sugarenia.com

Pattern repositories are a nice and useful - for once - trend. What are they? In their basic form, they are just galleries with screenshots coming from different sites, showcasing the different approaches in, let’s say, search boxes or contact forms.

I’ve followed almost all pattern repositories that emerged during the last few months - most of those though had trouble updating with the latest site releases and became stale after a while.

Since then, I’ve relied mostly to Flickr for finding inspiration for specific web design modules, until I thought oh what the eff, I’ll post my tids’n'bits from here and there too. Be sure to check them out, I’ll try and update it as much as I can.

Partners to the crime: Paparazzi! for the full screen site screenshots, Skitch for the insta-uploading to Flickr.

P.S. For something more substantial than my mediocre attempts, try out Pattern Tap, the latest and greatest in patterns sharing.

pattern tap, pattern, repositories, ux

You missed WGSS didn’t you? You didn’t? Nice.

‘Cause it’s here again. I couldn’t let this roam free in the ‘nets.

For those not understanding greek or those that refuse to reopen the above page in a tab, it’s an online advertising firm or something, offering marketing solutions even to bloggers. Would you let those people near your blog? I wouldn’t even let them touch my laptop bag.

So without further ado, let’s count the ways this little gem here sucks:

• All the text in this site - and I mean all - is an image. With a hover effect. That makes the text more pale on hovering.

  

• If you look a bit at the code, you see that everything is probably generated by Macromedia Dreamweaver. Which is bad, bad, bad. DW is a great editor and can be a pretty nice WYSIWYG application, but Christ, no.

  

• You cannot really say what’s linkable and what’s not on navigation. Everything is white - no underline or difference in colour or size.
• There’s a strange effect: if you click on the text of a page, it automatically redirects you to the next one. Pure class.
• <td colspan="16" rowspan="14">. ‘Nuff said.

Well, as you see, somewhere along the way these guys messed it up. This is usually the moment when I advise people to just switch off the PC and head for a walk, or paint, or learn chinese.

I do that to myself too, all the time.

wgss, greek, sites, suck, ad-network

I really, really like Last.fm new design. It’s so clean and organized for once - using the old interface, I could not really tell what was where and always found myself clicking here and there to get the pages I wanted.

But the current one, ah! So usable, so pretty, so clean, so new.

It has its rough edges (all redesigns have at first) but it’s a nice change for one of my favourite social sites.

And the people who worked on it do not - in any way - deserve the shit they get thrown at since they launched the new design.

Really, people. You, Last.fm users out there. Especially the freebies. What’s wrong with you? What do you think is SO fundamentally wrong with the new design?

Jeez.

See my point now?

last.fm, redesign

I think I am.

I’ll prove it to you. Bring me forth any weirdly operating door, a shiny elevator or even a mere fancy faucet. I won’t be able to use the object at first. I’ll have to stop, study it for a while and then - maybe - I’ll make it work.

I remember not being able to wash my hands, to operate revolving doors, to flush the toilet (sorry for the eww moment), all more than once.

I always was like that - I suck at recognizing new usage patterns in objects. Sometimes, this proves useful, since I can relate to naive users more easily. But at all times, this quirk has made me an object of mockery and laughs.

Am I to blame that I cannot use faucets? I don’t know. Should I stop and examine a faucet before using it? I don’t think.

Lay off with the innovative designs people. Innovation is good, but we surely don’t need a hundred new ways of operating a revolving door. Or a faucet. I really hate faucets.

For this one time, my dear designers, don’t break the rules.

All yours,
t3h st00pid g1rl

P.S. At least it seems I’m not alone. Read this book.

design, usability, design of everyday things, donald norman

Gather round, folks. I have something to confide.

Most of us work as web designers, web developers or copywriters for the web. Something around ‘web’, in general. 

We strive to keep our designs and projects compatible with the latest web standards, we use modern browsers and trendy applications, we design Web 2.0 and 3.0 and n.0, trying to keep up with the latest trends in web design and web technology and web copy. We design for clients of every aspect, clients that are close to the Web or not, clients that know what they want or pretend to know what they want or are clueless whatsoever.

We love the Web and try to keep up with its ever-changing waves every freakin’ day.

I have a question for all of you, webbies: Who do we work for? Or else, who do we kid?

Who appreciates our sweaty forehead, after keeping our HTML error-free and accessible? Who do you think cares about pixel perfect designs and crisp mockups apart from us? Who cares about web standards and basic principles of design anyway, apart from web designers? 

More than once in my short career in Web I’ve answered myself: Noone.

Think, webbies, are we designing just for us? Just for a clique of people that will pat our back and say “hey, great job”? What do our clients see? What do our users see? What do they appreciate? Do you think they like new features? Do you think they ever use them?

Sigh.

P.S. Get-in-the-same-lousy-mood-as-me game: Check your perfectly crafted HTML mockup on client’s IE5, repeatedly alternating windows with Firefox. Bang head on desk as needed.