Web Design Inside-Out

Whenever I start a new web project my first instinct is to start with the home page design. It’s fine to design that way for a brochure site, but when confronted with a dynamic website that will host a great deal of content, or a web application, I find that what works best is to design from the inside out.

The web is non-linear by nature; a designer is able to nudge the user towards viewing certain page elements (by using nothing less than sorcery, I assure you) but ultimately the user is in control of what page she wants to go to next on your site.

I found that the most logical design method is to start applying my design concepts to the “deeper” pages first, the pages that will contain the most content. That way I can tell from the start whether or not a design will work with the content that I have, and if not I can figure out sooner how to make it work.

Amazon.co.uk recommends

In an ultimately futile search to find a PAL version of Rock Band here in Jeddah, I caved and decided to purchase it online. I went to Amazon UK for the first time in about six years.

When I logged in I was amused by what Amazon thinks I still need. Amazon Recommends for you: IGCSE Biology. I literally LOL’d as I remembered how about six years ago I ordered my IGCSE books online, and haven’t returned to Amazon UK since, so those were the only recommendations Amazon had for me. Thank you for the chuckles, Amazon, but thankfully I’m way past that point. phew.

Look, Ma! No Save!

A couple of months ago I started using iMovie ‘08 at work. I use it to do very light video editing, superimposing text, etc. The first time it crashed I panicked. I thought to myself: OMG I didn’t save! When I relaunched it I saw that all my work was there, but I still fumbled through the menus trying to find a “Save” function and couldn’t. 2 Seconds of googling later led me to the discovery that iMovie ‘08 does not in fact have a save function.

I have very mixed feelings about this: on the one hand it’s great to break out of the cycle of constant “Cmd+S”ing that interrupts my workflow, and on the other hand that sense of security you get from saving, and iterative saving, is lost. I’m at your mercy, iMovie, and I don’t like it.