Backfire – Save CSS changes made in Firebug
Firebug offers a great way of doing on-the-fly CSS modifications right there where it matters: in the browser. It allows you to actually “design in the browser” which is part of the Quplo philosophy. The only problem is that CSS changes done in Firebug aren’t persistent, so you have to redo them in your editing environment in order to save your work.
Well, not anymore. Here’s Backfire: the save button for Firebug.
Backfire fires your CSS changes back to the server.
Improving the website production process – Part 1: Exporting to development platforms
If you’re involved in the website production process, chances are your job involves wireframing, visual design, prototyping, development or a combination thereof. More often than not, the process involves designers tossing designs “over the fence” to a development team. Regardless of what side of the fence you’re on, it’s clear that there’s room for improvement.
The website production process.
Adventures in integrating payment services as a Dutch business
We’d been developing and testing our PayPal subscription flow for Quplo for a month and had almost gotten it completely working when PayPal suddenly decided to change their user-facing checkout wizard. Our code was suddenly broken, and x.com‘s documentation hadn’t been updated to reflect any changes. Nor had the web service code. Even though we probably could have figured it out by looking around the internet and asking people, this entire experience gave us a queasy feeling: pulling the rug out from under developers’ feet, even if it’s just the Sandbox, doesn’t inspire confidence.
Create a prototype with the HTML5 boilerplate
Heard of the HTML5 boilerplate? It’s a recent great idea by Paul Irish and Divya Manian. The basic concept is that it gives you a great head start to creating a new HTML5 website by offering a pre-filled HTML file, the right CSS setup (including taking handheld styles into account), and automatic compatibility with older browsers. That’s great for people learning HTML5, but also for more experienced people who don’t want to keep typing out the same old boilerplate code (hence the name).
When we saw this, we immediately knew it would be great for quplo, since quplo is also all about getting somewhere faster and DRY. In our case, it’s about building prototypes superfast so you can communicate about them more easily and reach the end goal – whatever that may be – faster.
So we downloaded the HTML5 boilerplate and created a prototype template with it.
5 wireframing & prototyping tools doing something unique or different
In our search for other people in the industry working on wireframing and prototyping software, we looked around on Twitter for lists of prototyping apps. To our dismay, we didn’t really find many that had more than a few people and companies listed. So we decided to create our own.
Balsamiq’s Peldi already created a great list of wireframing tools, so we decided to focus on prototyping since we believe there’s a significant difference between the two, and we came up with a list which we’ve added to our Twitter account. You can follow it here.
Building a promotional site is hard
For the past few months we’ve been hard at work on the quplo promotional site, which has now launched along with our public beta. The entire process was rather difficult for us as we’ve never written in such detail about one of our products and certainly not with such a promotional, marketing-oriented approach.
How 37signals does HTML prototyping
A slide from Jason Fried's talk, "Backstage at 37signals"
Last month at UIE’s Web App Masters Tour conference in Philadelphia, Jason Fried gave a talk about 37signals‘ design process. It was a look backstage at a prominent web company and was fascinating because most of his talk went really in-depth in illustrating what a conversation between team members looks like during the design of a new screen or, in this case, redesign of something fundamental. Continue reading →
E-mail signatures are bad UX
Recognize this?
E-mail signatures. Meh.
Right! It’s your company’s e-mail signature! And it sucks. Not because of the disclaimer. Not because of the environmental note. No, it sucks because of the predefined “Kind regards”.
How the browser roundhouse-kicked Chuck Norris
It struck me this week. Browsers nowadays are so kick-ass that they outdo Chuck Norris’s badassness. The current momentum of skyrocketing browsergoodness can’t even be surpassed by Holland winning the worldcup next Sunday. Or perhaps it can, but let’s have a look anyway at where browsers are today shall we? Pure for the the sake of the great joyride that we’re in for when going retro.
Chuck Norris showing off his badassness.
Impressions: Briefs for iPhone
Briefs - wireframes remade for Cocoa Touch
Briefs is an upcoming image-based prototyping app for iPhone created by Rob Rhyne. You create sketches or designs of iPhone apps any way you want, and then combine them (in image format) with a kind of manifest that describes what’s on each picture. Then Briefs makes your design interactive based on that description.