Thursday, April 26, 2012 –
Friday is Will Bond's last day at iMarc.
Will started at iMarc as an intern over 7 years ago. After graduating from college he became a full-time Developer, then a Senior Developer, then our Technical Architect, and eventually iMarc's Director of Engineering. Through it all, Will has always been the guy who takes the time to understand what the real problem is, then figures out an elegant and innovative, yet pragmatic, solution.
We're going to miss…
Wednesday, March 7, 2012 –
The Fold – we have many conversations about what content appearing "above the fold". Important and engaging content typically belongs towards the top of most pages. However...
Designing around the mythical fold can be counterproductive.
The term "above the fold" comes from newspapers, where the most compelling story appears on the top-half of the front page. The folded newspaper, displayed on a newsstand, hopefully piques the…
Monday, August 30, 2010 –
Writing content for the web can be difficult and overwhelming. However, by keeping two simple guidelines in mind, writing good web content is possible.
Guideline #1: Direct Your Reader
All good writing directs the reader – whether it's a trifold brochure directing someone to call a phone number or a novel directing the reader's imagination. However, on the web, this direction is more concrete. The user can actually click a link.
Put yourself in…
Wednesday, March 10, 2010 –
Patrick: ...mmm, lunch from Abe's
Dave: You know, Abe's was named after Abe Vigoda.
Patrick: Really?
Dave: No.
Patrick: That's the second time I've fallen for that.
Dave: Really?
Patrick: No.
Bill: This sounds like Lunchroom Banter®
Tuesday, February 2, 2010 –
Flipping through the book Lost Crafts, I came upon this gem. Advice when building a dry stone wall…
A skilled waller will never pick a stone up twice; in other words, they won't waste time picking up lots of different stones, then discarding them, but will choose a stone and use it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 –
I recently heard the following gem from Jared Spool. In his Userability #10 Podcast, Jared talks about persona documents, relating the documents to vacation souvenirs:
"The document itself is like a vacation souvenir. It really doesn't hold much meaning except to those people who had the experience."
How true.
In an older blog, Jared equated persona docs to souvenir picture albums.
Consider a friend who sends you a link to…
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 –
When iMarc posts a job opening, we include instructions for How To Apply. This section typically includes the following:
Send us a link to your online (HTML) resume or email us a PDF or plain text resume.
Inquiries without links to web-based work will probably be ignored.
Resumes sent as Word documents will also likely be ignored.
Inevitably, the line about ignoring Word documents causes issues. In fact,…
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 –
The following is a simple introduction to various ways of joining database tables.
The example code should work identically in MySQL and PostgreSQL unless otherwise noted.
Set Up
First let's lay foundation for the data we'll be joining. We'll use a simple company <> people pattern.
We have a table of three companies.
SELECT * FROM companies;
company_id | company
------------+---------…
Wednesday, July 1, 2009 –
In the documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry, architect, Frank Gehry has it figured out.
"I accept the projects based on wether I like them... the people, not the work."
— Frank Gehry
Art critic, Mildred Friedman expands on this thought.
"Frank has figured out that the most important influence on the design is the client. If there's a terrific client to work with, you get a terrific building; and if there isn't, you don't."
—…
Friday, June 26, 2009 –
One of my favorite presentations from last week's An Event Apart was by Daniel Mall. He talked about the allies of web developers. We, as web developers, have long embraced HTML and CSS. More recently, JavaScript crossed the line from an annoyance littering our markup to an unobtrusive hero. We started embracing JavaScript when it became easy to separate script behavior from markup. Jeremy Keith wrote about behavioral separation in…
By: Dave Tufts
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