www.evanheisler.com

So it has been awhile since I have posted. Not for lack of ideas, but lack of gusto to sit down and assemble my thoughts. But with the advent of this thing called spring that is finally upon us after what I would consider 6 and a half months of winter, I am rejuvenated. Frustrated that it has taken so long, but I tell myself I might take it for granted if I lived anywhere else (except maybe Siberia). And I am not the only one. On a 40 mile bike ride on Sunday, I was amazed at the number of people out pedaling themselves around. I also saw a number of people paddling kayaks on a few rivers, and people flying kites. I think that is one of the great things about this state is that on the rare occasion that we have agreeable weather, people come out of the woodwork to enjoy it.

Some might be saying, “Evan, if you haven’t been blogging, what have you been up to in the last few months?” I plan on having a new version of this site launched in the next week or two, which will have a few new projects up, so keep an eye out for that.

Other than that, here are a few quick reviews/opinions of some media I have spent time with recently:

Baby Mama

Tina Fey and Amy Pohler movie. Figured it would be good for a laugh, and it was, but only a few. Wouldn’t say I disliked it, but I won’t be avidly promoting it…except maybe just to see Steve Martin in it.

Bee Movie

Yeah, I know, old news. Again, it was good, but not great. With the fire power of Jerry Seinfelds writing, DreamWorks Animation, and so many $10+ million celebs doing voice work, I had high hopes, and rightfully so I would say. In short, I don’t regret seeing it, but I probably won’t watch it again.

Ratatouille

This on the other hand, I liked a lot. Original story, great animation work, well written characters. Everything a movie geared towards 9 year olds should have.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

i got this book for Gretchen shortly after it was released but never got around to reading it until a little while ago. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I think most people would, except for those who still feel that “ignorance is bliss”. Michael Pollan writes in a style that is informative, yet casual, so even the most scientifically illiterate wouldn’t be too turned off by the information portrayed. Although, with that being said, at the end I came to the conclusion that the book reported on many facts of the food infrastructure in this country, but didn’t provide all that much insight. That is just my opinion of course and I don’t know if it was Pollan’s intention to “convince” people of anything. I will also be reading In Defense of Food so I am curious to see how Pollan’s writing comes across in that. I will say this though from the meals that he prepares in the book—I know nothing about cooking.

Hey Whipple, Squeeze This

Unless you work in design or marketing you probably have never heard of this book. Even if you do, maybe you still aren’t familiar with it. While there is a ton of good information in this book about marketing, it definitely is starting to feel a little dated. The writing is excellent, its a quick page-turner, and the case-study-type anecdotes are pretty amusing and insightful. I am just waiting for someone to come out with something similar geared more towards digital media.

No Country for Old Men

I heard a lot of hype around this movie, so I was pretty excited to watch it. I heard many-a-review say that they had a problem with the ending. I thought it was a great ending for the story that was told. But after reaching this conclusion and then discussing the movie with a few friends, I realized that the ending I had “seen” was completely different than the ending of others. Which in itself usually means a well written script in my opinion, but I can see how some would not appreciate this. Also the lack of any soundtrack— a tough thing to get away with but the Coen Brothers were really smart about this as well.

That is everything I could think of for the moment, besides things like Learning ActionScript 3.0 and JQuery in Action which I will spare the gory details on at this juncture. Thanks for tuning in, I hope to have some more thoughts to add shortly.

This post is not a tutorial on how to style form elements, but rather to hear how others out there feel about it. Many usability aficionados will say it is not okay to alter the appearance of form fields for the users’ sake. A user comes to expect certain things about fields and what to do with them based on their appearance. Is this reason enough not to change their appearance?

I recently added a client section to my web site to serve as a central place to exchange files, see updates, collect feedback, etc. I didn’t want the login to be buried making every trip to the members section a journey, so I settled with adding it into my header. The standard form fields felt extremely obtrusive when used in this instance where the form is not a primary object on the page. I also knew I did not want to rely on javascript to handle the form; I wanted to maintain a standards-based, valid PHP form that would be usable and unobtrusive.

Enter the styling.

I styled the fields to blend with the rest of the site. Does a user look at them and not know what to do with them? I hope not. Of course, this is a pretty specific instance and I can see the argument for avoiding styling registration or order forms, but I do not agree with some who say we should not style forms because it is “what users expect to see”. As a designer, sometimes that is enough reason to insist on changing them!

Although, one does have to take into consideration that the web is not a perfect world, and the varying renderings of forms, even in standards-based browsers is almost enough to make a front-end developer go kicking and screaming back to the designer saying “don’t mess with forms!” I do my development/browsing with Camino. I think it is the most evolved browser, and would encourage others to use it. And as such, I am happy with the form appearance in Camino. Safari keeps their white bevel/drop shadow border around the elements, which is frustrating, but not enough to make me give up yet. Firefox seems to bloat the form and make it larger than other browsers. As of writing this, I haven’t checked IE (I know, tisk, tisk).

So I guess my take on the whole thing:

• Standards and usability: Very important
• Design/development: Also very important if it enriches the user experience

Jakob Nielsen is a very intelligent and highly respected individual, but I don’t want all my hyperlinks blue and underlined, or all my text black on a white background, or all my form fields to follow the prescribed layout.

I recently added a few projects. Got any feedback? Take a look and let me know.

Infinite MPG is an idea I had for a web application that would encourage people to use alternative means of transportation. Basically the app is a calendar/diary a person can use to calculate their carbon emissions, and hopefully through awareness, lower them. I personally like knowing how much money I could be saving and how much pollution I am preventing. It could be used in a companies intranet for inner office competitions too.

Urbanly Green is the idea of Cody Chamberlain, a good friend of mine also concerned with environmental impact. His concept is to create a resource for people relative to their location. By using the site, a user could find sustainable businesses and recreation close by. The concept for the design is to use tags to filter related material.

So any feedback? Let me know.