All Posts

December 18
Turning Against “Streams” as a Media Design Principle

Taken at its most literal, the “streams” mindset has resulted in news designs optimized almost exclusively around reverse chronological lists.
November 13
You Had Me at Version 3.2

CSS maestro Dan Cederholm returns to the A Book Apart series with the release of Sass for Web Designers.
November 11
Print to Screen, Static to Dynamic

When comparing digital systems and legacy artifacts, it’s important to remember digital systems aren’t fully realized until they’re interacted with.
November 7
He Ain’t Snowfalling, He’s My Brother
October 29
Building Digital Literacy in the Newsroom
August 16
Third-Party Tracking and the Cookie Clearinghouse
August 7
Chrome’s Lax Password Storage
July 25
Pale Blue Dot Revisited
June 29
Combining to Yield Intuition
June 11
Making Inline SVG Play Nice in Legacy IE

Last week I was tearing my hair out trying to track down why the latest version of this site was rendering so badly in legacy versions of Internet Explorer. Here’s what I found.
June 7
Considering the Visual Future of iOS

Jason Santa Maria captures something about the “flat vs skeuomorphic” debate that’s been bugging me, especially when it comes to iOS.
June 1
Easier Fluid Layouts Using Justified Alignment

A great fluid layout technique that doesn’t require hard-coding horizontal margins.
May 30
State of Transition

Yesterday was my birthday, so I gave myself the gift of a redesign.
May 16
The New Yorker Launches Strongbox
May 14
The End of the Blink Tag
April 18
Manifesto of the PRKA
March 14
Go Indy

Video of my talk about digital publishing at the re:build conference in Indianapolis.
February 1
Let Them Eat Main Elements

So it looks like we’ll be getting a main element in HTML5 after all. Good news. But Jeremy Keith poses a question I’ve been wondering about too.

2012

December 4
News Corp Shutters The Daily

The fundamental contradiction at the heart of The Daily was that it aspired to be a mass market newspaper while only pursuing a single delivery channel.
September 11
But First, a Little History
September 7
On Demonstrating Progress

I’ve been devoting a good chunk of my time lately to documenting progress. Not technical documentation, but acknowledging effort and promoting it where others can see it.
June 21
People Are Squishy

One of the single worst lines you will ever hear in the context of a business environment is, “People are simple.”
April 2
Ze by the Numbers
March 29
Dead Silos and the Content Archipelago Ascendant

Last week Pew published its annual State of the News Media report, there are lessons aplenty for publishers and content builders of all stripes.
March 23
Saying ‘Pfft!’ to Boundary Conditions

This actually happened…
March 9
On the Big Web Show
March 8
A Retina Display Reckoning for Magazine Publishers

Because of legacy tools and mindsets, the size of the average “iPad magazine” is about to go through the roof.
March 5
Taking It to Eleven

A fully fluid redesign.
March 5
Thieves Are Your Best Customers in Waiting

Wherein I throw my two cents into the latest media piracy kerfuffle.
February 24
Responsive Navigation Patterns Roundup

2011

November 30
Stop SOPA From Destroying the Internet

To repurpose a line a U.S. president: I’m not opposed to laws, I’m opposed to dumb laws. And SOPA is a dangerously dumb law.
October 6
He Noticed, and That Mattered
September 29
Quote of the Day: Mobile-First Edition
August 31
Constricting the Tubes

A handy tool for simulating limited bandwidth.
June 7
Responsive Web Design From A Book Apart

Every so often something rolls around that makes the field feel new, and for me, this is most definitely it.
May 20
Traditional Publishers vs. Evolving Social (Media) Conventions

So the Editor in Chief of the New York Times went and wrote something that’s irritated a few of us Intertubes Types.
February 25
A Syntax Riddle Wrapped in a Parsing Enigma

Puzzling out issues with HTML5 and wrapping block-level content.
January 31
Whose Lifestyle, Exactly?

Anil Dash has gone and written something rather wonderful about the “lifestyle business” euphemism.

2010

September 24
Say Hello to Gridulator

Introducing a new tool for calculating layout grids.
July 6
Evolutionary Biology Hearts Typography
April 7
Of Magic Beans and Tablet Myopia

Here’s a tip. Whenever you hear reports about how something new will “revolutionize” an industry while somehow preserving its previous context and practices, you are entering the realm of magic beans.

