Chris Hanrath » Webdesign

Revealing Analytics

Chris — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:40:03 +0000

I was just checking the Google Analytics reports for my portfolio and found interesting referring keywords that send people to my page. Take a look at this one search term that was typed in by someone who visited my portfolio page:

“(intitle:~cv or inurl:~cv) and (“ui developer” or “developer ui” or “user interface developer” or “developer graphic user interface” or “gui developer” or “developed gui”) and (pa or pennsylvania or “new jersey” or ny or delaware or de) -jobs -careers -sample”

Red is here!

Chris — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:32:05 +0000

I’m excited to announce that my friends and former mentors Trek and Jesse from Backtik have released the first version of Red. In their screencast they show us how to build an AJAX photobucket similar to the one from Facebook just using Ruby without writing any Javascript at all.

Update: Now featured on Ajaxian.com.

New LinkedIn App Feature

Chris — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:49:15 +0000

LinkedIn has added a new feature that allows users to add applications to their profiles and networks.

LinkedIn Applications enable you to enrich your profile, share and collaborate with your network, and get the key insights that help you be more effective. Applications are added to your homepage and profile enabling you to control who gets access to what information.

I experimented this morning with the WordPress Blog feature, that is supposed to show your recent blog posts on your Profile page. From the Application gallery I was taken to the WordPress App Page, where i can choose to display it on my profile and LinkedIn Homepage.

This is where it stopped working for me… I went back to the WordPress App page and found a button to “update settings”, but the following page does not open. I will have to come back when it’s fixed …

Update: Now it works!

NY TimesPeople

Chris — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:09:00 +0000

The New York Times online, uses a bar at the top of the page that allows people log-in to their social platform to follow friends, co-workers and other readers as well as share content and comment on it.

The bar is very subtle, but offers more details in form of a pop-up once the user clicks on the “What’s this” link.

After signing up for the service, another wizard opens and offers to search for other people, import contacts or check suggested users.

The bar stays visible at the top throughout the user’s visit on nytimes.com and offers access to the timespeople page where the user can access newsfeeds, activity history, recommended content and his social network.

[Found via nytimes.com and timespeople.nytimes.com ]

The future of Red looks Green!

Chris — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:11:32 +0000

The more i talk to Jesse and Trek about their project “Red” that lets you write Ruby code that is converted to Javascript – the more i like it. When done, developers can write their applications completely in Ruby and don’t have to worry about the generated Javascript for the browser. Whatever Ruby specific code people come up with (class creation, inheritance…) Red translates it into Javascript. Looking into the future, this will enable developers to write great applications that can leverage all advantages of an object oriented language.

[ github.com ]

Expedia Labs

Chris — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:03:57 +0000

Yesterday i attended a presentation of Expedia on the University of Michigan Campus. They came to recruit Software designers and Project Managers. I was positively surprised to see how much they focus on usability and user-centered design to improve the user experience of their website. The presenter showed the audience a very interesting and promising take on booking your next vacation using expedia. Instead of using the traditional “day, time, destination” input, she showed us a very interesting wizard that selects vacation packages using other inputs such as an interactive map and vacation activities.

Unfortunately this is only visible to random users visiting Expedia.com who fall into the right category of the bucket test. But you can get an idea of Expedia’s attempts to improve the user experience at labs.expedia.com

Run Firefox Alpha portable

Chris — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 20:06:41 +0000

To run the latest Firefox alpha nightly build, download the portable zip file and the latest firefox zip trunk. Copy the “firefox” folder into the “App” folder… done!

[ cybernetnews.com, grandstreamdreams.blogspot.com ]

Best of the Web Awards

Chris — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:04:23 +0000

The .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development. The
14 categories for 2008 range from Design Agency of the Year and Podcast
of the Year through to the Infamy Award – a chance to name and shame
those ruining your web experience.

Vote for your favorites in the following categories:

Interactive site of the year
Web application of the year
Socially powered site of the year
Mashup of the year
Blog of the year
Podcast of the year
Vodcast of the year
Mobile site of the year
Design agency of the year
Innovation of the year
Web personality of the year
Viral campaign of the year
Standards champion of the year (go Christian Heilmann)
Open source application of the year
Best redesign of the year
Infamy Award

[Found via thenetawards.com]

Crossbrowser Rounded Corners

Chris — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:36:58 +0000

Using svg, vml and css this technique implements rounded corners cross browser compatible:

http://elv1s.ru/files/html+css/vector-corners.html

Pattern Libraries and Galleries

Chris — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:07:44 +0000

Part of my current Job at Yahoo is to work on the redesign of the Pattern Library. This is a great resource for designers and web developers where interaction design patterns are illustrated that exist on the web. Looking beyond just our library there are other libraries on the web that attempt to build similar collections. It seems there are two categories of libraries emerging: Galleries and Libraries.

Galleries provide a broad overview using visual examples for patterns on the web.

Libraries go further and try to describe the interaction and suggest solutions.

In addition there are Collections that identify implementation patterns