Dancing Mammoth » PJ Doland

Six simple design changes The Daily Caller should make today…

PJ Doland — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:15:59 +0000

The Arial is out of hand. I understand that it’s a web safe typeface. That still doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to use it for your masthead. Since you’re already willing to render the text as an image, you can definitely find something better. In fact, almost anything would be better (even some cliché blackletter). And please don’t use Arial for those feature headlines if you’re going to make them that large. The kerning is atrocious, which you can see in the example below if you look at the awkward space between the “Pa” and the “Fo”:
It’s true that there’s no “above the fold” on the web. That doesn’t mean it’s OK to have a feature graphic and headline so large that a visitor can’t even see the whole image when their browser resolution is set to 1024 x 768. And yes, it’s bad when Drudge does it. Save that kind of thing for V-I Day, should we ever be so lucky.
Kill the scrolling news ticker at the top of the page. This isn’t 1998 and your website isn’t a cable television news channel. Professional designers stopped using scrolling marquees for a reason.
Show me bylines on all the news items in the center column of the homepage before I click through to the story–even if it shows you’re running syndicated content.
You’re a new publication and you’re not established enough to get away branding your inside pages by just showing “The DC” in the upper left corner of the page. Show the full name of the site.
The line-height should be increased on all body text to make the copy easier to read.

When You Have Your Own Iconic Brand…

PJ Doland — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 23:42:57 +0000

Did Gibson think that nobody would notice when they completely-ripped off Apple for their new website design?

For reference, here is a screencap of Apple’s site:

Which brings me to two points:

When you have your own iconic brand, you really shouldn’t need to steal so shamelessly.
It’s 2009, Gibson. Did you really think table-based layout was still a good idea?

Bringing Site Control Out of the Admin Interface

PJ Doland — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:20:35 +0000

Sometimes it just makes more sense to put the controls right on the site. Watch this quick screencast to find out how we let one of our clients order the stories in their main content well with drag & drop ease.

Bringing Site Control Out of the Admin Interface from Dancing Mammoth on Vimeo.

All the Little Birds on Jaybird Street, Love to Hear the Mammoth Go Tweet, Tweet, Tweet.

PJ Doland — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:27:00 +0000

You can now follow our exploits via Twitter, if you feel so inclined.

Does Numbers Make Charts Like This?

PJ Doland — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:44:47 +0000

I’m in the process of upgrading my first-generation Core Duo Macbook, which is getting a little long-in-the-tooth. So this afternoon I visited Apple.com and I took a little time to review the specs of the newly released models.

I eventually came across the following bar chart, which is accessible as a pop-up from this page. It compares my current notebook (coincidentally) with the one I intend to purchase.

At first glance, it was obvious that something wasn’t quite right. The percentages listed inside the blue bars don’t even remotely correspond to the visual length of those bars relative to the baseline bar at the bottom. It isn’t even close.

I took a screenshot and did some measuring in Photoshop with the ruler tool. The baseline bar is 216 pixels wide. The bars above it are 357, 362, 382, and 417 pixels wide, respectively. That would yield rounded percentages of 65%, 68%, 77%, and 93%.

I assume the numbers are correct and Apple is just being deceptive to make the performance gains look more impressive. In any case, it’s definitely not cool.