Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  Arthur C. Clarke

I have always been fascinated by technology, about the things one can do with the right set of equipment. I think my fascination started when I was around 7 years old. Our family had recently got a computer. It was an Olivetti. I don’t remember the actual model but I remember me and my brother was having a lot of fun playing games on it.

It was magical. I wasn’t so curious about how it worked, I just knew it did and we had a wonderful time with it. That was all that mattered to me. Besides, if I would have taken it apart to see what made it work, at the age of 7, I don’t think my father would’ve been too happy about it.

So my starting point with technology was not by the “disassembling to see how it works” approach, it was by the fact of how it could be used. After that, my youth was filled with technology. I learned how I could capture songs from the radio to my casette tapes, edit them and create own mixtapes that I could listen to in my walkman. I realized that if I had two VHS players, I could copy the content from one of the tapes to the other.

It was exciting times.

I loved to experiment with technology and see what kind of results I could come up with. There was no one else there to teach me, I just learned driven by my own curiosity.

Things aren’t always as they seem

Fast forwarding to when I was 16 and were studying Media Production in High school. The Internet had become a pretty big thing at that time. It was fascinating, but I couldn’t really tell how it all worked. To create a website, I figured, surely required some kind of special software that I couldn’t afford.

I wasn’t interested of investigating more in it because I was focused on other stuff at the time. That changed when I came aware of that we were gonna have a course in school about it. For the first time, I was about to get my hands on this amazing software to create for the web.

The day my world turned

At the day we had our first lesson I was so excited that I could barely stand up. I was fidgeting on my hands like a little kid sitting outside of the classroom, just waiting to get in and start the new adventure.

I had fantasized about what the software was like. It must surely be really expensive. It can only be bigger organizations and certain schools that have this kind of software. I had tried out Photoshop earlier, but Photoshop was only for creating non-interactive graphics. This must be something more advanced and more complex than that.

My head was about to explode with all my thoughts. I just wanted to get in to the classroom and dive head down into the advanced high tech application. When my teacher finally opened the door I bolted for the closest computer. I searched for a new program, some with a cool name like “Professional Website Creator 2.0″ and with a shiny nice looking icon. I didn’t find it.

I asked my teacher, that had come up to me at this point, where it was and if he hadn’t installed it yet. That was the moment he opened Notepad and said “This is it”. I didn’t take him seriously. First I was just quiet and then I started laughing at him. “That was a good joke”, I told him, “Now show me the real stuff”. “No, this is it” he said again patiently and started typing.

He wrote some things I didn’t understand (HTML) in the file, saved it and opened it in the browser. What I saw made for one of the biggest turning points in my life. All of a sudden I realized it required no fancy software. I had made up all sort of craziness of how complicated it was to create for the web. But this was plain simplicity. I was enlightened. Since that day I was devoted to learn coding.

Code, for me, is in itself pure simplicity, just text structured in a way that makes sense. Perfectly beautiful. Until this day, nothing excites me more than writing HTML/CSS. HTML is the rock solid foundation, the wireframe, the structured content. CSS is the layout, the colors, the interaction. Bring them together and true magic appears. A visual representation in a form that a real human being can interact with. I may not be Harry Potter but I feel like a true wizard. Every day.

When most people bought an iPhone for the first time, it was because they needed a new phone to make phone calls and so they could access the Internet and emails in a very intuitive way. For most people that was the basic needs. Still I think many of those people today are spending a lot of time tossing around different colored birds in the direction of some green pigs. I know, because I did too.

I think most iPhones out there today is so crammed with apps that are just stealing time worth more than the actually value you get back using it. Because of the App Store and it’s marketing, we’re being fooled into using things we didn’t need in the first place. And that with the price of our attention (and sometimes real money as well). That’s a pretty high price to pay, I would say.

My conception is that apps are dead. Most of them today is just a big distraction that fills up your beautiful device with a lot of clutter. Real time information will be more valuable. Get the information you need, only when needed. No maintaining, no clutter, no procrastinating. Just valuable information, right in time. Even if that will be a fact very soon, we’re not really there yet. It’s time to declutter.

I can tell you what I have on my iPhone. I have 5 downloaded apps today. Spotify, for the music I love. Day one, for the most beautiful way to write a diary. Twitter, to communicate with the world. Google+, the network I think will be the most important in a soon future. Everyday, for an experiment I did taking a picture of myself each day for a year. That experiment is over in a week and when it is I’m gonna delete the app to declutter. And that’s it.

With this said I just want to make you aware. Aware of all the distractions you have at just one arms length away every day. When you find yourself to tangled up in them, take a moment to declutter, spend time with the person at the other end of the table, go out and explore the world, do the work you love, create valuable things. I’ll tell you what. It’s worth it.

If I’d been writing a year ago, I would have kept a list of ideas about articles I could write. So that I wouldn’t be finding myself running short on them. The list would surely be pretty long and I would have been totally imprisoned by it. Because of setting up this system I would be focusing on quantity instead of quality, and that my friend, is indeed a dangerous approach. There’s nothing harder to do than to try work passionately on something that’s completely shallow for you today, and that result will benefit no one.

So am I saying that you should scrap every idea that comes around in your head?

Not at all.

One thing I’ve learned by experimenting is that great ideas stick. The ones that you can’t get out of your head is the ones that grow substance. Now, that’s an idea worth pursuing. The ones that are less than great will float away. Exactly as it should be. Flexible ideas are the ones that grows in your head. Restraining ideas are the ones you have on paper.

