Johan Ronsse

Remember that post about the new Belgian Railways signage? Apparently they added a tutorial.

Photo via Rik.

Some time ago, I used to make a lot of these “brochure” type websites.

What frustrated me back then was that more often than not I was forced into an uncomfortable position. I had to make a good website, but the client’s branding would be subpar.

Their logo wouldn’t be any good, they would have chosen a cheap font somewhere, and basically they didn’t have a good brand to start with.

So I hear you say: that’s your job, isn’t it? To fix that?

I don’t agree. I think branding is a separate project. It needs to be done before the website project. For me, branding is a combination of a logo, a brand message and assets (illustrations, icons, patterns, etc.)

As a web designer, you’re confronted with this situation often, so you just roll with it and do the best you can. Maybe you nudge the client that they really need to improve their logo, and they need work on brand assets, and also they need better copywriting.

Because you are “the designer”, before you know it, this is your work: fixing the client’s brand. You are hiring illustrators, you are working with copywriters, you are organizing photo shoots and you are employing logo designers to figure the right brand for the client

Or, if you are starting out, maybe you just do the best you can with iStockphoto.com, whatever you can find using a Creative Commons search. There is no font budget so you look for open source fonts, or you are “creative” (I really hate that word) with what you have. You write the copy yourself because nobody else cares and the dummy copy that you wrote becomes the main copy of the final website.

The problem with all of this is you are wearing 2 hats: brand designer, and website designer. Branding is important, but it’s a separate craft. It can’t be sneaked into a website design project.

I mention CRUD a lot, and then people have this look on their face like they don’t know what I’m talking about.

So I think I’ll explain CRUD, this way I can always link back this article.

In software there is this term called CRUD, which stands for Create, Read, Update and Delete (sometimes called Destroy).

Think of a photos application: you can read your photos, update them, destroy them. Then you can create albums, update the albums (put photos in them), and if you want, you can delete them. Deleting sounds a lot nicer than destroying.

I like to think when you can spot these CRUD-like patterns, you could call what you are making an application. When what you are making is mostly about accessing content, you are making a website.

But I can easily shoot down my own argument here: there are also apps for primarily accessing content – like the Kindle reading application.

For years I’ve argued there is a difference between “apps” and “websites” but ultimately I have to agree with Jeremy‘s thoughts here. Website vs. app is a false dichotomy; it’s better to think of things as being on a sliding scale. And even that is hard to define. His Wikipedia example is very good: a page on Wikipedia is a document… until you start editing it. Is it an app now?

I love Modernizr to check if a browser support a certain CSS feature, but I found myself in the situation where I only had to check for flexbox support.

In this case, it seems a bit ridiculous to load Modernizr. You can use the following code instead:

var doc = document.body || document.documentElement;
var style = doc.style;

if ( style.webkitFlexWrap == '' ||
    style.msFlexWrap == '' ||
    style.flexWrap == '' ) {
  doc.className += " supports-flex";
}

Via Ethan Marcotte’s article “Putting My Patterns through Their Paces”.

Time for a new blog! This time I will try to actually blog a bit like… uh… blogging used to be?

For those who don’t know, I have a long history of blogs all the way back to 2006. In the beginning I blogged to learn, and when I went freelance a couple of years ago I blogged to build up my reputation.

The past few years I’ve mostly been blogging to promote the company I work for but since that’s a much bigger story now than just me, in a way I now feel I don’t have an outlet for my thoughts on the company blog anymore.

I’ve written tons of stuff the past few months and for me it’s been frustrating that none of it really got published in a proper way. This new site is a fresh start to finally get those thoughts online.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you can prefill credit card information when filling out forms on the web? Well, in iOS, you can.

Make sure Safari > Settings > Autofill > Credit card is turned on. This setting will allow you to add a credit card by taking a photo of it or manually adding the data.

When the setting is on, if you go to a form on the web, provided it is served through a secure connection (SSL), and it has the correct references, Safari will offer to autofill the credit card information.

I presume developers of native apps will also be able to prompt the user for their credit card information using Apple’s provided API’s.

The trick to making it work on the web is using certain “name” attributes on the inputs e.g. “ccName”. I haven’t personally verified the pattern that Safari is matching to, but this code sample of a form should help you on your way.

The DSLR is looking like not just a dinosaur, but a lame dinosaur, given these advances. How long will CaNikon watch Sony advance without responding? The optical viewfinder is great for some things, but I say get rid of it—it is a huge liability for most things. Mirrorless is now the leading technology on the market, solving real issues for real photography.

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