Web Design and Development in Greenville, SC | Merge

Here at Merge, we do a top-knotch thing that we like to call our Lunch and Learn. Your average Lunch and Learn consists of a randomly selected Merge-ian telling the rest of Merge all about something really awesome.

We also use a top-knotch CMS called Drupal. There's a new version of Drupal in the works: Drupal 7. The great thing about Drupal is that it's open source, which means that it's free and anyone can contribute. I just happen to be one of those anyones, and I spent a good bit of time talking with other Drupal developers about the new features, fixing bugs, contributing code, etc. Needless to say, I'm pretty pumped about the new release.

This time, it was my turn, and I chose to talk about the work done so far. Drupal 7 adds a lot of features and also changes a lot of things for the better. Some of those things include:

• A new administrative toolbar
• A new shortcut bar
• A new administration theme designed by the great Mark Boulton
• A new administrative overlay which allows you to access your site's administration without ever leaving the front end of the site
• A new bunch of really cool things that makes the lives of programmers a lot easier

The common thread behind most of the new additions to Drupal 7 is that they all make Drupal easier to use. In light of this, Merge is going to be taking a lot of the cool ideas from Drupal 7 and start giving them to our clients now. These new additions include a shortcut bar, a really easy to use administration interface, and a nice customized help section for each of our clients.

Why? Because Merge isn't in the business of cranking out websites. Merge is in the business of providing solutions for clients' needs.

Bottom line: Web development isn't about making pretty websites, it's about making sites that are usable and functional, and that's what Merge does best.

So as a direct result of our awesomeness and the fact that we work for a pretty fresh web shop, a few of us over at Merge got sent to Boston for An Event Apart last week. As I sit here thinking about it, I'm overcome with the intense-isity of the trip and I'm going to try to shoot it all at you in a few paragraphs so hold on to your hats, friends. Here goes.

For the unfamiliar, here's a little background information. An Event Apart is basically the live version of A List Apart and that alone makes it worth going to. A List Apart is an online magazine focusing on web standards which has been around since the dawn of web geeks and has done more to help the web than I can even understand. It hurts, almost.

So at An Event Apart, all of those awesome things come together in one room for a rapid-fire succession of speeches from some of the most respected mugs making web sites, including Jason Santa Maria, Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer (who couldn't make it because of some family medical issue), and Dan Cederholm (of SimpleBits and "Bulletproof Web Design"), among others. This ain't no water cooler discussion.

Fast forward past all the giddy packing and geekspeak, and we're suddenly on the way. Love how that happens. Suzy, Kim, and I met up at Merge Sunday morning and good old Kiminem agreed to drive us to the Charlotte airport. Kim and Suzy were pretty laid back about this whole flying ordeal, I guess since both of them have flown recently. I, on the other hand, hadn't been on a plane since my 4th grade trip to D.C. so I was basically the ultimate tourist. I not only had two laptops with me, but I was also ridin' dirty with a video camera and a regular old superzoom pointer and shooter, both with a pretty hardcore case. So every three minutes I'm snapping some sweet shots or taking a video of nothing. I'm sure they loved that.

So we champion on through the car ride, the security, the plane ride, the hotel, the wandering through the streets of Boston in the rain, and suddenly we're walking into the conference room. Then the party started. Here's day one:

Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon - Jared Spool (of User Interface Engineering)

• Don't copy something (like Amazon) without understanding WHY it's successful.
• Check out the reviews of Tuscan Whole Milk for a good laugh -- Amazon depends on customer reviews.
• Take risks! Don't fear new ideas.
• Redesign SLOWLY -- don't pull a Facebook.

Content First - Kristina Halverson (of Brain Traffic)

• Content is put off and ignored.
• Content should be thought about first.
• Someone needs to be in charge of content.
• Use "page tables" which examine the content of each page and keep records of it.

