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Wanna work with Less Everything? We’re currently looking for one or two persons to join the team on a 40 hr/wk basis. If you’re interested send me an email (steve [at] lesseverything.com) with the following info:

• What’s your hourly/weekly/annual rate? (we’re looking for someone not expensive)
• How good is your code?
• How many hours per week can you do (40 or more is good)?
• What do you think of jQuery and jRails?
• What testing framework do you use?
• How do you feel about testing?
• What do you think about the code quality in lovd by less?
• Are you interested in being mentored?
• Are you interested in mentoring?
• 1 – 10 how polished do you consider your tasks when you say they are done?
• When can you start?
• Can you work independently?
• Are you near Jacksonville, FL or Panama City, FL?
• Do you have trouble with self motivation?
• Would you be willing to do a small “audition application?”
• Do you have links to sites you’ve done (please explain your involvement), or any open source code?

P.S. If you’ve worked with us in the past and want to do so again, please let me know. (You know who you are :)

37signals changed my life. Again. The first time they inspired and liberated me. This this they've turned me sour. Their highly popular blog (which I love) preaches about appreciating craftsmanship and paying for it, supporting artistry. Jason Fried, the founder of 37signals, constantly tweets about sports car design, Aston Martin seems to be his favorite. I loved 37signals, I even went to their SEED conference. Their book, "Getting Real," changed my life. They hire people based on taste and style. They are amazing.

In a recent blog post Jason brings up a stupid error in Quickbooks Pro. What a confession, a stark revelation. They use Quickbooks. Quickbooks is a product by Intuit, the makers of bloatware accounting software. This made my skin crawl, how can a guy that harps on the finer things, style, elegance and design use a piece of software that is the farthest thing from it? I'm not saying anything we write is perfect and bug free, God knows everything is a work in progress. Of all the accounting software to use, why use the one that is the antithesis of 37signals it should be an anathema to them. For the love of God, why? Think of the children!

Batman is taking bribes. Superman is playing poker with Lex Luthor. The Lone Ranger is a racist. Steve Jobs uses a Dell. My world is in shambles.

Fair warning Jason: I'm gonna give you noogies at FOWA.

I sign-up for new web apps and social networking sites all the time. Rarely, do any of these site draw me in and make me want to participate with them. Very few apps are able to bring me back for a return visit after my initial login. And no I am not talking about the feeling people get when the app has reached critical mass and everyone is joining, those users are feeling like they don't want to be left out or "what's all the hype about?".

So this got me thinking, what qualities do successful apps contain that engage their viewer? With blogs, every site has an rss feed, what user emotions are needed to get the viewer to leave their RSS reader and comment?

Kathy Sierra (whom I have a crush on) says you must make the user feel like they're kicking ass, but that's only true for business apps. Let's talk about social networks/apps.

Twitter

I wonder what my friends are doing/saying?
Feeling = "I'm missing out on the content (links and opinions) from my peers)"

Facebook

I wonder what my friends are saying?
Feeling = "I want gossip"

Blogs

I agree or disagree so strongly that I need to comment on that post.
Feeling = I want to be heard and I want to hear what the blogger has to say.

Flickr

I need to see a full sized view of that image.
I want to explore other photographers pictures.
Feeling = Intrigued by beauty

---

How do you build a site that makes a user feel like they must contribute?
What are current apps doing to make their users feel this way?
What brings you back to your favorite websites again and again?

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. A good UI is often one when a user can "get through" the function quickly. An often missed point of good UI is to think about creating short cursor movements when planning the layout/UI of the app. As UI designers the copy writing and styling are concerns that sometimes overshadow our minds. I have to remind myself to work towards the shortest cursor path to complete a task or move between tasks.

Practical Usage

In LessAccounting we use fixed position buttons.

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Issue with the example

Most people love the fixed position buttons, but some people are so accustom to seeing the buttons at the bottom of the form they "miss" the button bar. We're still trying to figure out how to make them more noticeable without being annoying. Got any ideas? We'd love to hear them.

I'm thinking what did we do this year? It's been a blur, let's recall some of the highlights.

• Released LovdbyLess.com, so far it's been download over 23,000 times!
• Steve admitted to not wearing pants.
• Launched LessTimeSpent.com
• I told the world who I am
• Made major improvements to LessAccounting.com
• The amount of money being tracked in LessAccounting: 1,679,369,407.34
• Steve and I grew awesome 'staches
• Blog readership grew 6x, from 1 person (my Mom) to 5 people + you.
• We show why we're so productive.
• Steve called your idea worthless.
• We stopped supporting IE6. 37signals followed suit just a few days later.
• Launched RailsCities.com.
• Launched LessFriends.com.
• Steve spoke at a bunch of conferences including Dynamic Languages World Europe 08. (Love his pic with the eye patch, my business partner is a laugh riot.)
• I did some design work for John Resig of Mozilla and JQuery Dromaeo.com
• Steve and Obie head butted each other, ouch.
• Allan said SVN UP BITCHES!

2008 was a warm up for 2009, just wait!

