I’ve been running IE 7 beta on test machines for a while now, but just installed it on my production machine through auto-update.

It was a smooth update. The poor bookmark UI in IE 7 however, is the one thing that keeps me using Firefox as my default browser. That’s too bad. I really like the DOM explorer add on for IE versus the Firefox developer toolbar extension).

After installing IE 7 you may notice that Dreamweaver does not remember your FTP passwords for your sites. Adobe … released an update that’ll fix the disappearing passwords.

(1) Buy more ram for Photoshop. I know many people are skeptical if you’ll see much performance difference when using 1 gig of ram versus over 1 gig of ram. But, if you’re running Photoshop with large files you will benefit from more ram. I’ve been running 1 gig of ram on my Dell 9150, Pentium Dual Core 3Ghz for about 8 months. It’s been nice, but lately, I’ve had to work with 100+ layer Photoshop docs and things were getting slow. The extra gig I just added (for a total of 2 gig) has increased my typical Photoshop tasks 30% to 250%. The time savings will pay for the $99 gig of ram update in no time. Below is my very unscientific benchmark test of Photoshop speed before and after the ram upgrade.

(2) The next tip. Buy your ram from The Chip Merchant. I remember buying my first ram upgrade for my Mac Quadra 700 from The Chip Merchant in 1991. They had the best prices and service then, and still do 15 years later!

I had a ram slot question about my Dell when I went to install the new 1 gig module so I called The Chip Merchant. Within minutes their tech support knew my exact Dell model and everything about the installation. He explained some nitty gritty details for options I’d have down the road and we were done. I love The Chip Merchant.

I started to redesign www.asp.net this week. The project has been in talks for months but was green lit recently. I spent this past week on full scale black and white wire frames / storyboards. They’ll be more storyboards of the user experience than abstracted flow charts. Flow charts of information architecture are too abstract and can get people agreeing on concepts that just don’t matter to end users. The current site has a ton of information, product types and a diverse audience. The redesigned site will sing with less visual fluff and more easily findable content for specific audiences. Slick visuals and pretty graphics will be the easier part, as they always are. Working the information design, writing style, extensibility and seeing the transfer of the existing content into semantic formats will be the heavy lifting.

The last few months I’ve been designing the Microsoft IIS web site. It was a pleasure to work with Bill Staples, Chris Adams and all the folks at Telligent to pull this site together. We have some new features and design additions coming this summer as well.

1. Design for the user experience not for technologies and tools
2. Design with semantic mark-up in mind
3. Design for accessibility, you’ll get more than just accessibility benefits
4. Make menus from lists
5. Use CSS and image sprites for hover effects or when you need a related set of graphics to be available on the client at the same time
6. Use the yellow fade technique to give feedback to users
7. Create wire frames as full size storyboards that “play” in time like animation storyboards (flow charts and static Visio line drawings don’t communicate the real life experience of the UI and will ultimately hurt the end product)
8. For complex web apps start with wire frame storyboards instead of full color Photoshop comps
9. Know your target browser “folds” (horizontal and vertical)
10. Hand off XHTML & CSS to developers not PSDs

Check out the new (free) beta download of Microsoft Expression Web Designer. It’s looking quite nice and heck of a lot cheaper ($0 currently) than Dreamweaver. Vitamin has a good review if you want to see screen shots before downloading.

My friend Jeff Prosise at Wintellect referred me to the Government and Securities Division at Intergraph. After an NDA, some talks and a clear statement of work I started a new user interface project with them. The developers at Intergraph are top notch. I’m humbled and eager to work with them and their products. Thanks Jeff, I owe you sushi at least.

If you’ve tried to use rounded corners on the ASP.NET 2.0 menu control you’ll notice that the control renders a white background behind the entire bounds of the drop down menus (in IE 6). There is no user interface in Visual Studio (or Visual Web Developer) to get rid of this white space.
read more …

Fun projects are so … fun. The Made In Express Contest was one of them. The finalists are already chosen, but you can track their progress along with judges Chris Pirillo, Phillip Torrone and Robert Scoble. I’m interested to see how the Community based video remix app (PixelParty) turns out.

I just started writing this blog. Stay tuned for more nitty gritty on PNG post processing (lets hope Macromedia whips Photoshop PNG output into shape), how to format CSS for ASP.NET 2.0-centric developers, storyboarding rich AJAX UI’s and hopefully some more (no promises : ).

Most of this project is under hush hush non-disclosure. I’ll post a link when it’s live in the summer 2006. It’s been a pleasure to work with Scott Cate, owner of MyKB based in Scottsdale, AZ.

I’m designing a WIKI UI and look and feel with the Microsoft ASP.NET group. The WIKI will showcase Microsoft’s new “Atlas” framework.

ASP.NET “Atlas” is a package of new Web development technologies that integrates an extensive set of client script libraries with the rich, server-based development platform of ASP.NET 2.0. That was a mouth full. More simply, its AJAX plus ASP.NET 2.0. Cool combo! Download the ATLAS bits for free.