A graphic designer and I had a discussion yesterday about adding a small piece of functionality to a site we are building together. I mocked up the elements and asked for some feedback. I was thinking along the lines of - ‘is this approach worth developing further?’. The designer’s response was along the lines of - ‘can you line A up with B, and C up with D?’. I said - ’sure, but do you think this is a good solution?’

This highlighted something interesting - i was thinking in terms of time and he was thinking about space. What i mean by that is that my

interests lay in the sequence of events that occurs between the user and the interface over a period of time; whereas his lay in the more static visual relationships between items on the page.

It was a reminder to me of how crucial it is to consider both of these factors to achieve successful interface design.

You may have noticed the beginnings of plans for CSS frameworks/conventions. It’s something i’ve been thinking about for a while now, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

Something has crossed my mind more and more recently - the more we use frameworks such as Rails, Prototype, Scriptactulous, etc. the more I start to wonder about the longer-term effects of everyone using them. Let’s take Rails as an example - it’s really easy to do things such as auto-completed text boxes, standard error messages, AJAX with blind-down effects, etc. There’s an understandable excitement about these things - it’s refreshing after years of low-interactivity HTML. However, I predict some downsides. Firstly, inappropriate application of technology - rather than considering what is the best solution to a problem, designers and developers will gravitate towards the the easy options.

Secondly, it would be very easy to get complacent, with all these time-saving features and forget to innovate. Gizmos will only be impressive for so long, until everyone else is using them. Building your success on these kinds of features will leave you swamped with competition in the near future. I believe, forging ahead with your own ideas, while sensibly applying the help of frameworks is much healthier.

To conclude, what I’m pointing at here is not actually a problem with the frameworks themselves; it’s a problem of complacency in the mainstream workplace. There will always be a small number of people forging ahead with their own ideas, solving problems in radical new ways, setting the lead for everyone else to thoughtlessly follow…

Over and out.

Yesterday a tornado went past our office window in North London. It only lasted for a minute or two, then it was blue sky again. While the gusts of wind attacked a nearby tree, i noticed a wood pigeon clutching on to a branch. It looked rather scared but determined to stick it out.

I realised afterwards, that this week I have felt a bit like that pigeon.

Our industry clearly doesn’t need another buzz-word but Tornadic Web Development does have a ring to it. Now, i just have to come up with a meaning …