Stop building custom CMS tools

It is an ongoing goal of any designer/developer dealing with clients to offer a robust yet accessible cms. I’ve tried many times to build my own cms, but always failed because what seemed sooo simple turned out to be a hell-raiser.

Harmony literally took everything I ever wanted in a content management system and made it real and accessible for not just me, the developer, but my clients as well. To be honest, there hasn’t been one cms to actually successfully do this. Sure, you can hack the hell out of Drupal, Wordpress, RadiantCMS, Django Admin, etc and still not have half the form, function and ease of use that Harmony offers.

Hosted vs. Self-hosted

Harmony is a hosted solution which means it’s not for everyone, but it will probably suffice most folks requirements. I was skeptical at first for it being hosted, but I think it actually solves a lot of problems.

Support is all inclusive, you deal with one source for both the software and possible “hosting” issues like down-time, etc. You only have to worry about your websites and that’s a big relief.

Interface

Harmony is so easy to use that it almost feels wrong. It cut out so many things that I thought I needed. It just feels great. It’s mostly based on ajax and frankly that’s great. Purists would probably cry heresy, but no one listens to purists.

So you know how in most cms tools you can edit the theme/layout within the app (ala wordpress or radiantcms)?. Harmony does this too. But it actually bakes in some desktop text editor conventions like tabbing multiple lines and respecting tabs when moving to the next line. I would never suggest this, but you could theoretically build out a complete theme from within the app without too much trouble.

There is plenty more, but…

I will save the rest for a real review of the app with screenshots and all.

But overall I am impressed. I can see this improving my value as web designer as I learn more about Harmony and actually start using it in production (which is not far off).

Stay tuned!

Generally that problem is that they don’t have a website, but sometimes it’s that they don’t have a website and don’t have any budget either…Solving both of those problems at the the same time is my job.

I’m all for keeping costs down and what a great way to defend the use of templates with clients.

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The most frustrating endeavor

I sit in front of my moleskin notebook expecting great things to travel from my brain to paper. Of course the proverbial tumbleweed rolls across my brain like a lone nomad floating about the dessert. Out of panic I scribble just about anything to get the rusty gears of creativity rolling. But no go.

I try creative breaks by playing video games or going for a bike ride and I come back; nothing. I repeat the same process and still nothing.

Everywhere but here

So now I’m shopping at walmart and of course I won’t be home for hours. POW! I get a great idea for a design in my head and as I shop, the idea slowly begins to blow away on the winds of my short attention span. It’s gone.

I get home and thankfully it comes back to me, but now I hate it.

Does this sound like you?

Well I have a solution…just kidding. But I do have a question! How do you go about breaking the chains of the pedantic over-analytical perfectionist designer in you? Load it up in the comments or on twitter.

Not much room for the specialist…

Why not? Focusing equates to greater productivity. Once you begin to fragment that focus, fewer things get done. This is not to say that learning to accomplish in other areas is wrong. It’s to say that it shouldn’t be the primary focus. Looking back on my career as a web designer, I went wrong in several places. But the biggest area was defocusing and splitting my judgement, passion and skills into other areas.

Needless to say, the original thing I set out to do got lost in the fray, damaging my passion and almost permanently destroying any ambition to “come back”.

Do one thing well, acquire everything else as an accessory

I was once told that there aren’t many folks looking for just a CSS developer or just a JS developer (how would they know anyway?). Even if that were true it does not necessarily make you less valuable as a professional. Personally I think it’s more important to have a person who can nail one thing 90% of the time than someone who can nail most things 65% of the time. Where do you think the quality will come from first?

At the peak of it all, it’s really a game of quality vs. quanity. How much can be delivered in the least amount of time? vs. What can be delivered in the right amount of time? Far too many web shops expect developers to wear multiple hats.

Alls I’m sayin…

Really the point here is to not fret if you dig a certain part of the process and choose to do only that while everything else falls in as an accessory. Being awesome at one thing is more gratifying than being average at a lot of things. Look at Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Lamborghini, Porschè, the list goes on.

I’m over-reacting? You sir can shut up.

So here’s the deal. 79.63% of your time as a web designer is spent editing code in a text editor or web development IDE. Hacking on code (be it html, css, javascript, ruby, or whatever) is just a part of being a web designer. If anything, Photoshop is an unnatural fit for this line of work.

Don’t worry, this topic has been covered from many different angles before. But I’m fresh with it, so eat it. Look, Photoshop is awesome. I wouldn’t even be a designer if it were not for Photoshop. Sure, design is more than just a software application or tool, but Picasso would be a worthless hack without a good brush. Now following are the reasons why I think photoshop sucks for web design, finally!

Photoshop wasn’t built for iteration

For every change you make in Photoshop, you have to replicate it in the browser. God bless your soul if you have to do all this while a client is patiently waiting to see updates. You see, Photoshop only allows you to design a web layout in theory and not in reality. So you’re crossing your fingers every time you slice out a design. Frankly the whole process just sucks. Since CSS, HTML and Javascript are the end product, why not just start there to begin with? Headaches gone.

