For my IxD homies out there:  A couple of online tools worth evaluating:

Rapid Rabbit

Rapid prototyping tool which allows you to diagram and create links between pages or dialogs (depending on what you are doing!). Seems good for high-level design planning and fundamental screen interactions and workflow — but I haven’t test driven this yet.

Pencil Project

Free and Open Sketching/Prototyping plug-in for Firefox.  This one I *just* installed and plan to do a little monkey bidness with it.  I mean, good monkey bidness.  Ah, you know what I mean.  Either way, it has stencils that are stylized specifically for Windows XP/Vista and GTK+ environs… it’s not to say you couldn’t prototype with this tool for web applications, but I’d wager there are other tools that work better for mocking up web application UIs.

For me, I still heart visio stencils from www.guuui.com.

First things first: Resource Interactive (yeah, I’m looking at YOU, Resource!) posted a new technology blog. First real topic post (as opposed to the welcome post) is about web accessibility — in my experience as a consultant on past development teams, a much feared, possibly misunderstood (and somewhat maligned) concept by developers, project managers, and business analysts alike.

Once I actually heard “Why do we care so much about BLIND people, anyway?” uttered by a STATE employee over the course of one of my projects. Evidently it was not apparent that they worked with a blind person, and several vision-impaired individuals in their own department. I assure you, they weren’t trying to be a jerk, but they genuinely did not understand why my team put so much effort in designing, testing, and retesting each of our interfaces.

The RI article itself is pretty good, a decent overview of what developers and designers face when building a site these days, a short survey of possible impairments or barriers, as well as a few clever browser-oriented evaluation resources. However, there are some resources not cited in the post that I feel have incredible value — both as a method for automated testing, but even more so as a resource to truly understanding the experience of those with disabilities as they use internet technologies. I’ll be working on a complementary article this week addressing some of the other meaty aspects of accessibilty evaluation (it’s not just a government-mandated checklist anymore!) as well as providing a context for why accessible practices are so important in web development.
Next: Adobe Beta Versions: Anyone want to try out some beta-version Adobe Software?

• Dreamweaver Beta –> http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/dreamweavercs4/
• Fireworks Beta –> http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fireworkscs4/
• Soundbooth –> http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundboothcs4/

Also: Buzzword Update: I’m pretty stoked about this one, because I’ve been using Buzzword for a while, and it would appear that our voices have been heard to export Buzzword docs as PDFs. Seems like a no-brainer as Buzzword has not been branded as an Adobe Acrobat product officially as of this weekend. To my clients and cohorts — yup, it means you’ll have to update your logins to an Adobe Id. Sorry about that.

The most clever abuse of radio buttons ever performed by a dinosaur.

This is for my UI homies, all 2 of them.

I don’t really think the title applies to the post, but it was just a phrase my sister used the other day and it made me laugh. (I’ll not emphasize that she said it to me.)
I’ve been out hunting around for more neat tools for user interface design and development, and once again I find myself impressed with the tools that are out there…and the endless possibilities for producing some sweet interfaces.

In matters of Information Architecture and User Interaction design in web development, there is an update to the guuui.com Visio templates that I have been using (quite successfully) for my several projects. And who couldn’t use a great nail gun, as a User Interface designer?

In the matters of implementation of really cool user interface effects, I’m very impressed with MooTools – a compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework. The nicest thing about the MooTools site is that even with javascript turned off, the site is still usable. Excellent design – functionality and flash (without the Flash)! I’ll be playing with this soon, so expect some fun things from the playground.

During my exploration of AJAX techniques, I found a version of a drag n drop shopping cart that was used on just a handful of sites. My initial investigation found that there was a drag n drop cart developed using Ruby on Rails — but I wanted to see an implementation in PHP. Luckily, I came across a like-minded individual who loved the Ruby on Rails version but needed a PHP version. Since I am still learning, I took a look at the PHP-version source and customized it….just a little.

Here’s the Hot Hot Date Cart in the gui girl’s design playground. Order your date with the gui girl today!

It’s awesome what a little downtime can do. I now have some time to explore the current state of web technologies such as AJAX (It’s not just for cleaning anymore!) and Macromedia Flex. Today, I decided to explore the various javascript libraries graciously provided by the developers at Yahoo!.

Yahoo! User Interface [YUI] Library

Lots of different interface patterns and APIs are available. My lament would be “where was this 2 years ago when I started design on SACWIS?”, as several patterns I attempted to create along the way are captured here. Very cool stuff. I am so trying some of this new stuff out on the gui girl UI playground.