As a web designer, one of my jobs is to understand people’s design preferences before I put pencil to paper and mouse to screen. Looking at other websites as examples of design is important but provide misleading reactions when it comes to make decisions. Using Example Sites to Guide Design Projects Looking at examples of … Continue reading ““Engaging” “Interactive” Websites & The Pepsi Challenge”
I’m a big fan of the podcast 99% Invisible, and have even blogged about how an earlier episode of theirs related to web design. I’ve got another one to share now! Episode #308, “Curb Cuts”, looked at the “curb cut effect”, in which an accessibility accommodation proves useful to just about anyone. Curb cuts are … Continue reading “The Curb Cut Effect & Your Website”
A much belated update on upcoming events, personal life, and work life.
A link and some thoughts about why I love working with nonprofits and what makes nonprofit clients different from business clients.
Yesterday I attended the Washington State Nonprofit Conference for the first time. As I often do, I wanted to quickly report back on what I did and some quick takeaways. Beth Kanter on Nonprofit Self-Care & Burnout Beth Kanter was the morning plenary speaker to kick off the conference. She talked about burnout among nonprofit staff … Continue reading “WA State Nonprofit Conference: Quick Wrap Up”
Read the letter I sent to the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce asking that they cancel my membership in light of their recent advocacy against a tax on high-earning businesses for funding affordable housing in Seattle.
This is post 2 of 2 in the series “Learning JavaScript” After sharing some thoughts a while back as I got started with Codeacademy’s Learn JavaScript course, I wrapped things up yesterday. Then I cancelled my subscription. Let’s start with the good stuff first though. The Good Parts of My Codeacademy Experience I was motivated … Continue reading “Final Thoughts on Codeacademy’s Learn JavaScript Course”
The Nielsen Norman Group article on handling design feedback is jam-packed with great information.
The idea of conference tracks is enticing and well-intentioned, but it doesn’t work very well for many WordCamp attendees and is counter productive in many ways. Here’s why WordCamp Seattle 2017 didn’t have tracks and what we did instead.
This is post 1 of 2 in the series “Learning JavaScript” One of the hardest things as a freelancer is keeping your skills up. This year, I’m trying to invest time getting better at the JavaScript programming language. While I’ve tinkered with JavaScript for years, I’ve never been comfortable with it and have usually turned … Continue reading “Thoughts on Starting Codeacademy’s Learn JavaScript Course”
Using a blind review process for WordCamp 2017 resulted in a focused initial review of speakers and a diverse final speaker lineup that reflected the demographics of the heavily recruited applicant pool.
Two versions of WordPress in a row have had my code in it! How cool is that! Best yet, the latest bug fix came straight out of a client project, proving once again that nonprofits and open source mix wonderfully.
This is post 1 of 3 in the series “WordCamp Organizing” The WordCamp Speaker team worked really hard to generate a large pool of applicants and applications for WordCamp Seattle 2017, so processing them was going to be a headache! Our website’s infrastructure had some really fabulous tools to accept applications and automatically set up … Continue reading “Generating a WordCamp Application Review Form in Google Forms”
How I fixed a nasty technical error message about line 63 of /wp-includes/load.php for my client’s SiteGround-hosted website.
I had a great time “speed geeking” with 30 folks. In 5 minutes, I introduce them to web accessibility, showed examples of assistive technology and accessibility problems, and gave them a quick intro to the tota11y accessibility testing tool!
Even when making a change to a website is fast, the startup and wrapup work adds a significant amount of time. Here’s why.
