Yesterday was an epic day for packages. We got Christmas presents from two different family members as well as a box from Amazon for Mark (that is apparently for me for Christmas). Jaryth was beside himself opening the boxes and putting packages under the tree. But the best box, from my perspective, was the heavy box from Pearson. My book has come out! It has been a long time in the making of this book. Some of the problems were my fault, some were caused by other people, some well, who knows why it took so long. I’m just happy it’s here. I had been tracking Amazon.com and watching as the release date moved inexorably out from late September, to October, to early November, to Thanksgiving, to early December, and the last time I looked it was scheduled to be available on December 26th. “What if people wanted to give it as a Christmas present?” I wailed in my head. Of course, the less histrionic part of my brain replied “who would get a responsive web design book for Christmas?” But you never know… So then last Friday, my awesome tech editor, Jon Morin, posted to Facebook that he’d gotten his copy of the book. Jealousy struck! But I stayed calm. In fact, this was a good thing as it meant that the December 26th date might not be right, and it might get out on shelves and on Amazon.com before Christmas. And in fact, Amazon currently says it will be available on December 19th. Hooray! Buy your copy today! It looks amazing. It’s in full color, and I think you’ll find it really useful for learning and doing RWD. And if you do buy a copy, I would really appreciate it if you could write a review on Amazon when you’re done. Let me know what you liked, what you didn’t like and what you want to see more of. All comments are appreciated. I’ll also have code samples and other information on my website HTML5 in 24 Hours

[caption id=“attachment_771” align=“alignleft” width=“150”] This site displayed in a minimalist theme - very different from my last theme - and probably from my next theme. Click to view larger.[/caption] I’ve been trying out a bunch of new themes and frameworks lately, in an effort to determine what would be easiest for both me and my clients to use. In fact, this site is demonstrating that right now. Although I suspect as soon as I get some free time, I’m going to be changing it, probably drastically. Which is why I included the screen shot.

I’ve had this theme for around two years now. And I’ve been working on a new WP theme for a client and it’s gotten me all interested in building themes again. And then I mentioned this to Mark and he said he wants me to build a custom theme for his new site Tech for Anyone. If I were smart I would go about this redesign like I tell all my readers on About.com: cautiously and with care. But knowing me, I’ll probably just start designing sometime later tonight while watching some random show on Netflix. At least right now I’m watching a show about a vet in Africa, rather than British murder mysteries, so any theme I build will probably be more animal focused and less dripping blood and dead bodies.

I grew up knowing I had my heart on my sleeve. Every emotion I feel seems to start on my face, move to my mouth and then register in my brain. So when I find myself thinking “they should just calm down” about someone (other than myself, of course) the irony isn’t lost on me. For the fourth year in a row, I am participating in the About.com Readers’ Choice Awards. I set up some categories related to web design, in February solcited nominations, and now the finalists are getting votes. As in previous years, some people feel that there is a problem. Their site isn’t a finalist or they think another finalst is cheating or they can’t vote or they can, but too often or something like that. And they might start with a letter to me, but then they will move on to nastygrams and sarcastic comments and more. This happens every year. I explain the rules, remind people that you can’t be a finalist without being nominated, that cheating is not tolerated, and that About.com is doing all they can to make things fair. And then I (try very hard to) let it go. Ultimately, I think that it’s great that people value these awards enough to get so upset about them. But I’m not interested in freaking out because of them. I want to stay calm and recognize that the awards will do what they do whether I am upset or calm. So I choose calm.

