From the very early days of my career, graphic design has always been my source of inspiration for my web design. I also decided from the beginning that I wanted to focus on the web rather than print, but I had learned how to take print design elements and transform them into the web. Whenever I get a chance, I would pick up graphic design books to fuel my creativities. Here are some recent books I found in George Mason library:

More Graphic Simplicity: This is not a book to be read, but to be inspired. I am in awed with the beauty of simplicity showcased in the book.

Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type: A short, concise collection of user tips when dealing with typography, especially as types are increasingly popular for the web.

The Elements of Graphic Design (Second Edition): The layout of the book, which featured texts and examples around the main content, is a huge distraction. I have to mentally blocking out all of that noise in order just to focus on the primary texts. There are some great points on simplicity that I would like to jot down for future references:

Dynamic white space plus abstraction, the process of removing unnecessary details, are essential to sophisticated design (preface)

Visual simplicity eliminates unnecessary elements and structures those that remain in a logical, consistent system. Good design reduces the effort of reading as much as possible, thereby encouraging readership and uderstanding (page 3)

Again, the designer’s job is not to fill in all the space. It is to make information accessible and appealing. The best use of the page’s empty space is to help make information scannable, not to make the pages pretty. The point is to increase the page’s absorbability. (page 5)

The pauses between songs on a record show content the way white space does. Space attracts readers by making the page look accessible, unthreatening, and manageable. Leaving too little white space makes a page look crowded – good only if that’s the point you want to make. Leaving too much white space is almost impossible. I say “almost” because you will get groans of disapproval if you toss around chunks of unused white space, that is, emptiness purely for its own sake, rather than for the sake of the message. Readers are far less likely to notice or object to too much white space than to an unreadable, crowded page. (page 13)

Listening to Miles Davis’s “Move” and it fits perfect with my state of mind at the moment at work. I have finally moved sites off the server that is hosting the Law School web site. Now it’s one dedicated server dedicated to just the Law site. Everything else such as student organizations, blogs and faculty sites are residing on another dedicated server.

I set up three different networks using WordPress multisite feature. One for the faculty. One for student organizations . One for the blogs. I moved the Library & Technology Blog yesterday using the export and import feature in WordPress and the process took me two seconds. WordPress rocks once again.

In the future, anyone from the school or library request a web site for a faculty, organization or, blog, I can just add a new WordPress site instantly. They can go with the default template or create their own.

I am so glad that I could make the move with the support of my supervisor. It’s definitely a peace of mind to have the main site on its own.

ASM-Aetna Blog, a project I had involved as a developer, has been nominated for Connecticut’s Top Blog of 2012 in the following categories: Best Overall Blog, Best Health Blog and Best Business Blog. Congratulations to the ASM-Aetna team.

Thật ngậm ngùi khi xem hình của ba nhận được hôm nay từ đứa cháu gái. Ba đã già đi rất nhiều. Trong trí óc của tôi ba cứ như ngày tôi còn ấu thơ. Khi nói chuyện với ba qua điên thoại giọng của ông còn rất khoẻ nên tôi không hình dung ra được. Thật ra ngoài những câu thông thường hỏi thăm sức khoẻ, giữa tôi và ba không có gì để nói cả. Khoảng cánh giữa tôi và ba thật đã quá xa. Xét lại thì chúng tôi đã cách xa hơn 20 năm. Thời gian trôi qua quá mau nhất là bây giờ khi tôi bận bịu trông công việc và con cái.

Nhìn những cằn cỗi trên khuôn mặt của ông làm tôi bàng hoàng xúc động. Có lẻ đây là lần đầu tiên tôi nhìn rỏ nét mặt của ông tuy hình không được rỏ cho lắm. Mổi khi nghỉ đến ba, tôi chỉ nghỉ đến ông trong giai đoạn tôi có ông. Vì chuổi ngày bên ba quá hiếm hoi hoi nên tôi nhớ rất rỏ những kỷ niệm ấy. Lúc xa ba cũng là lúc tôi xa quê hương và cũng là lúc tôi xa những ngày ấu thơ tôi quý nhất. Vì mất cả ba thứ quang trọng nhất đối với tôi lúc mới lớn, tôi đã không chấp nhận nổi thử thách mới. Bây giờ tôi đã quen xứ người và không còn nhỏ nữa. Cuộc sống mới tôi đã chấp nhận. Tuổi thơ cũng đã qua tôi không hề hối tiếc. Nhưng khi nhìn ba, tôi thấy xót xa. Tôi muốn ôm được lấy ông và nói những lời tôi chưa bao giờ nói với ông: “Con rất thương ba.”

With a sleepless night and many hours of converting Flash to Quicktime movies, the motion pieces are now residing on YouTube. The process took much more time and effort then I had expected. Why am I making the transition?

