To be honest the design isn’t my favourite, which I know it should be given that this is my site and should reflect the best of my ability. That said however, I had changes I really wanted to make to the site and really not enough time to get everything 100% right.

The reasons for the update were ideally to bring in a few newer bits of information like my Dribbble feed and also highlight the guest articles I do for Onextrapixel and Six Revisions. Also while redeveloping the site it had to be built in HTML5 and be made responsive given these are the new buzzwords of the industry and something not found in the last version of this site.

Part of me still thinks this is a bad idea given the reception the previous design got, the highlight being featured in Smashing Book 2. As to not bin it completely I do link to a imager of the design from the homepage and also here. I considered creating a 2010.keanrichmond.com so the code remained also but frankly the amount of work involved in doing that goes against the idea of doing this all quickly. Quick is an even greater concern as I have a presentation to get created as well as a few other niceities in the pipeline

One thing to mention is this is wildly under tested and under optimised but I thought I could fix those once live. Also I’m frankly ignore anything lower than IE8 because they’re old and no one coming to my site for anything it actually offers should be using old browsers.

So enjoy, feel free to leave comments or bugs and when I get the itch to redesign again hopefully I’ll have loads of time to really come up with something that’s a new level of awesomeness.

Something new for 2012 by Kean Richmond

The reason I say lost my mind has nothing to do with the conference itself more my aversion to public speaking or almost anything that draws attention which could then be negative. But hell it’s 2012 I’m apparently considered a grown up so I’m sure I can spend 45 minutes of my life trying something new and scary.

So with that in mind if you’re free on the 3rd of March and have a slightly odd interest in a design based talk at what is primarily an SEO conference with some extra stuff thrown in then please come along. I’m sure my talk will either be informative or entertaining (in you’ll see me crumble on stage), hell I might even manage both

What was I thinking? by Kean Richmond

Now to liken the process of designing or developing a website as a war is extreme, most certainly our clients can’t be compared to such great historical adversaries such as the Roman’s, the Nazi’s or the Sith. But in educating clients about the benefits of different areas of web design, many of our war cries fall on deaf ears. Instead of concentrating on whether or not their website is engaging through language, function and design they would rather push the need to brighten up their content with an inordinate amount of coloured text.

Site’s like WeeNudge help us in communicating effectively the reasons as to why a client’s request is not in the best interest of the website or its users, but if a client wants ‘every other word green’ then what other response do we have than ‘it’ll look shit’?

It’s getting client’s to forget about the details or at least validate their requests which has become the daily battle for many a designer. Saying that we need to educate clients is of course correct but some are simply unwilling to learn what it means to have a professional web agency design and develop their website. It’s not like we can be direct and say ‘You need to learn about what it is to create a website’ without coming across as somewhat patronising.

Two-tier community

So back to the ALA article where so many great webbies have spoken about the great developments they’ve learnt and adopted over the past year such as HTML5, responsive design and designing for emotion. Within the article Tim Van Damme comments that he’s observed a greater understanding of the power of good design within large corporations. This may be true of large corporations but for those dealing with smaller, more local, companies this is far from reality.

2011 has come with a number of great advancements in how we think about making websites and also in the technologies at our disposal but for me these are all things that I adopt silently into my workflow. These are not things I could begin to inform clients about when such basic things as separating personal taste from what qualifies as good design is still such an issue.

Of course the approach a client takes in regards to the process is in part down to me as a designer, I should educate a client in best practices but saying it and achieving this are two very different things. It’s becomes even more difficult when a client’s view is that a designer is little more than a pixel pusher. Trust me when I say pushing too hard against these types of clients only results in being called rude and being told it is my role to simply implement the wishes of the client.

Even though I’m sure the designers and developers within the ALA article do have their fair share of difficult clients they seem to be enjoying an easier relationship with their clients. Their prominence possibly affording them more understanding and educated clients. Their exposure to the same types of clients as the community at large deal with is diminished and so questions arise like ‘does their view of the community at large become skewed’? ‘Are these people viewing a world in which there is a greater understand of our profession whilst many struggle to jump over the most basic of hurdles’? To further the analogy have these people become the General’s delivering orders from a safe distance while the rest of us are still losing small skirmishes out in the trenches?

A little help from our friends

I don’t want this is be seen as discrediting the work or information that these people produce, nor does their position entitle others to do the same. My worry is that while the knowledge they impart is invaluable, the community at large is falling behind. Instead designers are still dealing with issues that we should be working hard to resolve so that the community at large can follow in the footsteps of our web pioneers and see the same bright future they lay out before us in the A List Apart article.

Trench Webfare by Kean Richmond

To be honest I can’t wrap my head round getting the right balance of how detailed to be with user validation in a couple of instances.

In a nutshell the question is:

Should I provide an error saying both the username and password are wrong if only one of them is actually wrong?

I was thinking about being more specific with the error messages. So if the username was correct but the password wasn’t only return an error detailing the password as wrong. Also on the flip side showing only a error for the username being wrong if the password was right.

I’ve scrapped the second idea because it seems stupid to confirm a password is correct if the username is wrong, surely a password can only be right once it’s associated to a username. There has to be implications on security too by confirming a password is correct and all a hacker would need to do is figure out the right username and then they’d be in.

So that left me with showing that only the password is incorrect if the username is right, but doesn’t the same problem exist in that I’m confirming a valid username and all a hacker has to do now is figure out the right password.

Does presenting an error message that says ‘some’ information is wrong work better by not telling some hacker what is or is not correct? But that doesn’t balance well with helping out users identify where the error actually lies.

So if anyone can help me come up with what they’d maybe do and why that would be really helpful.

How best to do user login validation by Kean Richmond