I’m starting to wonder if other web design sites DELETE the anachronistic and ultra-conservative design comments. It seems like whenever I write a post talking about a more modern style design, I ONLY get comments talking about how horrible it is because it’s new and different. Of course, they don’t say that’s the reason, but that’s what it really comes down to. Makes me depressed, as I really like looking at the new stuff, but when the only feedback I get is “eww, that sucks, the scroll bar makes the car move, it doesn’t scroll down the page” it’s hard to stay motivated. Specifics:
I posted a picture of the Beetle.com website last Wednesday as an example of an innovative site using HTML5 in a new and exciting way. This resulted in (so far) five comments. Two of which were positive, which is more than usual and the rest were critical with one guy going into detail about all the reasons that he found the “quality” of the site lacking. Most of them were upset with the usability, which makes me wonder if they were viewing it in some crappy browser like IE7 or something. They don’t say. My Opinion
I think that the web is changing. The classic website with “pages” and sections is going to go away and be replaced by sites like Beetle.com that are more like experiences, like games, like applications. Content is still going to be very important, but websites are going to need to compete with all the other things vying for our attention like video, radio, television, movies, other websites, mobile apps, desktop apps, and oh yeah, our work… (what’s that?) Websites that are fun and draw you in are going to be more successful than ones that are just focused on slapping up “content.” I think the other thing the people commenting on my Beetle.com post need to remember is what the audience of the Beetle.com site is and the demographics of who Beetle.com is trying to attract. Sadly, I suspect that the demographics of people who come to my site on About.com are much older (and more boring and less “hip”) than who Beetle.com is going for. Volkswagen wants to promote the new beetle as being “more power, less flower” but they also want to get on the cutting edge bandwagon of HTML5 siteapps. So they built a site that reflects that. It’s not just a website and it’s not just an app, it’s both

This is a “podcast” or audio recording where I’m trying out doing an audio recording of my thoughts.

What I notice is that when I was staring at the computer it was very hard to talk, as I kept getting distracted by the machine.

Some things I talk about:

• idea for an article on Webmaster tools and Google analytics
• working on editor reviews and my plan to create a video of my favorite web editors
• thoughts about a new(-ish) category of web editor—the WYSIWYG editor so people don’t need to know HTML at all
  • should I create a separate evaluation of these editors?
  • do customers make a distinction between WYSIWYG editors and “development” editors?

So, Thursday or Friday I got a note from my mail carrier saying that I had a box waiting for me from Amazon.com. Since I have received all of my Amazon orders I was not really sure what it could be. Since it was addressed (on the note) to J. Kyrnin, I was thinking it might actually be a present for Jaryth because his birthday is coming up. So I head to the post office this morning, and after waiting in the long line (of course!) I get my package and open it up and inside is a girl’s size small hockey shorts with “pelvic protector”. Um buh? I checked the box again and yes, it was addressed to me. But on the inside the shipping label was addressed to someone in New York State, both billing and shipping addresses. What I then learned is that Amazon makes it challenging to deal with problems that occur outside of their standard problems. If I wanted to return it, I was told that “returns are easy.” But then I wasn’t sure if the hockey player in New York would get the refund or not. I don’t want the money, it isn’t mine. I then thought I’d return it as a gift, and that wouldn’t work as a) Amazon does gift returns as a gift card to the recipient (ie. me) not the sender and b) this item was apparently not eligible for returns or exchanges. So then I moved on to their customer care form. First I have to indicate that the problem I’m having is not part of their online help. Then I have to choose from a drop-down that, unsurprisingly, has no option for “I received something I didn’t order and is not a gift.” I chose “other non-order related.” But it is kinda order related, but anyhow… So then I get another drop down, and by this time I’m getting ready to give up, except that I don’t want to throw away a perfectly good, brand new item, as that seems like a waste. So I slog on. I fill in the next drop down in the “other” category again, because again they don’t have one that is related to my issue. I then give details and then “more details” and hit the “contact me by email” option. I am now supposed to wait no more than 12 hours for a response. I hope that the hockey player doesn’t start her hockey games for a while. This seems like something that many online form creators should be aware of - namely the goals of the customers using the form. My perception of this customer service form was that they were trying to avoid having to talk to me. There was a lot of focus on getting me to use online help, and I’m sure that’s useful for the majority of requests. But for those that don’t fit into that mold, the form can get annoying very fast. One of the features that this form had that ended up being annoying was that it changed dynamically when I chose various options. Designers and developers love these types of forms because they are interactive, fun to build, and help the customer self-select exactly what they need. But I found it really annoying as there was never any indication that the end was in sight. I would select one option, and another would appear - poof. I would choose from that list, and the form would change again. As I said above I was getting really tired of filling out the form (and you should be aware that this form was the last in a series of things I tried before using it. I tried returning, gift returning, and then just looking for a number I could call before finding that link to customer service. If I had been even slightly busier or on any type of time restraint I would have just given up and dumped the thing in the trash never to worry about it again. I suppose the other reason it was tedious is because all of the choices I had for returns, gift returns, and even customer service were assuming that I had made some type of mistake. For example, when asked why I wanted to return it, I was given options like:

