When I am not designing I also like to read and was happy to stumble upon what is called a “Blog-Parade” asking readers to send in a list of their 10 present or all-time favourite books.
So here is mine, a  mixture of German, English and French literature:

1. Stieg Larsson: “Millenium”
2. Jhumpa Lahiri: “The Namesake”
3. Margaret Atwood: “The Handmaids Tale”
4. Ann-Marie MacDonald: “Fall On Your Knees”
5. Philippa Gregory: “The Other Boleyn Girl” (the book is much better than the film)
6. Stefan Zweig: “Nirgendwo in Afrika”
7. Rohinton Mistry: “A Fine Balance”
8. Barbara Wood: “Rote Sonne, Schwarzes Land”
9. Barbara Kingsolver: “The Poisonwood Bible”
10. Diana Gabaldon: “Outlander” (the whole series)

The list could go on…

While this Blog parade was in German it would be nice to hear what people around here like to read. So feel free to to comment and spell out the list of your best reads.  : )

With rumours of recession looming over the American economy the Financial Post published a nice article on how and what kind of web site will help your business survive hard times.

While this article contains information that should be common knowledge among web designers, clients can be directed to this resource to get a better understanding of how a successful web site should be structured. It will help them to outsource or prepare content, keywords and graphics that are appropriate and choose the right designer/programmer/SEO to do the work because they will know what to look for.

What I particularly like about the article is the subtle hint to “bug free” code.

Happy reading!

A few weeks ago I was asked by Luc Arnold if I was interested in answering a few questions about my experience in web design to be published on his new Blog Spicywebdesigners. The interview is published at: Interview with Spicywebdesigners

So far I am the first canadien “Spicy web designer” to be interviewed amongst American, Australien, Danish and Brittish designers. Judging from the energy Luc is putting into his Blog I am sure this list is bound to grow rapidly into a great resource.

In collaboration with the PowerWatts Team I proudly present the NEW POWERWATTS website, featuring multiple web 2.0 features such as collapsible and tabbed panels, Dom Scripting, Google Maps and a Blog.

A nice success considering that PowerWatts was indexed on Google page 1 even prior to its launch!

One of the challenges I encountered was using Adobe Spry together with JQuery. Unfortunately there is no synergy between these 2 JavaScript libraries and the call to both libraries in the header section of my HTML file created a mayor crash in Dreamweaver (running on Vista).  After spending days on Forums and Blogs I reinstalled Adobe CS3 and could isolate the one HTML file on a computer running XP Pro and an earlier version of Dreamweaver.

If you are interested come visit :
powerwatts.com
and comment if you like

Recently I stumbled upon “Bulletproof Web Design” by Dan Cederholm. Attracted by the title I set out to discover the holy grail. As I am already used to working with the standard compliant table-less, Css approach (whenever possible) I did not really need any further convincing but liked how Dan explained the float theory and the approach towards IE hacks. Great book, read it!

The second book I found interesting is “Dom Scripting” by Jeremy Keith. A nice refresher in JavaScript and how to use code in a clean, nicely degrading way. I hope this approach becomes mandatory in web design classes.

Working on French and English versions of educational booklets early this year required updating huge amounts of Illustrator and Photoshop images from inside the native InDesign documents.
Being used to working with multipage layouts in QuarkXPress I was extremely surprised and happy with the recent version of InDesign. InDesign is streamlined with Illustrator and Photoshop and not only do the Interfaces look similar but commands have same shortcuts and image updating from the links pallet is so well organized that it was a pleasure to see this miracle of technology at work.

And then there is the one feature that is still lacking from the File menu of the most recent version in Quark->”Save as PDF”.
This option alone is worth switching.

Much has been written about freelancing. A great source for information that I like to consult is
freelanceswitch.
Subjects covering inspiration, remuneration, client types (most interesting) are treated in interesting and sometimes humorous fashion.

As a freelancer the web is an extension of my office and I fully use its potential as a resource.

After my disaster with the upgrade of WP 2 to 2.5, sleepless nights figuring out why my updated blog cannot connect to my DB I had no choice but starting over with a fresh installation of WP 2.5. and a new DB.
Which means all previous entries and comments are lost.. for now

So here we are, starting over in WP2.5 with a brand new WP theme.