RIP Steve Jobs. 1955 – 2011.

Shocked and saddened by the news of the passing of Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs tonight. Despite his illness and his resignation as CEO just a few weeks ago, this still has affected me greatly. I had to excuse myself from dinner to compose myself and acknowledge my feelings when I learned of the news tonight, via a push message from CNN’s iPhone app of course. As US President Barack Obama put it, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

From Apple.com:

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

Links

Infojocks Sports Graphics

Infojocks - Ohio State

I can only assume this chart is showing all Ohio State's various NCAA violations.

I love sports. I love designs. I lust infographics. What could be better than an awesomely designed poster that beautifully and nerdily displays detailed sports statistics? Designer Jeremy Yingling creates and sells great looking posters and prints that illustrate sports history through various types of data visualization techniques. The logo is great too. Definitely a Ohio/Pennsylvania area bias right now (Jeremey is an Ohio U grad), but hopefully Infojocks will add some Texas stuff so I have an excuse to give him some money.

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Articles

Content Choreography – Content Strategy in a Responsive World

Trent Walton has written (and designed) a great (and beautiful) article on dealing with content in responsive web designs that adapt to the width of visitors’ browsers. Content Choreography is a good discussion of content organization, changing designs too much between various widths, and the workflow needed when creating responsive web sites. Definitely a must read for any designer or developer.

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MediaElement.js HTML5 Video Player

Great JavaScript script for HTML5 video and audio players with a Flash fallback. Includes plugins support and skins. Visitors get a good and consistent media experience regardless of what browser they’re using.

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Links

Screen Resolution != Browser Window

Something I’ve been preaching for years, but just because your web analytics say everyone visiting your site has as screen resolution of 4,000 pixels by 4,000 pixels doesn’t actually mean their browser is that size. Screen resolution size is not the same as browser window size. Most users, including myself, surf the web with their browser window at only a fraction of their screen resolution.

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Images

Mac vs. PC Infographic

Great looking, amusing infographic from the Hunch blog comparing survey answers of Mac users to PC users. Don’t read the comments on that post if you want to continue thinking humanity has a chance.

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Links

Does Your Facebook Page Work for Secure Users?

New-ish Facebook security settings allow site users to turn on https browsing. Depending on how you set up your company’s Facebook page or what apps you have running, this change could be resulting in an awful experience for those users when they visit your Facebook page.

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Quotes

Thematic Consistency and URL Design

This is a realization of the One Web (see 3.1 One Web) principle, whereby content should be accessible on a range of devices irrespective of differences in presentation capabilities and access mechanism. Web sites may paginate their content in various ways corresponding to differences in device characteristics; therefore the navigation structure of the site, and possibly its technical realization, may vary according to the device class that is being served. (See also [WebArch] Section 3.5.1).

A bookmark captured on one device should be usable on another, different type of device even if it does not yield exactly the same experience. If the page that was bookmarked is not appropriate for the device that is now using it, an alternative that is suitable should be provided.

W3C

Thematic consistency means no matter what device you’re using, the same content should pull up when you hit a URL.

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Articles

Apple Helping Microsoft Convince Windows XP Users to Finally Upgrade

Microsoft themselves had tons of trouble getting their customers to upgrade from Windows XP, but now maybe more people will finally take the plunge to the actually very good Windows 7 thanks to Apple and iCloud. Straight from the Apple press release: “Using iCloud with a PC requires Windows Vista or Windows 7; Outlook 2010 or 2007 is recommended for accessing contacts and calendars.” If you want to use all the new features of iOS 5 you’ll have to upgrade to an operating system less than 10 years old.

My work laptop was finally upgraded from WinXP to Win7 just a few months ago so I no longer have any computers running it but there are still plenty of office computers out there still chugging along on XP.

Source: Engadget

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Images

Responsive web design trending, mobile first still lagging

Responsive web design trending, mobile first still lagging

Jason Grigsby of CloudFour has posted an interesting (as always) article on the latest trends in mobile first responsive web design and the numbers show the majority of responsive designs provide very little, if any, file size savings for their mobile versions.

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