Google Web Designer can't open HTML unless... wtf? LoOoOoOoOoL

Soooooo I downloaded and installed Google's shiny new toy, Google Web Designer.

I load up the application, and try to open an HTML file I've been working on.

Imagine my wtfbbq reaction when it shows me this.


Yes, an application with 'Web Designer' in it can't open an HTML file. WTF?

But wait! It lets me create HTML files, so why can't it open them? Hmm! It seems that it can open its own files... why?


Well it turns out, if I want to open a HTML file in Google WTF Designer, I have to first open my HTML file in a text editor, or any OTHER HTML editor of my choice, and insert <meta name="generator" content="Google Web Designer 1.0.0.924"> into the meta tags. Then it works.

What on earth were they thinking? Anyone who works with HTML should easily find this. Are they trying to lock the people who don't want to look at their HTML at all into the Web Designer? When any bloody text editor can open... Oh my brain.

The End Result


What We've Learned About Responsive Design - Newfangled

Responsive design is more work. And more expensive. Maybe you don't need it as much as you think you do.

I've run into the idea that since responsive design is a more efficient mobile solution than creating unique mobile sites or alternate page templates, it is therefore going to be cheaper and simpler than what everyone is expecting. Not true. The fact of the matter is that doing responsive design requires work that just wouldn't be done at all if mobile wasn't a consideration. Now, I'm not advocating that we ignore mobile. But in some cases, I'd argue that mobile is probably higher on the priority list than a serious cost/benefit analysis would merit.

Our audience is primarily comprised of people working in the advertising, marketing and design industry. They're people who influence or make decisions about design and development projects. With our audience in mind, if you were to ask me if mobile should be a higher priority I'd say absolutely. I'd think of all of our hip and stylish visitors and how many of them probably already have an iPhone 5. But you know what? In the last month, just under 10% of our website's visitors accessed it with a mobile device. That includes phones and tablets. If I extend my look to the last six months, the mobile population is exactly the same. The last year? It drops to 8%. So, mobile traffic is growing, but not as rapidly as I would have assumed based upon what I think I know about our audience. With those numbers, should mobile be prioritized as much as it has been (we're about to launch a site redesign that makes heavy use of responsive design techniques — more on that later)? With over 90% of our visitors still coming in through a "desktop" computer? Probably not. But for us, there's an additional consideration of needing to demonstrate our capabilities in this area, which pushes the benefits over the cost. For many other businesses, though, that additional benefit doesn't exist.

Very few of our clients have a "money is no object" attitude when it comes to budgeting for a web project. In fact, for many of them, our costs are a bit of a stretch. But they believe in the value of what we offer and trust us to lead them to the best outcomes. It would be wrong for me to push responsive design on all of them, indiscriminate of what they know about their audience, their actual visitor data, and their actual budget. If their money could be better spent in some other way, then it should be.

Superbly practical and down-to-earth article about responsive design.

Too many creative leads (and writers) jump onto the idea of responsive design like it's the next wonderfully shiny new toy that will display their leetness, without regard for whether or not it's actually suited to what they're producing. It's refreshing to see something so logical and well-thought out about the subject.

Zooniverse: Bat Detective

Zooniverse has quite a few neat projects using crowdsourcing of interested human brains to help scientists classify data.

They started off with Galaxy Zoo, which basically gets people to help classify what stars, solar systems, etc, and expanded out to quite a few more.

With Bat Detective, you listen to batty squeaks of doom, then help classify them.

All Zooniverse's stuff is really well done, and fun to use, while Contributing To Science at the same time. Give the squee-bats (or the other stuff) a poke, and you'll see!

How not to use Helvetica Neue "Lighter"

Oh my eyes. Best (or is that worst) part is, the use of Helvetica Neue "Lighter" (not even the actual Helvetica Neue Light) was obviously intentional. Whoever designed this thought it was a good idea to make it look like this.

And they couldn't even get the implementation of their terrible idea right by using @font-face. Helvetica Neue doesn't come with the OS you know... If you really want it to look like that, so much so that you make it integral to your design and sit it on top of your font stack, then license the font.

Considering the client, one would think there's enough money for that.

P.S. If you don't have Helvetica Neue Light installed on your computer, thank your lucky stars, you'll actually be able to read the page.

Ze Web Design, UX & IA Portfolio of a Nugget

Having set my illustration house in order, I figured it was time to do my web design/UX/IA one as well. While I used to hand-code and maintain my own site, I've found that I'm way too lazy to do all the updating that goes with it. Hopefully with my new Posterous based webby portfolio, I'll actually update it more than oh... once every new job. ;)

Here's a webnugget for you!

P.S. Can you spot the punny domain name!

How a bad favicon.ico can cause a lot of trouble « Wim Godden’s professional blog

It’s actually remarkable to see that sites like Google, Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, AOL, Adobe and Myspace (to name just a few) send out a 1150 byte icon.
Given that Google has tried everything to skim down its main page (including removing </body> and </html> tags, it’s odd they didn’t save the 239 bytes by creating a PNG file and providing that PNG to all non-IE clients (multiply it by 100 million or so hits/day and you get a nice 23TBytes…).

Whoa, I never even considered this. O.o