Flash has become a legacy program and not supported on mobile devices, particularly on Apple products. I have been thinking of abandoning the entire motion section altogether, but then again I have invested tons of time in the pieces. Although I don’t do Flash motion graphic anymore, I still want to keep them for prosperity.

I only brought over the ones that I still have the original Flash files. The earlier pieces that I could no longer find the source are now gone.

I am looking forward to the three-day conference, Computers in Libraries 2012, next week. The program featured some interesting topics including web and mobile development for library.

I will also be attending the five-day training for Red Hat System Administration I (RH124) on the first week of April. This is the skill tI need to pick up for my current job. I have learned my way into Linux by reading books and with the help of the previous developer. I am hoping to gain more knowledge and confidence through the training.

The main navigation for Visualgui has been reworked on small screens to allow more contents showing up on mobile devices. As much as I liked the colorful menu on the previous version, this is more user friendly.

FancyZoom, which being used mainly on the graphic section, is replaced with FancyBox2. FancyZoom worked well for what I needed, but has not been updated since 2008. In addition, FancyZoom doesn’t work with Infinite Scroll, which are used on both sites and motion. FancyBox2, on the other hand, has been reborn with CSS3, responsive design and integrated slideshow. The script loads faster than the previous version and works well with Infinite Scroll.

FancyBox2 is now also used to open Flash files on the motion pieces to improve the user experience. Infinite Scroll breaks the back button; therefore, visitors would lose their spot if they click to view a slideshow. Now they just launch FancyBox and close it when they are done viewing. This is also an issue for the site section and the easiest solution is to open a new window. I know that opening a new window is not recommended, but it makes sense in this case. Users go off my site to see the work I have done and then close the browser when they want to get back to my site for more samples. This method makes much more sense with Infinite Scroll.

I haven’t thought of a major redesign for Visualgui. I did a realign a year ago and still enjoying the simplicity of this site. It allows me to do what I would like to do: showcase my work, add new graphics weekly on the homepage and just write. As you can see, I write quite a bit on this blog and I hardly reread for grammar mistakes. I would love to because every once in a while I reread some of my posts and I can’t even figure out what I had written, but time is nothing I have plenty of these days. With two kids, the only free time I get is from 11pm to one in the morning. At that time, my brain is half asleep and half fried. As a result my posts are not as polished as I like them to be, but I still appreciate the ability to just write.

Santorum:

I believe and I think that the right approach is to accept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, in a very broken way, a gift of human life, and accept what God is giving to you. As you know, in lots of different aspects of our life we have horrible things happening. I can’t think of anything more horrible, but nevertheless we have to make the best out of a bad situation. And that is making the best of a bad situation.

This might sound wrong on many levels, but just imagine a rapist raping a girl and telling her, “Look bitch, I am giving you a gift from God.”

After launching the web site for Renew Body Contour, I am so tempting to get the treatment myself. Thanks to a week straight of Eden Center’s diet (usually a bowl of noodle soup or a big plate of rice with avocado or durian smoothie), I now tipped over 150 pounds, which is the weight I thought I would never exceed. I know I am fat when I weight more than a pregnant woman. It’s definitely not a good thing to work so closed to a vibrant Vietnamese food area. I need to stick to my mixed greens, chicken, tomatoes and grapes. I also need to get back to jogging again. The weather is too damn nice.

I broke so many resolutions already. My wife just sigh when I tell her that I need to stop eating recklessly. On Tuesday, I went to James Hoban’s with a few of my closed former colleagues. After a few gin and tonic, I went for a big bacon burger. Man, it was heaven-sent. I couldn’t resist the temptation because I was so happy for one of them for taking on a new job four months after me. We worked together and the circumstand and the situation pulled us tighter together. That’s something to be pondered in another post.

I rolled out a major update on George Mason Law last night to improve the user experience on small screen devices. The massive amount of links on the header and the navigation take up the entire screen on the iPhone. When users clicked on a nav item, they couldn’t tell that the page is being loaded below the screen. I have pondered upon the issue for a while and finally figured out a solution.

I made the logo smaller and moved the entire header and navigation to the bottom of the page for small screens. I added two links at the top of the page: “skip to content” and “skip to navigation.” Users can get direct to content or navigation with just one click or tap. With the smaller logo and navigation out of the way, the content is now moved up higher on the small devices. For large screens, I moved the entire header back to the top of the page using CSS absolute positioning.

What I really like about this approach is the improve in accessibility and SEO. Users with screen readers don’t have to go through all of the nav links to get to the main content. Search engines could also get to the information much faster because the content is higher on the page.

The beauty of the web is that we can still make changes after the site has launched.