We are legitimate producers of value, and those contributions need to be reciprocated and respected.

I get that. I agree with that.

But let’s not forget the role that altruism, volunteer work and community involvement play in legitimizing our practice, as well. We are all working for a day when there’s a balanced relationship between those commissioning work and those creating it, but bearing our teeth at the scent of every contest will only spite ourselves in the end.

Let’s not forget that fighting for a more reasonable perception of our works requires only that we be judicious in our sharing, not dogmatic.

The backlash to the recent Obama Jobs poster contest has found me surprised. Not so much the lack of participation – I get not everybody has the time or interest to volunteer their time to a national campaign – but for the vitriol.

Despite it being odd that they’d ask for volunteer work on an economy-driving campaign, this promotion makes no bones about being strictly non-paying. They’re not soliciting assets with a lure for a potential return – they’re saying the return is in the involvement itself.

If we can’t ever share our talents without financial compensation without risking our industry’s legitimacy, then I question the viability of the legitimacy we think we’re protecting.

My dentist travels overseas annually to provide care for those who can’t ever come close to affording it. Lawyers provide pro bono work on a regular basis. Professional athletes participate as amateurs in the Olympic Games. All of these are respected and well-compensated professions.

I will know our industry has achieved the respect it desires when we can greet a promotion like this not with agitation, but indifference.

Or, possibly, altruism.

I think you already did. Thank you.

Never ever, ever,
ever stop iterating,
stop working,
stop finding new ways
to get started.

He recently linked to a Stephen Coles-penned article by the name of The Webfont Revolution Is Over, Let the Evolution Begin. It’s a good read, and primarily focuses on the need for producing fonts that render clearly and legibly under many different screen conditions (OS makes, browsers, font sizes, etc.).

The “money quote” for me read as follows:

Demand fonts that render well for the bulk of all web users, not just those on Mac OS X or Windows 7, but also the poor saps on Windows XP who still represent more than half of the browsing population.

What I find particularly curious about said article and the linking to it by said party is that the webfont on MarkBoulton.co.uk, his personal (and recently-refreshed) weblog, looks absolutely terrible under some not-so-unlikely conditions.

Here it is in the latest Firefox on Windows 7 before the font loads. If you roll over the image, you can see the “after”.

It’s really so tricky to read the “e”s as to make one wonder if the linking of the article is less a stance of solidarity and more of a reminder to do some housecleaning of one’s own.

I’m always turned off when people take potshots at luminaries and I’m sure my work has more than a hole or two of its own, so I hope this piece doesn’t come off as disrespectful or opportunistic.

That said, this is a swell opportunity for everyone to remember to check our designs as thoroughly as we dream them.

• The Technology industry is historically an engineering-driven one
• Engineering is the “how” and Creative is the “why”
• The Web has matured to the point that the “how” is something of a given
• This leaves the “why” as an area of differentiation
• Thus, bolstering your Creative team is a wise move
• Bonus: Does this significantly alter the nature of the industry?

Let’s get one thing out of the way quickly: “Creative” is a terminological can of worms and unhelpful for the discussion because of its interpretations multitude, which the author basically cops to in the opening paragraphs. I’m assuming for the purposes of the point he was making it was used as shorthand for “a thinker” instead of “a doer”; of course, that’s also a notion that’s difficult to fit in a box, which speaks to an issue of context:

The Issue of Context

Of course, it’s recognized that engineers “create” and their process is “creative” in its own right. Likewise, designers are involved in the crafting of products and manufacture elements themselves, even if only in the form of mockups, sitemaps, etc.

So, if the question at hand isn’t so much “who’s technical and who’s design”, what is it? Well, a more helpful version for my own thinking is “who’s dreaming it up and who’s making it happen?”

In my experience, it’s best to keep those two roles separate. If you’re wearing both hats at the same time, it can be kind of dangerous; it’s just really, really hard to maintain the integrity of the design process without censoring yourself in a “that would be a bitch to code” kind of way – even minutely, even unconsciously.

So for the sake of clarity, let’s call the separate parties the “doers” and the “dreamers”; the former charged with expanding what’s possible, the latter beholden to what’s ideal.

Users don’t come prepared to expect holding a key while clicking a second option will highlight both. Throw in the esoteric difference in behavior between CMD/CTRL and SHIFT and you have a recipe for disaster.

I believe I’ve found a waaaaaay more intuitive interface that gets the job done just as easily, and is a snap to code, to boot.

The Problem

Here’s your usual multi-select box …

<select multiple="multiple" size="4">
<option value="">First Option</option>
<option value="">Second Option</option>
<option value="">Third Option</option>
<option value="">Fourth Option</option>
<option value="">Fifth Option</option>
<option value="">Sixth Option</option>
</select>

The Solution

While slightly more code will net you much nicer results …

<style type='text/css'>
.multiselect { overflow: auto; border: 1px solid #999; width: 160px; height: 100px; }
label { display: block; padding-left: 6px; }
</style>

<div class='multiselect'>
<label><input name="" type="checkbox" value="" /> First Option</label>
<label><input name="" type="checkbox" value="" /> Second Option</label>
<label><input name="" type="checkbox" value="" /> Third Option</label>
<label><input name="" type="checkbox" value="" /> Fourth Option</label>
<label><input name="" type="checkbox" value="" /> Fifth Option</label>
<label><input name="" type="checkbox" value="" /> Sixth Option</label>
</div>

The Trick

The concept here is really pretty simple: just make a bunch of line-separated checkbox/label pairs and wrap ‘em in a <div>. The trick, however, comes in assigning an overflow of “auto” and a specific height – once the options go past it, you get a scrollbar.

This retains the core appeal of a select box (fitting more options in less space) while giving a ton more visual clues and feedback to your audience. It also lets you go crazy with styling – think hover states for <label> tags, more padding, gradient backgrounds, etc.

Plus, aside from some CSS, it’s achieved in the same amount of lines of code!

The only drawback I can think of is the inability to hold the shift key and select the options between two highlighted ones, but whipping up a quick few lines of Javascript would remedy that, as well!