Posts by Justin
IE6Funeral.com
Yesterday we announced a local party celebrating Google’s soon-to-be discontinued support for IE6. Now, thousands of Twitter posts later, with exposure on a few really big websites, we’ve obviously struck a chord (and maybe in some cases, a nerve) with internet lovers everywhere.
The Premise
Needless to say, IE6Funeral.com received more attention than anticipated. If you haven’t seen it already, check out Twitter, Techcrunch, or The Washington Post. The premise is simple: Google will soon be discontinuing support for IE6 on at least some of its online services. We should commemorate the occasion.
The Funeral
In the days ahead, we’ll be working to address the overwhelming response to the
partyfuneral invitation. What we know so far is there will definitely be a casket, a body, and from all appearances, mourners a-plenty.The Reality
Back in reality, we still develop websites that support IE6, along with every other browser. The extent to which we focus on IE6 is assessed on a project-by-project basis, and grounded in research on the relevant audiences and content.
While Google discontinuing support for IE6 has very little impact on the way we work, it does mark an important step in the evolution of the interwebs. It’s also a great excuse to get together with our local web design community.
In lieu of attending the party, please send flowers. And at the very least, please leave your remembrance.
Drupal for Journalism Educators: Poynter's News University Goes Live
Last week, Poynter’s NewsU.org, the world’s leading journalism education website, went live with a complete redesign. The website was designed and developed by Aten and built entirely in Drupal. It is the result of almost a year of strategy, design, and development, in collaboration with the incredible team of web producers and content experts at NewsU.
It’s an exciting step forward for NewsU, and an exciting case study in using Drupal as a learning platform. The website features hundreds of courses spread across several course types, each with its own needs for design, behavior, reporting, and 3rd-party integration.
A few of challenges we tackled with NewsU included:
- Creating an effective UI for allowing NewsU to promote — and end users to find — courses within an extensive catalog of almost two hundred training modules.
- More clearly demonstrating the relationship between NewsU and its parent organization, the Poynter Institute.
- Managing permissions and enrollment across hundreds of courses for more than 130,000 users.
- Importing massive data sets into Drupal from legacy sources including MySQL and SQL Server.
- Integrating with SCORM learning modules, Adobe Connect, and other 3rd-party services.
- Developing and implementing design and technical standards for creating (as well as retro-fitting) courses across the entire website.
We’re extremely pleased with the outcome of the process. It is rewarding to work with organizations that have such relevance in the current world climate. As journalism continues to evolve and adapt in the age of the Internet, the need for quality, relevant training will need to adapt with it. So far, Drupal has proved a capable platform for handling the unique needs of an online learning experience. We’re looking forward to helping expand and refine both NewsU and Drupal as a learning platform.
Check out the redesign at NewsU.org.
Look out for an upcoming case study on the design and development process, as well as a soon-to-be announced session proposal for DrupalCon San Francisco. You can learn a bit more about the redesign process at NewsU Next, see what people are saying on Twitter, or ready the official press release.
Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009
Goodbye 2008
Having survived the post-holiday frenzy that were weeks 1 and 2 of 2009, we took a few minutes to reflect on accomplishments from 2008.
Here are a few stand-outs from the list.- We participated in DrupalCon Boston 2008
- Sponsored and helped plan DrupalCamp Colorado
- Released a few Drupal modules, most notably YouTube API
- Won a 2008 Web Award and 2008 Interactive Media Award for iCitizenForum.com, bringing the number of awards for our work with Colonial Williamsburg to more than a dozen
- Launched a handful of shiny new websites, including our own
Equally worth mentioning, we’ve settled nicely into the Denver office (love the space and the neighborhood), have made important refinements to our process, and have continued to gel as a team. All in all, a productive year.
Hello 2009
We’re two weeks in, and already have plenty to talk about.
DrupalCon 2009
We’re excited to be attendees and bronze sponsors for the event… looking forward to a fantastic conference in Washington this March!
Usability Tests for Drupal 7
Brad’s off to participate in a round of formal usability tests at the University of Baltimore for Drupal 7 this February. This will help continue the work done by graduate students there last year.
