In the spirit of excuses here are the top 10 reasons redesigning your website is like renovating your bathroom.

10. Both require removing rotten frames (if you find any)
9. Both might require hiring a professional
8. Both seem to go on forever
7. Both require the right tools to get the job done
6. Both involve uncovering disturbing things from the past
5. Both should follow industry standards
4. Both require preliminary planning to be successful
3. Both have fantastic online resources
2. Both have designs that at one point were in style but now I can’t stand
1. Both involve meeting objectives or you could really land in hot water

http://montreal.bixi.com/home

http://twitter.com/dummieshtml

That’s it. Enjoy!

In a move towards a more classy web experience we have decided to shun your standards complaint W3C validated Web 4.0 HTML 5 rounded corners and fancy canvas that is “going to kill Flash” extremist attitude. In it’s shallow and empty place we have moved foward/backward to something more familiar and city like (geocities like actually) with a traditional blastin’ Oasis Wonderwall MIDI file to mess with your ear drums, sophisticated animated gifs that will make your eyeball pop out, plus timeless banners and by far the best – a circuit background to really show everyone that we all know all that there is to possible to know about ‘puters.

Check out the beta version now!!!!

Let us know what you think. We really want to hear from you! A special shout out to the folks over at Wonder-Tonic for creating the Geocitiesizer which is totally awesome. Keep up the good work!

http://karenmcgrane.com/2010/01/10/in-defense-of-lorem-ipsum/

Below are some of my favorite contemporary artists as well as my top five favorite galleries. I highly recommend seeing this artwork in person, especially Gregory Barsamian’s work because the web just doesn’t do it justice.

Gregory Barsamian

Ann Hamilton

Mathew Barney

Cornelia Parker

Andrea Zittel

Rachel Whiteread

Banksy

Tavares Strachan

Rachel Berwick

Bruce Chao

Christo and Jean-Claude

Brian Jungen

Natalie Jeremijenko

My Favorite Galleries:

Judd Foundation
located in Marfa, TX

ps1
located in Queens, NY

dia:beacon
located in Beacon, NY

MASSMoCA
located in North Adams, MA

LACMA
Located in LA

Jeff: How does a screen reader handle a web page?

David: The simple answer is sequentially. To clarify, a web page can consist of various objects, i.e. frames, lists, fields etc. When the page is sent to a computer, the screen reader makes a virtual model of the page so that it is easier for a blind person to navigate. As a result, the page may have two frames arranged so that they are side by side, this would not be made clear to a visually impaired person, who would see the contents of frame1, followed by the contents of frame . Once the page displays, the blind person would ordinarily use the arrow keys to examine data. Note that these keys do not read the web page, but a virtual model of the web page. This model is based on various guesses made by the screen reader. It is however quite an educated guess, and reliant on the screen reader’s knowledge of how web page are built. But… when using non standard controls and widgets, the screen reader can often guess wrongly, or not even bother to give it a try. W3C webpages are usually OK, and when building pages in (X)html, I usually use html tidy (a free application) which validates and corrects (X)html. When using a product like Dreamweaver, you will find that this product has accessibility checking built in, and provides helpful suggestions as to how to best make pages accessible.

Jeff: What are 5 tips that readers of this website can do to immediately improve their website accessibility?

David: Before giving these tips, I have always held that there is no need to sacrifice looks for accessibility. In some cases, making a page accessible can make it look better.

1. Punctuate long pages with headings
Most screen readers will have a facility for jumping from one heading to the next, and if the page consists of a very long document, it makes sense to plan it in the same way as you’d plan your links and subdocuments.

2. Alt tag all pictures
This makes absolutely no difference to how a page looks, but the off screen model will pick up the alt tag, and read the description of the picture. You don’’t have to write an essay, but just one sentence to describe the picture. Also, make descriptions meaningful, so that they convey an idea. “this is a picture of David Reynolds” is fine, but “this is a picture of David Reynolds playing the saxophone” is heaps better.

3. On forms, try to make your fields standard
Having fields within a table with their associated names across the top will upset a screen reader. The screen reader would prefer and would recognize fields with labels to the left. There are two exceptions to this rule. One is checkboxes, and the other is radio buttons. In both cases, it is better to have the label to the right of the checkbox/radio button.

4. Don’t make your webpages too long
In my opinion, this is bad practice anyway, since you should plan the page so that it broken down into ideas which can be farmed out to subpages where appropriate.

5. Don’t dynamically load pages if it can be avoided
I visit pages which have comboboxes to select a language, as soon as I move the selection to the firstly normally Arabic, a page loads in Arabic. My screen reader has a get around for this one, but some don’t. Better to have a combobox where you can select a language. Once a language has been selected, you hit the go button, and the page loads.

A special thanks to David for sharing with us, if you find these helpful or need clarification please leave a comment below.

• 10. Skill Levels Please

SXSW Staff – I heard a few people mention this one, so please separate sessions by skill level. Ohhhh, wait the good news on this one is on the 3rd day I actually realized that SXSW Interactive pocket guide already did this. Hoooray, now we are almost there, now go ahead and put this exact same information on the website and iPhone apps that everyone else was using.  It’s called consistency.  Thanks.

• 9. Improve Registration

SXSW Staff – Last I checked, this is an interactive conference, correct? I signed up and even paid online, yet I had to fill out paperwork with the same exact info you already had. Ditto on the picture for the badges, I uploaded one online yet had to take a new picture when I was there. Two for two. I like standing in lines and all, but cutting all this unnecessary what nots like this will speed things up.

