just using Microsoft-Paint

Microsoft-Paint - A software piece known for its basic drawing tools. Drawing is all about shadows. I found this interesting video, in which artist creates Monalisa, just using Microsoft-Paint. He proves, it's not about tool, it's about what you can create out of it. It's awesome how shadow & light come alive to create magic colors of Monalisa using MS-paint.

The same painting is done using Photoshop here which is much more versatile, powerful and flexible tool. If you could realize how nicely this artist is using Photoshop tool to his advantage, you will know the importance of the Monalisa painting done by MS-Paint:
Monalisa realized on Photohosp

Display custom fonts, using only html code

Display custom fonts, using only html code

If I you want to use a font style which is not loaded in a user's system, normally you may convert the same text into graphics in .gif and .jpeg format and upload it as a image called into web page. Which adds to the size of the page and rendering time also increases. Till now, though there are many hacks to load custom fonts, they were mostly few browser specific. Here's an interesting solution, just by using javascript and HTML coding custom font written text can be rendered in a browser.

Instead of creating images or using flash just to show your site's graphic text in the font you want, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as if your visitors had the font installed locally. This is a work in progress, but functional enough at least to render the the graphic text on this site. Here's what it takes to get going: load the typeface.js library and some typeface.js fonts, then proceed like normal here:

>> Using Custom fonts at Typeface.js

10 Usability Principles to guide you

10 Usability Principles to guide you

1. Motivate
Design your site to meet specific user needs and goals. Use motivators to draw different user "personae" into specific parts of your site.
2. User task flow
Who are your users? What are their tasks and online environment? For a site to be usable, page flow must match workflow.
3. Architecture – it's 80% of usability
Build an efficient navigational structure. Remember – if they can't find it in 3 clicks, they're gone.
4. Affordance means obvious
Make controls understandable. Avoid confusion between emblems, banners, and buttons.
5. Replicate
Why reinvent the wheel? Use ergonomically designed templates for the most common 8-12 pages.
6. Usability test along the way
Test early in design using low-fidelity prototypes. Don't wait until the end when it's too late.Know the technology limitations Identify and optimize for target browsers and user hardware. Test HTML, JavaScript, etc. for compatibility.
7. Know the technology limitations
Identify and optimize for target browsers and user hardware.Test HTML, JavaScript, etc for compatibility.
8. Know user tolerances
Users are impatient. Design for a 2-10 second maximum download. Reuse header graphics so they can load from cache. Avoid excessive scrolling.
9. Multimedia – be discriminating
Good animation attracts attention to specific information, then stops. Too much movement distracts, slowing reading and comprehension.
10. Use a stats package
Monitor traffic through your site. Which pages pique user interest? Which pages make users leave? Adjust your site accordingly.

via | humanfactors

Shoot until u feel great..

Shoot until u feel great..

I recently got the following from a client...

Thus far, I would say that most of the images I've captured are boring and uninteresting. I want to learn to capture images that will stop people in their tracks. Images that will make people say "wow".

This got me thinking... How does one make really stunning photographs? What does it take? How can we aim for, and work toward achieving this lofty goal? So, here are five ideas to move you forward toward greatness:

• Define Greatness
• Define yourself and your work. Identify where you are now as and where you will be.
• Make photographs to please yourself
• Engage people you already dialogue through your work
• Learn from Experts

>> And over to Zivkov for more

Flickr link of the day
>> My friend Vyas has shot amazing pictures with his new Nikon D80

Photoshop CS3

Photoshop CS3

I installed Photoshop CS3 today. My favorite new feature is the startup time. CS2 takes 29 seconds to launch on my Intel Mac, and CS3 only takes 3 seconds. My second favorite feature is the docking palettes. They took me a few minutes to get use to, but I love the screen space they save on my laptop. The new docks also work great with the new screen mode called "Maximised Screen Mode".

I haven't used CS3 on an actual project yet, so I'm sure I'll add to my list of favorite new features. I was excited to see the Smart Filters, and while they are pretty cool, they're not all I was hoping for. It looks like once you have a applied Smart Fiter to a layer, the original data cannot be altered without permenently rendering the filter. I was hoping that they would function at little more like adjustment layers.

Of course, CS3 is still beta, so there's the usual minor bugs. One I've seen so far is the cursor for the brush tool is rendered incorrectly. I believe this only affects the Mac version. I've heard several people say one of the best new features is the Quick Selection Tool. I'll have to keep an open mind about this one. I played with it a little and it doesn't seem to be precise enough for detailed masked. Overall I love it, and would recommend it to anyone using an Intel Mac.