I got an email today asking if there were an easier way to take my online class because when she clicked on a link that she thought was the next step, she was taken somewhere else. I really don’t know what to tell these people. It isn’t that hard, people! Of course, it IS that hard if you need someone holding your hand the entire way. Step 1, do this, step 2, do that, step 3 go here, step 4 go there, poof, you’re a web designer! I like teaching beginners. I really do. But I don’t like teaching lazy people who can’t be bothered to read or follow instructions. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I wrote to her telling her to go to the syllabus for the week and follow the links from there, going back to that page when she’d finished an article. Her reply: “That is what I did but could not get back. I saw a lot of links to other websites. I was reading lesson 1 and it said to type in HTML and I do not know how to do that yet so I think I registered for the wrong class. I thought I was registering for the html class but I think it is the wrong one. “ OH MY GOD! You couldn’t get back? See that fancy button in the upper left of your browser window? That’s the (wait for it) BACK button. Try clicking that. I’ll wait… Or, if that doesn’t work, try going back to the email where you first got the link. Oh, you deleted that already? How the FUCK can I help you then? I just wrote her again with step-by-fucking-step instructions for how to find the lessons, how to stay on them, how to avoid clicking anything other than what’s on the syllabus. Unfortunately, I can’t fucking control her mouse to stop her from clicking on anything shiny that she sees while she’s not reading the lesson. Holy fuck woman. Okay, after calming down a bit I took a look at the articles. I think she’s getting hung up in one of the Notepad articles that says “write your HTML here” and since she hasn’t learned HTML, she’s thinking “but I don’t know HTML” and getting frustrated. I honestly don’t know, as of course, she can’t even make that much clear in her communication to me. So I added a note in that article saying “if you are in the HTML class, don’t worry about writing HTML here, just type a few words and move to the next step.” Or something like that. Honestly, I think that what is rocket science is writing a course that is easy enough for the people who need their hands held but not so easy that the more adventurous learners aren’t bored to tears and walk away.

So, my design is scheduled to be presented tomorrow, and I’ve already got a new design in mind. Holy, cow, Jenn! Why not stick with a design for, oh, say a week to try it out? Or at least until you’ve finished your presentation. But the “shiny!” Step away from the shiny, Jenn. You’re feverish, just walk away from Dreamweaver for right now.

So, you said that it was very square, so I rounded some of the corners, just for you. Of course, if you were viewing this in IE, you’d still see the square corners because I didn’t do it with images but with CSS (faster to download). Luckily, I know you’re not viewing it in IE. And this method works for Firefox 1+, Safari 3+, Opera 10.5+, Chrome 1+, and browsers that use Gecko or Webkit. I don’t remember what browser you use, however. Okay, time to stop stalling on my newsletter.

I’ve got my new template up and running. I’m sure I’ll continue to find things I need to tweak and fix on it, but for now I’m pleased with it.

This is my first foray into my own images for a design. Or I should say, it’s the first time I’ve ever used a painting or drawing I did. I really like how it turned out. If you’re curious to know more about why I built this template, check out the About this Site link in the navigation above.