Besides, iterating a design is far easier in markup and css. If you know what you’re doing, the whole process can be downright beautiful and almost enjoyable and since the design is already coded, there’s no more “design time in photoshop”. It’s in the browser already!

Photoshop doesn’t do “interaction”

This point stands to be repeated as originally stated by Ryan Singer of 37signals and instead of murdering you with my own brand of eloquence, here is the quote from Ryan himself:

You can’t click a Photoshop mockup. This is probably the number one reason we skip static mockups. They aren’t real. Paper isn’t real either, but paper doesn’t have that expectation. A Photoshop mockup is on your screen. If it’s on your screen it should work. You can’t pull down menus in a Photoshop mockup, you can’t enter text into a field in a Photoshop mockup, you can’t click a link in a Photoshop mockup. HTML/CSS, on the other hand, is the real experience.

And the argument goes, “Your design process may call for skipping Photoshop, but ours doesn’t”. First of all, no one said you had to absolutely stop using Photoshop. However, you do need to stop using it for actual interaction design as it just doesn’t make sense.

Photoshop doesn’t scale

Yep, that’s exactly what I mean. When I say “scale” in this context, I mean driving a u-haul truck up a road-less mountain. You ever try adding things to a design you made 3 months ago in Photoshop? Let me tell you, it sucks the major nut of a donkey. Layers are messy and strewn about like a dirty college dorm and you probably forgot to organize, group and name your layers like a “real” designer should.

Essentially you have to throw the original design out and start from scratch again. Sure, you can pull out a few buttons, patterns and other bits, but it’s really just a monumental waste of time.

Photoshop rant is over. Long live Photoshop.

Like I said, Photoshop is awesome. It will always be in my tool belt. But while it’s not the best tool for reality-driven interaction design, it still serves my needs as a designer at just about every level. This rant is not to suggest you throw out the one tool that got you where you are. It’s more of a reminder that some octagon pegs just aren’t meant to fit in circular holes and no you can not use sand paper for the edges.

#1 We don’t have time to answer questions cause we’re busy coding

What an immaculate load of poo. Granted, a lot of work goes into building great software and that excuse comes with a heaping pile of truth. But there is always time to answer questions from users. The answers don’t have to be really long and most only require a yes, no or “we will look into that, but no promises”. Users can usually cope well with the later pretty well.

Just make sure you don’t make your users feel like they’re an inconvenience to your “god-like” approach to writing code.

#2 We don’t think that would be useful

The only reason a user EVER makes a feature request is cause they think that feature would be useful. Just cause it doesn’t fit in your developer dream world of code nirvana doesn’t necessarily make it useless to your users. There are requests that just don’t make sense for your software and most users will understand if given a reasonable explanation for why it doesn’t make sense.

It doesn’t take much to get to a user to stop using your software and responding like this will surely push them over the edge given the right circumstances.

#3 …

Silence toward user support requests are like a proverbial middle finger. Some users do take things a bit too seriously, but that’s no reason to give them a cold shoulder. Your overly passionate users can usually end up being your most loyal users giving some of the best feedback.

The important thing is to at least respond. When it comes to users and your software, silence is the worst response. If there are too many in need of a response, start a development blog or a twitter account that keeps everybody in the loop.

#4 We promise!

Stop promising stuff!! Software development is an organism that is poor at delivering on specific promises. The macrabbit team behind CSSEdit and Espresso learned this the hard way.

Plans are great, but with software they are hardly ever concrete and not to mention that users and code are always changing. Either way empty promises are just never good. It’s a guaranteed way to lose a good chunk of your users to competitors. Make sure you aren’t promising features or releases out of some panic to keep users interested.

#5 Sorry, we only have answers to everything but the question you have

There is nothing more vexing than seeing a support response that answers every question but the one you actually asked. I’ve been bitten by this a couple times.

If you don’t know the answer, just say so or ask for clarification. It doesn’t help your users to “keep all channels open”. Users either want to hear yes or no, or any response that make up a definite answer that isn’t beating around the bush.

Conclusion

The moral of the story is to listen to your users, don’t ignore them and never treat them like children. They often care about your software more than you do as a developer. So it only makes sense that users get upset when something doesn’t work or a feature is missing or they get no response from support or the developer. Just take care of your users.

I need those fonts in Photoshop

Since most web designers design first in photoshop or [your favorite design app here], Typekit does not do much good. Unless I can actually download those fonts for use in my pre-browser workflow, how can it possibly make sense to use typekit for a real project? Sure I can change my workflow to sketch designs and then go straight to the browser, but sometimes you just want to see how two fonts work together and that is difficult with Typekit.

If typekit offered some sort of 30-day “design time” trial on font downloads, that would be most awesome. I’d even pay a fee for it. It would give me enough time to test the fonts before I go to “production” or the browser.