Fresh New Projects Any Minute Now
We’ve been busy, and it’s about to show — expect new portfolio pieces soon. Among them, there’ll be a Drupal website for a prominent New England art institute, a Drupal website for a large international non-profit, a Drupal+Flickr powered showcase site for a Denver-based tattooer and artist, and a Flash game using Papervision3D where you’ll have to fight weeds to save flowers.
Not Just a Day Job
It’s amazing to work with people who love what they do enough to do it at home, off the clock.
Brad contributes to the open-source Drupal project. Eric works on various web-based applications (most of them a secret at this point). Ken designs websites.
Speaking of, one of Ken’s personal projects, parkviewbaptist.net, was recently included in a web design inspiration book: The Web Designer’s Idea Book. It’s available, of course, at Amazon.com.
The Fun of Making Games Fun
Much to my 8-year-old daughter’s enjoyment, we make a lot of games around here. We’re rounding third base on our latest game right now. Animations are in place. Game play is mostly built out. After several months of work, we’re finally to the part where we get to play it for the first time.
Trouble is, it isn’t much fun. Something’s missing… the essential chemistry of style, pace, and challenge isn’t quite right.
Don’t Panic
It isn’t a problem. We’ve just made it to that point in the game development cycle where we get to pull everything together and actually make it fun.
In our experience, fun almost always comes late in the development cycle for games. It requires having all of the pieces in place in a way that can actually be played with and experienced. The concept is important, of course; as is each character and object in the game, which go through their own cycles of feedback and revision. But the thing that actually makes the game a game, the compelling dynamic that comes from the way each element interacts with its environment, is often sorted out late in process. In a way, we spend the first 80–90% of the development cycle creating opportunities. The last 10–20% of development is spent capitalizing on those opportunities.
A Couple Examples
Midnight Messenger
In Midnight Messenger, Li Ming wanders through swamps and forests with a jar of fireflies to light her way. Early in the design process, we decided that the level should never actually fade to total blackness. Rather, if Li Ming lost fireflies during game-play, the level would fade to a dark gray. Why? A completely dark environment covered up all of the illustrations and animations that made the game look so captivating, and when completely black, the game screen designs looked really boring.Once we had all of the elements in place, though, and could actually play the game, we realized that this was in fact exactly how it should have been. Making the level fade all the way to black as Li Ming lost fireflies was what made the game fun. We made that change, which led to one more: we made the fireflies remain visible — as dancing orbs of light — even as the screen fades to black. The user could see the fireflies, but couldn’t see the obstacles between them and Li Ming.
This combination of changes, while fairly simple and late in the development process, were what made the game so compelling and fun.
Wrekin’ Ball Billie
In Wreckin’ Ball Billie, Billie drives his wrecking ball crane through a neighborhood and tears down poverty housing. Where each dilapidated house is demolished, a crew from Habitat for Humanity appears to rebuild a replacement.We originally envisioned Wreckin’ Ball Billie as a slow-paced game where the user carefully arranges the crane with the arrow keys, lines up the wrecking ball on a trajectory that will slam into the appropriate house, and presses the space bar to let it go. The challenge would be in correctly setting up the crane and making sure no neighboring structures were damaged.
Once we had the prototype in place, however, we realized that the compelling opportunity was in speeding up the pace. The crane should drive quickly from one house to the other. Controls should be simple, and users should pound away at the keyboard to tear down houses. Caution to the wind, this demolition game became a race against time and a frenzy of destruction (all for a good cause, of course).
Planning for the Unknown
In light of the fact that there are almost always significant changes in game play toward the final stages of the project, we have found it incredibly important that all development is executed in as flexible a way as possible. Clean, well-commented code is a good starting point. In addition, every factor in game play that could be variable should be variable. Throughout the process, we work to identify potential areas of change; for example, “We might want the kid to run faster,” or, “We may want a steeper camera angle.” We often find it difficult to know what the final decision for these variables will be, and build for flexibility wherever we can.
We have also found it critical to identify what isn’t flexible, early in the process. That way, we know what isn’t on the table for change once we have a prototype. Understanding our limitations in the project lets developers avoid the frustration of dealing with impossible requests, and gives us helpful boundaries for fine-tuning the compelling challenge of the game.
Hitting that point where we finally have an actual prototype to play with, and implementing changes that make it come alive, is an exciting and necessary step in the process. Being ready for these changes, and embracing the opportunities we discover, is critical. For us, this is the step that makes games fun.