Principles of the Visual Language: A Dialect of Our Own Design
"A visual language informs all design, from architecture to print. Fluency in the same language drawn on by Bauhaus, mid-century Swiss, or postmodern design is essential for brilliant web design. In this practical talk, ground uniquely web-based interactions - from complex CSS3 animations and rotations to JavaScript behaviors - using that time-tested visual primer. Take a more considered approach to choices, evoke the desired emotive responses, learn how to better articulate your design decisions. Extend graphic design's grammar into a visual dialect of web design that guides us to smarter, beautifully balanced juxtapositions of elements in our new, multidimensional web experiences."
(Simon Collison)
Fig.1 Simon Collison (03 June 03 2011) "A Dialect of Our Own Design".
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
The jQuery Project
"jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.
jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and animation, advanced effects and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications."
(John Resig)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Google Code: Closure Compiler tool
"The Closure Compiler is a tool for making JavaScript download and run faster. It is a true compiler for JavaScript. Instead of compiling from a source language to machine code, it compiles from JavaScript to better JavaScript. It parses your JavaScript, analyzes it, removes dead code and rewrites and minimizes what's left. It also checks syntax, variable references, and types, and warns about common JavaScript pitfalls."
(Google Code)
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ubiquity: Firefoxs command line web interface gets more natural
"The Ubiquity add-on for Firefox is a 'command line interface for the web'. It enables you to interact with web services like Google search, Twitter, Yelp, Delicious and Gmail, as well as perform searches on content sites like Amazon, Wikipedia and Flickr. Ubiquity enables you to perform specific tasks, like e-mail a link to a Gmail contact, post a tweet or check the weather, all with just a few keystrokes."
(Michael Calore, 24 June 2009, Webmonkey)
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David RogersonSHARE
VNTH06: Interactive Nottingham Scenes
The Virtual Nottingham Treasure Hunt 2006 (VNTH06) is a joint student project initiated as part of a first-year learning requirement of the NTU (Nottingham Trent University) Multimedia programme.
Students contributed to the project through creating individual interactive presentations - that they made using: digital photographs; HTML hyperlinks; and JavaScript instigated user prompts. They were asked to respond to elements within designated parts of Nottingham City town centre (East Midlands, England) through using simple interactive features organised loosely as an interactive treasure hunt.
The online arrangement of the project has been designed to unify the collected student works through a manner that is both open and structured. I have used a grid of linked thumbnail images to do this based on the original map sectors used by students to make their projects. I have used this approach in an effort to enforce a single organising strategy for the project as a whole (through the use of a single top-level access point) and at the same time provide an open platform for students to consider the design of the relationships between each of their project elements within their individual presentations. I have also provided the students with the ability to interlink their projects with their peers projects and to the main menu through the use of a single contextual menu (that is available to users on the final screen of each of the student projects).
The publishing features of the project were automated using file-access functions (implemented using PHP server-side scripting) rather than through using the more traditional 3-tier application design approach (HTML forms - operational logic - persistent storage). I chose this method in this case because of its simplicity and its flexibility for facilitating easy reorganisation of content.
The project provided students with an opportunity to experiment with programming techniques in an uncomplicated and creative way. It allowed students to build simple JavaScript operations through combining: event-handlers; custom functions; and dynamic text fields.
VNTH06 integrates multiple NTU Multimedia student presentations into a single interactive work. It is a publishing platform for organising heterogeneous content and a means for students to locate themselves within their local creative practice network.
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MultimediaSHARE
