Ramblings and prose on design, publishing, and things of interest.
I have come to the conclusion that I have no discipline when it comes to WordPress themes. I’m finicky and unsure about asthetics most of the time. This theme, recently discovered at ElegantThemes, is great but I’m having difficulties with the logo.
I hope to have it running to specs soon, but then again, that’s what I said three days ago with the magazine theme.
. . . sort of. I’ve experimented with many magazine-themed designs and templates, never quite settling on either a design or what the subject-matter of the magazine should be.
I like The Morning After theme by Arun Kale and hope it inspires me to finally make the site worth visiting, or at the least coming up in a search. Bear with me as I take it through the paces, configuring widgets, sidebars, pages, and custom fields.
It’s been a while, but I’m determined to renew this site for practical purposes. I’ve installed this new theme and will gradually experiment with the CSS, widgets, images, etc. Stay tuned!
A new search engine arrived on the Web scene today called “Cuil.” Cuil is an old Irish term for knowledge, and the site is sure to attract enough Web 2.0 users charmed by its smooth, succinct layout and magazine-like search results.
At the time of this post, the site was experiencing heavy traffic so some of the links were not working properly, but I suspect that’ll improve as use become less of a novelty and more use-directed.
Of the many features Cuil offers for exploring the variety and complexity of the Web, two in particular will sure to prove useful: tabs and drilldown. After performing a search, you may get a drilldown widget that will allow you to drill deeper into subjects related to your search term. Tabs offer you additional choices and suggestions on how to refine your search.
I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about Cuil in the weeks ahead, but the 800 pound gorilla in the room goes by the name of Google. And if size, weight, and ridiculously huge market cap has any influence, the ex-Google employees who founded Cuil will need more than cumulative knowledge to make it a success.
For the last few months I’ve been trying to gain a better understanding of the many frameworks and libraries proliferating the development community. When I first discovered Yahoo! User Interface (YUI), I knew it was something powerfully useful, easily accessible, and would change the work flow of more than a few developers and designers.
As I dug deeper, my giddiness subsided and I was soon immersed knee-deep into Ajax, JQuery, Mootools, Scriptaculous, and Prototype. I’ve been long overdue posting my findings, and for good reason: It was important to learn more about “why” you would want to use one framework versus the other. However, I also circled back around and found yet another framework right at home in one of my most trusted tools, Dreamweaver, called Spry and developed for designers by the good folks at Adobe.
In an effort to keep things brief, I’ll discuss the above frameworks in a series of future articles. First we’ll explain Ajax in a nutshell.
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a technology that allows a web page to perform actions or update data dynamically, without reloading the page or fetching data from the server. By using Ajax, a web site can be more responsive and interactive. For example, Google Maps wouldn’t function as it does without Ajax. Imagine if when you tried to scroll the map to the left you had to wait for the page to reload? With Ajax, Google Maps provides a user-friendly tool that allows you to manipulate the application by dragging or clicking a page object to view or pull additional data. Ajax allows for a much shorter delay and a less disruptive process than if you had to wait for the entire page to reload for each and every interaction you initiate.
JavaScript is not new to the web by any means. In the early days of the web it was, admittedly, used for just as much evil as good. I have horrible memories of multiple-occurring pop-ups, flaming pillars, and animated insects scurrying across web pages. What’s new today, however, is how it has been adopted into a developer’s tool kit to make a semantically marked-up and beautifully designed CSS web page truly interactive. This is called the behavior layer. Of course, the downside to JavaScript occurs by the simple act of turning it “off” within the web browser. But, here again the maturity of JavaScript can come to your rescue by degrading your code gracefully to accommodate a browser that has opted out of your meticulously designed user experience. No harm, no foul. If JavaScript is turned off, the user will still benefit from whatever page content is present absent the really kewl functions and actions that JavaScript can create.
To learn more about Ajax, check out Wikipedia or this very good article by J.J. Garrett at Adaptive Path.