2009

September 30
For the Future of Publishing, Many Will Come From Few

A quick food-for-thought quote from Clay Shirky’s speech at the Shorenstein Center last week.
May 20
The Long Form
January 8
Adapting Designs as Content Evolves

How your designs scale with use is one of those things you need to diligently revisit and tweak as products mature.

2008

July 30
Interlude

We now pause for a brief interlude.
May 5
A Style of Looking

“I guarantee there’s non-crap out there.”
March 26
BusinessLinked

If you’ve been to BusinessWeek.com lately, you may have noticed our article pages sporting some nifty new functionality.

2007

November 20
Tell ’Em, Z

Jeffrey Zeldman stopped by the office to talk web standards with BusinessWeek’s “Innovation of the Week” podcast.
October 31
24 Hour Visual People

“I’m really more of a visual person.”
October 18
The Redesign Response Curve

In every redesign I’ve been involved with, user response has followed a predictable pattern.
October 15
The Other New BusinessWeek

The BusinessWeek redesigns keep on coming. This time it’s our print colleagues taking the wraps off a shiny new package.
August 17
The Uhh Uhh Song

Here’s one for all you public speakers out there.
August 13
On Pushing Back Against Obviously Bad Ideas

In which we recall the tragedy of the CueCat.
July 11
Elevating “Time Spent” Over Pageviews

Nielsen has announced it will begin focusing on “time spent” instead of pageviews as the key measure of website user engagement.
May 24
Control Option Support

Adventures in tech support.
May 20
Lead Electric Triangle
May 8
My Little Piece of Apartness
May 7
Copper Is the New Black

Last week the BusinessWeek crew donned our Sunday best and headed to the National Magazine Awards. And wouldn’t you know, we actually won.
March 30
Lemon Trees

Remembering when all we had were lemons.
March 25
Roach Clipping

A little slice of NYC life.
February 9
The Devil You Must Live With

Dealing with reality of ads.
January 30
The BW Design Update Rolls On

Rolling out the next phase of a redesign.
January 5
Better Than the SQL

If you’ve set up WordPress in a localhost testing environment you may already be familiar with the vagaries of site_url and home.
January 3
Who Moved My Socket?

With the release of OS X 10.4.4, the default socket location for PHP and MySQL has been moved.

2006

September 19
Squashing Borders on Dynamic iframes

Ah, the iframe. So we meet again.
July 18
Killing WebMonkey: A Case for the Commons

On losing a piece of web design history.
June 26
The New Look at BusinessWeek.com

Redesigning BusinessWeek’s website.
June 12
The Year in Review
May 27
Test Movie and AS2 Garbage Collection Hilarity

Want to scramble the Flash 8 compiler’s brain? (Or more likely your own?)
May 19
Fifth Avenue Apple Store Press Event

Tagging along with BusinessWeek’s tech reporters at the opening of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store.
March 8
You Could Learn a Lot From a Dummy

The IIHS Ratings Viewer, one of the projects I’ve been tinkering with at the office, went live this week.
January 30
Mac IE: The End Has Come

Tomorrow, Internet Explorer for Mac will shuffle off this mortal coil.
January 25
Google Maps Is a Cubist Masterpiece

Google Maps is messing with my head.
January 9
Adobe Unveils Lightroom Beta

It seems like the folks at Adobe aren’t about to take Aperture lying down.

2005

December 27
Photoshop Inside Stroke Opacity Weirdness
November 8
Tab Delimited
August 31
The Hidden Depths

Like lots of Flash folk, I’ve got a real love/hate relationship going with the V2 components.
June 7
Look Ma! I’m on Steve’s Giant Screen!

Holy cow! Steve Jobs featured the BusinessWeek News Widget in his WWDC keynote today.
May 26
Life, Relocated
April 21
Nikon RAW Metadata Encrypted, Broken

Word has gotten around that Nikon is encrypting the white balance metadata in raw files recorded by its high-end digital cameras.
April 13
The Acid2 Browser Test
April 9
WordPress Permalinks and the OS X Apache Install

If you’ve installed WordPress on an OS X system and can’t figure out why your permalinks won’t function, this may help.
April 5
How to Manhandle a Disk Image

Got an OS X disk image that flat-out refuses to eject? Here’s how to fix it.