© 1995-2009 by
L. Michelle Johnson

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Inflatable Sheep

Passing Fancies

  1. WEB DESIGN
  • Perfect Pitch
    Jeremy's fight on the DMCA take-downs. Talk about over-reacting with Perfect Pitch....
  • Happy 14th Anniversary
    Today marks my website's fourteenth anniversary. How much is that in dog years? With Geocities going down, it made me think over that antiquated thing called a personal home page. I personally pooh-poohed those things called blogs (before that...
  • Geocities, iPhone Stuff, and Halloween
    Goodbye, Geocities! Will miss your early trying-on-the-web-for-size, your blink tags, your animated gifs, your naivete, so full of bluster, so making connections. Bless your heart. Beautiful light photos. Just makes me smile. [Thanks, Jason] AT&T's mixed iPhone message. “AT&T...
  • Usability Note
    I was reading The Myth of Usability Testing and ran across the link to Crazy Egg. Looks like a nicely visual way of tracking links on a webpage. Hoping to give it a try on work's Home Page....
  • Accessibility and Odd Bits
    I've been reading Glenda's blog for quite awhile. I like to find websites of individuals with various “handicaps” to help achieve a better understanding of their lives and how to design better, more accessible websites. They inspire me with...
  • All About Derek and One Other Thing
    I got my copy of Strange Light last Thursday. What an erie collection of photos from the Australian dust storm in September. Good job, Derek, on putting this little gem via MagCloud together! A side note and link for...
  • Actual Web Stuff
    No Chief Web Officer Required. I must be outta the loop. Had to look up what the term “C-Suite” meant. Found this other definition, which I'm not going to link to due to annoying ad and Bing pop-up and...
  • Time Flies
    Time Flies When You're Having… What happened to time???  It's been almost a month since I posted an entry.  I think I know why the absence - Twitter.   Okay, so I gave up using Twitter for myself as it...
  • Invoking Jane Curtin
    W3C, you ignorant slut!. Great piece about the other side of the conversation on XHTML2 vs. HTML5. Shane's title is provocative and his reasoning appears sound. [Thanks, Shelley! See also her other links on the topic] iPhone 3GS Launch...
  • Say It Ain't So
    XHTML2 is dead. I too have mixed feelings about this. Why exactly is all the support going to HTML5? I don't know enough about HTML5 to make any reasonable assumptions. I can't tell if HTML5 is going to be...
  • And in no particular order…
    Fake Steve is back! The New Yorker has an iPhone-specific website. I like their icon. [Thanks, Jason] DM of the Rings. Lord of the Rings D&D style. The State of California has just redesigned its website. Waaa! I want...
  • Lovely Day in the Neighborhood
    Jakob Nielsen makes a good case for not masking passwords. Women aren't funny?  I'm with Elissa in saying fuck you to Christopher.  Here's her list of some women writers who are “reliably hysterical, clever, and concise” with links to...
  • Kitchen Sink Redux
    Glenda has started her Accessibility 100 list to highlight improvements to consider whether it's bathroom design, store entry issues, or links on your webpage. It's a bit scary what the credit card companies are up to. I've been fortunate...
  • HTML, Mac Security, and Up
    EFF has just set up a new website, TOSBack. They make it easy by highlighting what was deleted and what was added. So far, they're tracking forty-four websites, Facebook, Google Blogger, and Data.gov to name a few. I hate...
  • Tag Clouds and De-Twittering
    Is Information Visualizaion the Next Frontier for Design? I created my own sheep tag cloud. Create yours at Wordle. I took a look at Twitter a couple of years. With it now being everywhere you turn, I tried it...
  • Web Design Goodness
    A handy blog, ATMac (Assistive Technology for Mac OS X Users). Thanks, Roger. A good definition of web design: “Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices...
  • Web Design Books: Share the Love
    Here are the books on my To Read List which seems to be never-ending, but in a good way. “Beautiful Evidence” - Edward Tufte “Creativity for Graphic Designers” - Mark Oldach “Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type...
  • Many Links
    Derek offers some tips on how to shoot events. Jason presents an argument for using real people instead of personas. Here's a bunch of lists bookmarks that I've been collecting. So many links, so little time. Chris's Top 100...
