Firefox 3 final is out now.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Frosty, while I do think that you have a lot to learn (and should probably listen to Asher+Kuci a bit), I don't think your design is horrible.

JM

It is not horrible, it's not great or even very good. It's a middling effort by "designers" who think they can make functional webpages, thus the "C" I gave it.

[FrostyBoy]

Yeah, let's all take design lessons from Asher, he knows what he's talking about.

[Asher]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
No, you don't lose anything.

As for guidelines, I have been inside, outside, under and over them so many times. I know, I know I know. I am really at the edge. I've been designing since I was 10, working as one since 15, professionally when I was 18. I design brochures, postcards, logos, emblems, posters, massive backdrops, letterheads, websites, leaflets, business cards, CD covers, folder covers, book covers, book pages, stickers, odd **** and I do game graphics for a hobby. You name it, I've probably done it. And it's not just because I know what I am doing, I am actually good at it. I am praised for my work and in high demand.

So I raise my eyebrow at those who question me or talk to me as if I am supposed to learn something in order to go from ameteur to professional? Really, just stop.

I don't care how long you've been doing this. The fact that you're readily dismissing consensus suggestions for your site tells me you don't want to learn how to be a good interface / site designer. You're happy making tiny webpages for tiny companies that are flashy but not terribly usable or functional. If that's the niche you want, then fine, but that's career-limiting.

The #1 factor in designing webpages and interfaces is usability. That is their entire purpose. We are not creating pretty paintings to hang up in hallways, you're crafting a way for a user to interact with a system to accomplish what they want.

It is quite clear to me you're a pretty talented graphics artist, but you are an amateur site designer at best. You can still be an amateur site designer, even if you've done it for 10 years, if you don't care to learn how to improve usability on sites and don't take any suggestions to heart.

[Asher]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
.NET, a bit of CSS, AJAX, js.

Can you elaborate on .NET? And I find it funny you list JS as well as AJAX, when JS is incorporated in AJAX...are you just listing buzzwords?

[Asher]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Yeah, let's all take design lessons from Asher, he knows what he's talking about.

I'm not sure why you think I'm unqualified to do interface design. It's part of my daily job and I studied it at university as well.

The difference is I design interfaces (currently) for investment bankers. I'm not sure you realize how fast-paced this market is. They need to instantly see the relevant information on their screen and rapidly perform tasks in the application. Every second counts, quite literally. And the complexity and breadth of information these applications display is astounding and certainly a far more complicated beast than a simple website for booking hotel rooms. And the experience teaches you a lot about interface design -- when I looked at screenshots of your website a whole ton of low-hanging fruit popped out at me that indicated poor usability. And that kind of insight is possible because I have designed interfaces for incredibly anal people -- I know what they'd tell me exactly if I showed them that kind of interface.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
.NET, a bit of CSS, AJAX, js.

Yeah, that's like saying a car is made out of metal, plastics, composites, ceramics, and polymers. That doesn't necessarily suggest good or bad engineering. (And it's about as redundant as your line, too.)

And it doesn't answer my question.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
I wonder if the previous issues are fixed this time.

Jesus christ, I don't even know what to say.

I would just like to say I accurately predicted Frosty would be this out to lunch.

[MOBIUS]

FrostyBoy - the Ben Kenobi of Web Designers...

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by MOBIUS
FrostyBoy - the Ben Kenobi of Web Designers...

Oh, dude.

Be nice.

BK doesn't pretend to be right about anything!

[Asher]

I'm also curious how long Frosty has been working on this design. I recall him mentioning it months ago and it's still eight months (!) from release? It's a pretty basic app.

------

Sort of related...

This week I've been prototyping a trade audit tool for a major US main investment bank. There's massive demand for this kind of tool given the credit crunch...

The app is bare-bones and is strictly a prototype. The graphics artists haven't been looped in yet. This is all dynamic though... I've done all of this stuff this week alone, pretty rapidly compared to Frosty.

I used some crappy open source video capture software so there's lots of artifacts, and YouTubing it didnt help the quality, but you can get the jist of it:

[Q Classic]

You know why that app's design sucks?

I tried to click on it, but nothing I was typing was changing what was happening on screen. It's like it wasn't interactive or something. So not Web 2.0

so rite nao

[Asher]

Ultimately the app will also support up to 6 monitors natively and real-time data feeds so the execs at the bank can monitor asset flow.

Right now they get reports every 2 hour in Excel with PivotTables and graphs which are pretty sloppy.

[Q Classic]

You know how I know that app sucks?

You're not using .NET, AJAX, some css, js...

[Asher]

Well, I am using .NET at least.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Mr Snuggles
Well, I am using .NET at least.

Oh, honey, I knew you couldn't make a complete file of pail.