Other than that

Typekit is great. It is exactly how I expected this kind of solution to look and work. The font rendering is very consistent across browsers and darn near instant and the implementation is simple and portable. What more do you want? Font selection? Oh yeah, they have that too!

The font selection is awesome. But after riding the coat tails of Arial, Georgia and Tahoma for the past 10 years, I can’t say that it’s easy to get use to expanded horizon of typography options. I found myself looking for fonts that resemble what I’ve been using in the past. But that changes after a few tweaks to the imagination.

What I’d like see

Like I said, I’d love to see more respect for pre-browser workflows (aka photoshop, fireworks, what have you). Another thing I’d like see is faster font rendering. I know, I know. It’s blazing fast for a first run, but dude, sometimes it’s not that fast and almost comparable to sIFR (Yeah, I just went there).

Overall, Typekit is awesome. Nough said,

Guess you can say I’ve given up on design. I’ve digressed into a spectator who once knew what it was like to see a design built with sweat and tears, be launched into the wild. The smell of the servers as they spin up to serve my awesome pixels, the click of my harddrive as I’m…alright, so maybe it’s not as poetic. But man I do miss design.

Back to square one

Brett Favre and I have a lot in common. We love what we do. We never want to stop doing it. But at some point we have to take a break and realign, rediscover and realize the real reason we wake up to do what we do.

I’m starting over. I’m emptying my portfolio, blanking my LinkedIn profile and online resume(s). I’m going zero on my entire history as a designer. It’s all burning down today.

Omg. Why would you do that?

The designer I was before today is no longer the designer I want to be going forward. Sure, the work of my past could be something to keep around, but I’m not really proud of that work anymore. Lessons were learned and those will stay with me forever.

Most would probably advise against this journey I’m embarking on, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a couple years but never really got up the guts to pull the trigger.

Conclusion

Being a designer “with no experience” will be fun. I promise. I’ll vlog about it as well.

Unfortunately lots of folks out there are scolding James Cameron for giving us a boat full of eye candy but no depth in the writing. Frankly that’s just wrong.

Not for script snobs

If you’re looking for a film that develops really deep relationships between all the characters (Lord of the Rings did this really well), then Avatar is not the movie for you (only so much you can do in 190 minutes). While I agree with the fact that character depth was lacking, it was still a great film and not as boring as many have proclaimed.

Avatar contained elements that folks with both high and low expectations can honestly enjoy without feeling like they just got ripped off. While it’s not a really deep film like many expected (neither was Titanic, yet it won many awards), it is a well told story and is depicted with the utmost attention to detail.

Why some didn’t like it

Avatar covers a plot line that has been covered in many films before it. The two biggest subjects in this film are equality between two species and the environment. I’m willing to bet this film will be a hit with environmentalists. But it’s true that we’ve seen this topic covered many times before and just this summer in the film, District 9.

But those things are nothing to hold against Avatar. There hasn’t been a single major box office film in the past 5 years that has presented a very unique plot line. So our high expectations are slightly misplaced. Go watch an indie film or something.

Conclusion

See this movie if you want to watch something that is actually worth watching. Avatar is definitely a film for the whole family and I’d recommend it to just about any type of film watcher. Avatar is action, a love story and a good message about the heart of humanity and caring for those who are different. Great film indeed and great message for the holidays.

Although most (as in non-teenagers and mature highschoolers) would find it difficult to believe that New Moon eclipsed The Dark Knight by just under $3 million at the box office on opening night. $70 million is now the new record to beat for a single showing of a single film here in the states.

Now on to the good stuff.

Werewolves and Vampires, Oh my!

I am not a huge proponent of tween movies and yes, that is the audience the book series and films aregeared toward. But I will say that for a somewhat light-weight film in regards to scripts and depth of story-line, I was pleasantly surprised.

During the length of the film I was pretty much hanging on every scene. The story-line and performances between all the actors kept me engaged. But I must admit that Kristen Stewart’s performance was quite predictable (Checkout Adventureland for an almost identical performance).

There were certain parts that I could have done without, for example the vision of Edward (Robert Pattison) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) running through a forest. The dairy was strong with the cheese oozing from that scene.

The interpretation of werewolves was very clean unlike Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. In New Moon they were almost cute and cuddly. That is until they ripped a vampire to shreds. Not so cute then.

The whole twilight series brought a lot to the table for the genre and it certainly tweaks the traditional perception of vampires. The ones where they wear capes and count stuff or am I thinking of Sesame Street? Eh, who knows?!

What not to expect

If you’re a twi-hard fan of the books, don’t be surprised to see the usual hollywood “upgrade” of the story-line and characters. Ya know, where they cut out important aspects of the book and modify other parts and characters almost beyond recognition. In other words, if you’re watching New Moon on the coin that it will follow the book series to the letter, you will be sorely disappointed.

Like all hollywood interpretations, they almost are never 100% accurate and New Moon is no exception to this rule. Aside, it is a fun and enjoyable movie and if you liked the first Twilight film, you will almost certainly enjoy New Moon. But don’t expect oscar performances here.