Via | squidfingers.com

Why uglier the better?

Why uglier the better?

It’s a tiny chip from my busy UI work station.

Telecom rocks everywhere, especially when it's wireless. True, it's a hot segment. Life is barren minus communication. Pardon granted to network jamming in Bangalore. With a new brand guidelines, international presence over wireless -knowledge transfer, ultra catchy UI specifications I started my new tenure. Days are yummy with aah! like coffees, toffees, ultra thin LCD's, tightly scheduled meetings, compact neo designed cubicles, hot & sour fms, flexi hours, music flowing into earphones...

I'm delegated to understand, overhaul, redesign, refurbish, uplift the GUI of one of the successful application.I built a fair idea about the app from usability perspective. I pinged my architect to fathom the ratio of demographic application usage & web usage stats. His reply was simply astonishing. It's one of the most widely used application & is buzzing global wireless circuits in a macro sense. I was much keen on product user count, though it has less impact on my cubicle informtion architecturing & laboring !

Reason was simple. It looks like a legacy design with a marginal effort on styling & presentation. It resembles 3.1 window interface in a neo era of dynamic applications. It seems technology arrived prior to design in choked interface, aborted usability, hard coded xhtml & forbidden CSS ! Obviously, It was designed way back in '97, where UI designing has less prominence over functionality. Till date only functional updates are upfront. As a result usability & accessibility lacks to the core. But in P/L margins it's a best- of-the-breed in the par-applications segment. It's packed with tight application framework and vested with powerful technology available around.

Interestingly, it's built by one of the finest software firms of India, which is accountable for Silk Board traffic choking every morning in Bangalore !

In placid words, it's nothing new. It's a common phenomenon that applications very frequently undergo re-skining. Instantly, the query birthed like a tiny bug inside me and started nagging in 24/7 ishtyle*.

Why ? even the saddest looking applications do better business contrary to impressive ones. Why uglier the better? Why users hardly raise a flag against interface-less apps. What matters a most? The so-called 'Goodwill' factor Or the intelligent brand strategy? Comprimising nature for a good service or a strategic marketing of the company? Lack of know-how on clean UI or not bothering about it at-all? Why Slashdot rocks? Is it because of content or speed ? What matters most ?

Today, all these doubts're resolved with this nicety blog of Aaron. It's a must read simple post if you're using Gmail & Microsoft etc & STILL have queries about the sloppy interfaces.

* style, manner, in a way.

It's about color honey !

It's about color honey !

Colors are universal & everybody can visualise colors. I heard cat can't dream in colors. poor animal.I wonder how it gauges between red,yellow,white roses on valentines !

Quite often I try to know the color values of any image or graphic on my desktop. Just to get the right RGB, HEX, HSB, CMYK values I take the screenshot paste it into Photoshop and do some color sniffing to get the right color value. I know, it's a tedious task when Photoshop starts like a old lambretta early in the morning!. There may be apps which helps to grab the right color code. I'm sure, they involve atleast 3 or more combination of tasks to assess the right color value. I found this nifty, little app which lets you grab the color values & screen co-ordinates on your screen in a snap of finger.

colorpix automatically translates any screen color into RGB, HEX, HSB and CMYK color values, and comes with a zoom-able magnifier built in! Best of all, there's nothing to install - just download the tiny app and off you go. So grab it now, it's FREE!

It can color sniff, color identity.

http://www.colorschemer.com/colorpix_info.php

The Death of 2Advanced

The Death of 2Advanced

Not so long ago. Flash or any interactive tools were part and parcel of any design PC in the organisation. Initially there were more and more web presence spelled the oath of flash as their ' Brand identity'. Though it's inevitable, ester months ( years !?) have seen these interactive tools constrained either for product demo or corporate presentations.

The situation seems changed quite radically. Though I'm working for Finance to Banking applications, there were only few instances where these interactive tools are bought into action. ( Exception: with regard to Flex, since it's a RIA spearhead.). This interesting scenario was nagging in my mind for quite some time. Is this situation common everywhere ? Or it's prevailing only in the arena where I'm professionally working ?

Nope.Now it's everywhere I believe.

Here's a blogger dares to take a shot on the design phase from Flash to Cascading, keeping a canon on the shoulder of 2Advanced.

Sure you have the sector where a hardcore flash site makes sense as in the movie and game websites, but as for me, as a standard, the flash wave that was seemingly going to be the 'future of the internet' is now taking a shot in the side due to the explosion of CSS, usability, and web standards.

Check this interesting ( somewhere biased, and usability bug bitten ! ;) ) article:

Death-of-2advanced.html