Thinking Small - Jason Santa Maria

• <3 you JSM!
• KEEP A SKETCHBOOK! "Sketching is not about being a good artist, it's about being a good thinker."
• Important to get the message across using JUST the design.
• Determine the problem before diving into a solution.
• Font picking tips: pick 1 serif and 1 sans-serif, pick fonts from the same designer because they look similar.

Photo: Kim and Mike with Jason Santa Maria. Photo credit to Adactio.

Future Shock Treatment - Jeremy Keith (of Clearleft and Adactio)

• Lots of helpful tips (add query string to end of CSS link to prevent caching, add "hasjs" body class via JS for JS-specific styles, etc.
• Websites do not need to look exactly the same in every browser.
• CSS frameworks bad because they force their markup on you.
• JS frameworks good because they adapt to YOUR markup.

Designing with Psychology In Mind - Joshua Porter (from Bokardo Design)

• Behavior is a function of the person and the environment.
• We can change a user's behavior by changing the environment.
• Behavior should come before design.
• "The behavior you see is the behavior you've designed for."
• Single locus of attention = the fact that we can only actively think about one thing at a time.

DIY UX - Whitney Hess

• We are all UX (User Experience) designers.
• UX testing is essential, must be done personally.
• Even if you just go to Starbuck's and ask people to try stuff out

Bulletproof A-Z - Dan Cederholm (of SimpleBits and Bulletproof Web Design)

• Check out http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/
• Introduced idea of "progressive enrichment" instead of enhancement.
• Progressive enrichment involves adding little rewards via CSS, sort of like adding minerals to pasta (enriching it)
• Talked about RGBA, border-radius, text-shadow, etc.

With that, we all went and passed out for about an hour before going to the most awesome bar for the most awesome party of the most awesome bunch of geeks you've ever seen. We spent a while talking to Jeremy Keith and walked back to the hotel with Jason Santa Maria, two pretty cool mugs.

Suddenly, it's day two, in which we actually get the free breakfast and start out for another machine-gun round of web talk.

Beyond Pixel Pushing: A Simple Way To Better Sites and Happier Clients - Brett Welch (from GoodBarry)

• Cut scope, not price.
• Aim for the middle ground clients, that aren't clueless but also don't think they're smarter than you.
• Say "tell me about your business" instead of "what kind of website do you want?"

A Site Redesign - Jeffrey Zeldman

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• Redesigning without fixing problems is a missed opportunity.
• User research is NOT market research.
• User the "Alzheimer Method" with clients...repeat everything often. They're busy. They forget.
• Listen between the words. "Add a link" really means "We want to get more people on this page."

Flash and Web Standards - Daniel Mall

• Programming languages are NOT solutions, they are tools.
• Use HTML instead of XML to feed flash because HTML is more easily indexed.
• Important to determine the correct amount of PLAY for a website (YouTube vs. Vimeo for example)

Accessibility - Experiments at the Edges of Experience - Derek Featherstone

• Websites need to be easily navigated using only the keyboard (sight impaired users, motor impaired users, etc.)
• It's possible to do this for every site.
• Examples: added keyboard navigation for GMaps and absolutely positioned invisible buttons for YouTube so that you can tab to them.

Findability Bliss Through Web Standars - Aarron Walter

• Want to help people find our site, find stuff inside our site, and rediscover our site.
• Don't use keywords in more than 7% of content because that's unnatural and bad for SEO.
• Meta tags don't help with Google but descriptions do show up on results page so be thoughtful with them.
• Google is starting to recognize microformats so we need to start using them.

Changing The World - SimpleScott

• This mug created Obama's Logo, Site, Print ads, etc.
• Worked hard.
• Didn't learn anything, but interesting nonetheless.

And with that, we went home. We had to skip out on the last two presentations, one of which was a discussion of the community from a Flickr employee, and the other was something by Andy Clarke, which was bound to be good. But we had to leave. You can only handle so much cool crap before your head starts to ooze it back out.

Bonus: we got to see the sunset from the plane, which was pretty freaking amazing. And that's our trip. Later, Boston. It was a party.