• 8. Online Feedback

SXSW Staff – speaking of unnecessary what nots. Again, this is an interactive conference and you are still passing out paper and pencils for feedback? It’s 2010 people, is this the best we can do? We should be zipping around on hover-boards by now and considering the WIFI was actually good this year and the successful integration of twitter hash tags, as well as the rise of online questioning tools like HotPotato, it seems amateur to bust out the paper and pencils as the only solution to provide feedback. Save the trees yall.

• 7. Event Preparation

Presenters – Please be prepared. I picked your session out of all the options available during that time slot and I really don’t want to sit through some presentation you slapped together the night before after some drinks down on 6th street. While you are debugging code that “should” work or discussing with your panel members on what you were talking about and what part of the presentation you are supposed to be in and if it’s OK to tell that one story, I’m the guy getting up and leaving your presentation. I’m not a big fan of practicing, but like maybe pretend you know what’s going on and it’s all part of your dazzling master plan.

• 6. I have Google Too!

Presenters – Here’s a secret tidbit of info: I have Google too. This is only for a small portion of you, but please don’t give your session a really cool title and then regurgitate the exact same thing it takes me 2.4 seconds to find online. You do look cool with that microphone with the name card and hash tag, now talk about something original/interesting/how to immediately address issues in our jobs and people will love you, we will even carry you out of the room on our shoulders, I promise.

• 5. Chairs of Torture

Austin Convention Center – If your overall goal of SXSW interactive is to redistribute my lower lumbar and completely mess up my back with your tiny non cushion metal chairs of torture then you win! May I suggest the Iron Maiden (torture device – not the awesome band) or perhaps the rack torture next year?

• 4. Understand Your Audience

Sales People In/Outside the Conference – Understand your audience and adjust your strategy. When I’m running between standing room sessions or in the bathroom I really don’t want to hear about “the next facebook/twitter geo location mobile flash killer virtual reality iphone app” but I’m sure it’s cool. Also, a big special WTF to Greenpeace – you have a wonderful cause that I believe in but I really don’t want to hear “HEY GUY, YOU LOOK LIKE YOU CARE” as you shove your save the whale/rainbows clipboard in my chest…. five times in one day. Hand me some info, if I’m interested I’ll get involved. Getting in my face just makes me hate you. Sorry about that.

• 3. Road Warrior

City of Austin – Our roads and transportation system already suck – we know this. Yet out of any time of the year you could pick, during SXSW you went ahead and tore up a few blocks of Cesar Chavez right by the convention center for a double impact of causing all sorts of traffic nightmares while simultaneously welcoming our out of town guests with a various collection of barricades, cones, and broken asphalt. Strangely I have no problem with those cranes and bulldozers though. Maybe just line those up on the street and show how awesome they are and hold off on the actual work till after the conference. We do have that train now though, I’m sure next years attendees will love the ride out to Leander! Chooo Chooo!

• 2. Questions Disguised As Product Plugs

Attendees – I’m all for asking questions. No really I am, and this is a bit elementary, but if you are going to get up in front of the crowd when it’s time for questions (if there is any) please actually ask a question. Duh! I’m sure the project you are working on at your business is really great, but plugging whatever it is you do and how awesome you are really makes you look like a complete tool. Save that stuff for after the session in the 15 thousand other networking events and let the line of people with actual questions ask them. Thanks.

• 1. Fashion Smashion

Attendees – Attire. You are in Austin, TX. Pretty much all of our nice restaurants allow people in if they are wearing jeans and if they don’t you probably don’t want to go there. Jot that one down. You are going to be walking a lot so I suggest focusing a little bit more on comfort and a little less on fashion – but that tiny tie with the wool blazer with the matching skull cap and scarf is looking fierce, but it’s damn near 80 degrees out so I know you are also burning up. Follow this and you can free yourself to actually learn at this conference instead of focusing on what’s a hot trend. Doing that is completely lame. Whoever does that should be ashamed of themselves. Shame Shame.

As Jeff mentioned on Friday, most of us are here at the SXSW Interactive Conference.  If you’ve never been, it’s definitely worth a look.  The fact that it is held in our hometown of Austin, Texas every year makes it a no-brainer for us, but I personally find a lot of great takeaways… and I’m not talking about free swag.

One of my favorite sessions so far was “The Right Way to Wireframe”, a 2 part series featuring Tod Zaki Warfel, Russ Unger, Fred Beecher, and Will Evans.  This group of designers and design agencies challenged the big names in UX and UI Design to “show your work”, and subsequently put together a design challenge for themselves.  I won’t go too far into detail, because these AWESOME time-lapsed videos will tell the story better than I can:
The Right Way to Wireframe video series

Also, in the spirit of posting trends, Jeff, Kate, and I have been documenting all of the trends we see popping up here at SXSW.  I started compiling these yesterday and thought they might make an interesting post.
Disclaimer: We don’t necessarily think all of these are good trends, but these are our observations. Enjoy…

The 3 most important mobile devices:

Kyle Outlaw, Razorfish – iPhone, Android, iPad

Barbara Ballard, Little Springs Design – iPad, what is Nokia n900 doing?, Sony Playstation phone

Scott Jenson, Google - (claimed iPhone and Android is boring so he provided the following) – Where is it going? Better browser and OS integration, clouds of devices, and cheaper devices.

Update:  A good summary of the entire panel has been posted here

Anyone have something else to add?