Kuumba means creativity. Today we focus on our creative side. We search for new ways to help people and build things that makes people’s lives easier. Creativity can take many forms and the important thing is not to judge the outcome, but rather enjoy the process of creating. Regardless of what you create, take time today to create something. It will be wonderful.

And if you can launch it too.

Nia means purpose, so on this the fifth day of Kwanzaa we should be reflecting on what our individual and collective purposes are, and what we can do to improve both ourselves and our community.

This is also a good day to think about that project you’ve been working on. What is its purpose? Does it really need all of those features to be what people need it to be? Or maybe some of them can wait. Maybe you’ve gotten so into the details that it no longer does what it needs to. Take the day and reflect on the your purpose and how you affect the world through your work and your actions.

Ujima means “collective work and responsibility.” Today we think on a very personal level about how the problems of our community are our problems. How we can help others to make this a better world for everyone. Throughout today, let’s all pay special attention to how we can do little things to help our community.

On the second day of Kwanzaa we recognize Kujichagulia, Self-Determination. This day is about taking responsibility for ourselves and standing up to be counted. It is about getting in the game and not just watching from the sidelines. It is about liberation. The liberation that comes from free choice. The choice to be who I want to be and not apologize or be ashamed of it. Embrace yourself, love yourself, be yourself, be proud of yourself, and make choices that are good for you—like launching.

Happy Kwanzaa to you today. As you may already know, today is the first day of the seven day holiday, Kwanzaa. Every year we celebrate Kwnazaa from Dec 26 to Jan 1. Each of the seven days represents a different principle. On the first day of Kwanzaa we we reflect on Umoja which means unity. It is a chance to pause and think about the unity of families, nations and all people. How we can gain strength and harmony through the unity of our lives. It is a day to feel connected with one another. As many of us go back to work, or back to the mall, let’s think about the unity between ourselves and the people we interact with. Let’s silently wish them well as we realize that they are all our brothers and sisters.

I just realized we hadn't blogged episode #4, we just tweeted the link.

So here is episode #4, like others before, Steve doesn't know I am recording him. Enjoy watching Steve ramble about how he doesn't wear pants to work anymore and how that his "new thing".

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The backstory, a few weeks ago Steve recently had a small spill on his motorcycle which resulted in some nice scraps.

In this episode you will see...
A Scab
Removing of a Scab.
Me being a good friend, encouraging others to do gross and horrible things.
Steve successfully grossing me out.

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Most people familiar with Ruby are familiar with the Ruby operator ||=. What it does is assign the value of the right to the variable on the left if left is nil (or false). Here is an example:

<script src="http://gist.github.com/36467.js"></script>

Most people however are not familiar with the corollary operator &&=. What it does is assign the value of the right to the variable on the left if left is not nil (or false). Here is an example:

<script src="http://gist.github.com/36468.js"></script>

Here is an example of how one might use &&=. The idea is that you have an array of something and you only really care if they all completed or not. I used AR::Base.save to show a poor man’s transactions.

<script src="http://gist.github.com/36738.js"></script>

I see so many good designs floating around the internet, these designs would be great if only slight changes were made. These small change are usually better because they emphasize or de-emphasize parts of the page, improving the visual hierarchy.

Good design is a series of small decisions that collectively turn into a good design. The difference between a good design and a great design might be a very small overlooked detail. No design is ever finished, there's always room to improve. Here's a good design that I made some very very small changes to that make it better. The image you first see if the original design, it's fantastic. Take your mouse and hover over it and wait a second, you'll see my changes. It might take your eye a second to see the changes.

What I did...

I enlarged the font size on the navigation so your eye picks up on it more quickly. I gave the individual stories a little more spacing and separated the columns a tad as well. The date on the article I made less eye catching, it's just not that important. Are these changes mind blowing? No, they're minor changes that can greatly affect the outcome of the design.


<style> .change {background: url(http://b.lesseverything.com/assets/2008/12/11/theirs2.png); width: 550px; display: block; height: 600px;} .change:hover {background: url(http://b.lesseverything.com/assets/2008/12/11/mychanges2.png);} .change:focus {background: url(http://b.lesseverything.com/assets/2008/12/12/mychanges2b.png___100___RGB_8_.jpg);} </style> if you're in firefox, click on the image and you'll see my noted changes

The Problem...

As a designer I have a tendency to cram things into a site, this isn't a good thing. You need to give you visitors eye breathing room. The original design "www.GOOD.is" had was cramped. It caused my eye to speed up and hurry thru the elements. Give your user's eyes white space/open space it's a key piece of good design.

With so many Photoshop tutorials floating around everyone thinks they're designers. There's nothing wrong with tutorials or Photoshop but Photoshop isn't the foundation of good design. Good design is about visual balance, a font hierarchy, color weight, alignment and proximity, these pillars are how you, the designer, guide the viewer's eyes around the page to the places you want them to be.

Below is a simple design, but very effective. The spacing is clear and the alignments are perfect.

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Simple alignments make a difference.

See the consistent spacing?