  • Learning and Happy Birthday Website
    Back in the 80's, I picked up a great book, “The Three Boxes of Life” written by Richard Nelson Bolles (who also wrote “What Color Is My Parachute”). You have three boxes—learn, work, play. His notion was that you...
  • Web Design and San Francisco
    The results of the 2007 Web Design Survey from A List Apart are in. Jeffrey led me to a handy tool when testing for colorblindness, the Colorblind Web Page Filter. Just enter your test URL and choose from a...
  • Conference and Web Design Books
    I went to An Event Apart in San Francisco. Nicely organized and well paced. Quite a few Macs and iPhones. Steve must be pleased. The speakers were for the most part good. I enjoyed Jason Santa Maria. It was...
  • Blahg'd
    Ever since I read Jeffrey's Blahg, my back burner brain has been mulling it over. November 1st will be my eleventh year on the Web and I feel like my website's been on life support this year. I've been...
  • Where are the Women
    Another Top 100 links list, Share Your OPML. Just quickly read down the list, and the only question I have is where are the women? You know, I generally don't care for Flash websites. But Bullseye Creative makes it...
  • Accessibility and PDFs
    I'm wrangling over PDFs and accessiblity. I know that you're supposed to have an HTML alternative, but that's not always possible for large PDF files. You can always use Adobe's conversion tool for converting PDFs to text or HTML,...
  • Early to Bed, Early to Rise…
    One of my biggest problems I face is how to get up at 5:00 a.m. to exercise, shower, get ready for work, and be there by 6:30 a.m. I have to work nine-hour days, and so, being a morning...
  • Re-Entry
    Has the Web world passed me by while life had it's way with me? I think I can still hop back on. First, to brush up on CSS…I see that CSS 2.1 is almost there (except for support in...
  • Early Bird
    Just got up from a weekend spent camping in the backyard again. With summer already fading, the fall chill is in the air. And how nice to watch the moon come up through the screen in the roof of...
  • Happy Feet
    With my foot and leg on the mend, I'm actually walking…at a snail's pace, but walking nonetheless without the aid of a wheelchair, crutches, or cane. And just in time for the Fourth of July weekend. Good timing. Joe...
  • Long Summer Days
    Web design and summer, such a nice combo. At the bottom of this entry is a picture of my youngest grandson, RayRay, enjoying the water sprinkler while Grandma Shell soaks the foot on the patio. The 7 Habits of...
  • Thankful Friday Ketchup
    Finally, a year-long project completed at work, and I come up for air. Had to check the newsreader to see what I missed this week. And OMG, it's a thankful Friday. Bruce asks if standards-based menus help accessibility and...
  • Photoshop and Nipples
    Photoshop techniques: See photoshop technique for Giving to Hiram masthead Reverse engineering the shiny, how to create the Dashboard look Aqua button tutorial [Thanks, Dori] Don't Photoshop out your nipples. Please. What the hey is up with the banning...
  • Friday My Day
    Another lovely day in the Valley. I'm on modified work duty with my broken leg which means I work at work two days a week and work from home three days a week. Love the flexibility, love working in...
  • QA Items
    While organizing the QA of a new feature on the website at work, I ran across these two links: Better Practice Checklist: Testing Websites with Users IBM's Ease of Use: how to measure your success Nice refresher with good...
  • Overload
    Have been in a state of information and to-do list overload. I didn't really realize it until I read Recipe for Simplicity. My every minute is spoken for until the end of the evening when I just veg in...
  • Local Conferences
    In March, I got to go to Web Design World in San Francisco. I was surprised at the number of people that weren't local. It was a good session and I got to hear Molly, Dave, and Doug talk...
  • Thankful Friday
    …Guidelines for Accessible and Usable Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work with Screen Readers
  • Friday My Day
    Top 10 Usability Blunders of the Big Players
  • Cheesy Grin
    …Good laugh: CSS Zen Garden, Geocities style [Thanks, Jeffrey]…
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