What It Looks Like

If you’re not used to seeing this type of look out of me, don’t worry, other people feel the same way. I always find this interesting — the idea that it doesn’t “look like a design I’d put out.” I’m pretty sure I have a particular style, but it’s not rooted in tangible things you can point to in a screenshot. I’m a stickler for the right padding between elements, keeping things uniform. I like producing a design analogy and using it throughout the site, not doing one-off design elements that never get used again. Beyond that, I like to do something new for each site I design, something that I’ll put in the toolbox and pull out at a future date. Here are some new things I did on the new 9rules:

• Using CSS text-shadow to produce a glowing effect instead of a drop shadow effect. If you have Safari (or WebKit nightly) you’ll see this on the hover effect for the 4 links up in the header. It’s simple to code (search for “text-shadow” within the CSS file) so it was fun to use.
• Deeper transparency effects. If you resize the window you’ll see the elements in the top blue header area are sliding around on top of the blue line background. The “Browse By Community” element looks especially cool with this effect.

Now apart from specific techniques that I used to execute the design, the layout and design itself was important in this iteration because it was a clean break from the past site. The old 9rules was complex and had many moving parts, and since the new 9rules is just member content, it was like starting fresh as far as the information that needed to be displayed. I wanted this new design to reflect the cleanliness and simplified content options presented, so a clean and tight visual design was the goal. Big white content area, wide columns, ample padding between layout pieces, big typography. The visual touches to separate each area are sparse, but noticeable. I especially like the layout of the member grid listing in the left column.

How It Works

The new 9rules is refreshing to me as a 9rules reader because it makes the content more accessible and is right up front. I don’t have to click from the homepage over to the “member entries listing” to find what I want, it’s right there. It sounds obvious, but straight-up usability was the goal from the onset because — dare I say — 9rules.com had been on a usability decline for over a year. Adding new features adds complexity, and we tried to please all types of users who visited 9rules — people who wanted member entries, people who wanted Clips, Notes, profiles, whatever — so the site wasn’t optimized for any particular use case. That would be impossible, because so many different types of users frequented our site. Now, we know what people want when they come to the new 9rules: they want to see blog entries from our members. And we give it to them.

It’s The Best

In my opinion, and in the opinions of a half dozen or so beta testers, this is the best version of 9rules yet. I think this opinion spawns from the visual design being cleaner, but it also comes from the minds of many visitors who never used the new features (Notes, Clips, to name a few) and yearned for a return of the old, singular functionality we used to offer. We’ve brought back the old concept, added some great new features, and dropped it into a cleaner and more usable layout, so I think those aspects combine to make it “the best” we’ve done… so far.

If you’ve got any design thoughts or technical questions, be sure to hit me up in the comments.

The interview is really great, and goes into some detail about making films underwater and how John Boyle got started doing so. However, this interview isn’t just for those experienced in underwater film making.

Helen: If you could give one simple piece of advice to anyone starting out in UW filming what would it be?

John: Apart from buy my book:0)?! Do it – diving will never be the same once you have tried filming – it adds so much to your experience. For so many people a dive is simply a walk in the park – follow a guide around a pre-set route glancing at things as they pass. With any camera – still or video – you learn to stop, look and observe – and hopefully to create an image of what you are seeing that you can share.

Its absolutely wonder to read about people’s experiences doing such a wide range of things. Great interview.

For many of us, “running the business” is the hardest part of the entire process. If we’re opening a design or development company we know we have the skills to pull that off. But running a business can be daunting, and this guide makes things simple and easy to follow.

I can definitely say that I’ve been guilty of this myself, and Kyle hits the nail on the head when he points to the struggle it is to have the self-control needed to focus on the final details. We’re seeing this more and more even on the corporate level when we see tons of new products being released as “beta” and staying as such for a long time.

Kyle also notes that by focusing on this last 10%, his site now lives up to his own expectations. Perhaps it isn’t that people get lazy for the last 10%, but that their personal expectations are too low? An interesting topic and discussion.

Kyle’s site Warpspire has many noteworthy articles worth noting - pun totally intended.

If you’ve ever wanted to experiment with some of the more popular APIs that are being made available, this tutorial will give you a really great jump into learning how to do it properly. I recommend watching FiftyFourEleven for the ongoing API series that Mike is putting together.

Cognitive Daily has a great article on Learning to understand cause and effect. Looking at different situations from the point of view of a child and how we humans associate probability with causality.

This article merely scratches the surface of the quality content available at Cognitive Daily, we recommend going through their archives when you get the time.

To me, this seems like the perfect discussion to have with the Merovingian (if you do not know who this is, you are probably better off than me).

Sure it’s just a poll, but it gives you an idea of what to expect from the site because the answers are the ones you would never expect to see in a Future Husband poll. Warning: The site contains strong language because it is geared towards adults and isn’t meant to be “professional” so to speak. It’s meant to be real and raw and that’s exactly what it is.

Perhaps this can lend itself to how we think of testimonials. At one point I would have said that they were overused. But perhaps the fact that some testimonials add no value, while others that are well written can add an extreme amount of selling potential.

Maybe its not the amount of testimonials that matters, but the quality of them. Great article Bud.

Boom 2.0 covers the internal conflict of wanting to maintain control and wanting to create enough time to do what you really want to do. All part of a small company growing up and I am definitely glad to be a part of it.

I can’t answer that now, but I do know that once it stops being fun working for 9rules I am buying the first ticket out of here. If dignity is deadly then that’s a good thing because I am not sure we had any to start off with in the first place.

Yes I know WordPress is free and I am friends with Matt Mullenweg so I am not promoting the downfall of WordPress. I am promoting the need for it to be prettier because that’s what it deserves.

Planning is essential to becoming a successful freelance Web developer and Garrett Dimon has written up an excellent article on the steps he suggests taking to become one.

This article is near and dear to my heart simply because I’ve written similar articles as well. Erik’s Email Identity Theft goes hand in hand with Inventive spam, Identity theft via spam and Account suspended - multiple password failures.

Based on the sheer number of these emails which plague each and every one of us, I’m led to think that somehow somewhere these messages are successful. Have you read about or had any experience with people succumbing to these scams? And, have you read any articles similar to these that would be important for people to read to help protect themselves?

If you are developing a product or service, you might think that what your working on is the most exciting thing you’ve ever seen. That does not mean that the public will. Marketing something that does not immediately create a buzz just by mentioning the name can be difficult - following Archer’s advice and looking at a few examples can really help you to give your product or service a good public face.

I have to say that this article is a bit close to my heart, because my feelings are very similar to that of the Your Total Site team.

No matter what your feelings are towards the usage of Ajax and Javascript, discussion about the matter will always yield better results than not talking about it at all. Great article Garrett.

Commenting your code, whether its for a simple Web site or a complicated application, is always a good idea. For those of you just getting into programming and Web development, commenting your code is a must if you would ever want to work in a group. Typically, in a company setting, there is going to be more than one person who has the clearance to edit a given block of code - and if its properly commented it will cut down on mistakes of those editing it which were not the original author.

Ryan’s tips in his article deserve the recent attention - and we’re glad to have the entire Particle Tree team in the Network.