Once you’ve written down an idea your mind will unconsciously get to work by setting expectations on yourself. Most of the time those expectations will never be met and when they don’t, it brings stress. “If I only had more time…”. But it’s not about having enough time. Working on ideas that doesn’t have substance will never be inspirational and can indeed be excruciatingly painful. Be careful not to work on such things.

I know what I want to work on today, I don’t need a list telling me that because it doesn’t know. A list is only constraining and limiting to how I saw the world yesterday. It’s time to let go of the ideas that your past self dreamt up 2 months ago, and start execute on the ideas that excites you today.

Here is a little story from my own life about untethering. About a year ago I wanted to start taking great photos, I’ve always liked photography and I was influenced from a lot of people around me that had advanced cameras at the time. ‘No problem, I can do that’, I thought. I bought a DSLR camera and started trying it out. Everything was fine. A couple of months went on and gradually my camera more often stayed at home while I went out. It started to collect dust. Initially I thought it was just because I didn’t have the right accessories so I started fantasizing about new lenses that surely would boost my productivity. Luckily, I never bought any new accessories.

It was never about if I had the right lenses or not. It was about my motivation. About my passion for it. I was trying to force myself to learn something I didn’t truly wanted to. It was like an awakening and I realized it before spending more time (and money) on something that, for me, would have been totally useless in the long run. I untethered, sold my camera and freed up some space. I put my attention back on the things I’m passionate about.

Everyday the world will ask me to learn a lot of new things, and that’s okay. But everyday it’s up to me to say no to all the things I don’t want to know. It’s also okay to not know everything. If there is something I really want to learn, I need to throw myself in there full-hearted with a laser sharp focus and embrace it. If I find a true passion for it, good for me! Otherwise I need to untether as soon as possible to once again free up time and space for things to come.

The rise of responsive web design

Not long ago, we as web designers had a fairly strong notion about how our work was gonna be viewed. A 1024px wide screen was considered the lowest resolution worth designing for. So we created a 960px grid standard. This was the canvas we had to work with and this was how the end user was gonna see the result. The Internet was considered to be viewed when you were sitting at your computer, and if your screen had a resolution of 800x600px, well too bad.

This has changed.

The Internet today is constantly around us everywhere. You can navigate the web on your phone while you’re on the go, on your 50″ TV at home and everything in between. So we can no longer design our websites like it is a canvas. There’s no idea to know what kind of device the website is gonna be viewed on. Web design can’t be fixed anymore, it needs to be flexible. Content and design needs to flow like water and take the shape of whatever container it’s poured in to. We needed a solution, Ethan cracked the idea of responsive web design and it has been widely adopted since.

Adapt to a new way of designing

So the way we coded changed. But Photoshop hasn’t changed. Creating mockups in Photoshop are still fixed comps. We can of course go ahead and create a couple of different mockups for different viewports but that is, in my eyes, to go overboard with things and will require a lot of maintenance. Instead of putting a lot of time to create Photoshop comps, isn’t it better to do the design directly in the browser? The browser is after all where the end result will be.

As I said initially, I myself have transitioned a lot of my work to the browser without even noticing. After experimenting with it for a while I started to see some of the advantages this approach has.

I know what I get.

Many are the times when I’ve banged my head against the wall after coding up a design, just to find out that the browser is not even nearly rendering my custom font as nicely as it looked in Photoshop. When designing in the browser I’ll get direct feedback, all the time.

Keep it clean.

Before, I usually found myself adding a little too much of the bells and whistles when designing in Photoshop. When designing in the browser I’m keeping focus on what’s important.

Flexibility for all.

When it’s required to do some changes, it’s so easily done in code and the changes takes effect immediately. No middle hands. Code is flexible. Photoshop comps aren’t.

Inventing on principle.

The most interesting aspect with designing in the browser is that when I do, I can play around with stuff in realtime and find exciting new solutions I’d never discover otherwise. This presentation from Bret Victor shows exactly this.

To the future

Something that is gonna be important for this to be widely adopted is that we have great tools for this kind of workflow. The different web inspector tools needs to be improved, and we need more handy tools like Typecast and ColorSnapper. So is designing in the browser the future? I’m not sure. I can’t tell the future. What I can say though is that I will most probably continue my transition to design even more in the browser, and what do I know, maybe a year from now I won’t even need Photoshop.

No one can possibly know what the future will look like. What may work today may not be working tomorrow. The only thing we can do to predict some kind of future is to base it on the experience and knowledge we have about the past.

This is how statistics works, by gathering numbers from the past we can draw an imaginary line of how things will look like tomorrow. But still, no one can ever be sure.

That’s why I for instance don’t like salesmen who tries to make a deal by claiming that their latest television set is future proof because it has a lot of HDMI inputs. If it’s something that history has shown us, is that technology doesn’t last.

It evolves, but it doesn’t stay in it’s current shape. To continue on the technology stride, I remember the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD, a war that Blu-ray eventually won. After that it was said that if you wanted your new computer or home theater to be future proof it needed to contain a Blu-ray player.

This was 4 years ago. How many still believes that Blu-ray is the future?

The same story goes for websites. Many people today say that they’re building websites that are future proof. That’s a lie. We can’t create future proof websites.

What we can do though, is to think in a future friendly way when we create websites. Flexibility is one of the most important aspects for future friendliness. If you have a simple robust framework that can expand and contract on demand you have something that is truly great to work with for the future. If you want to achieve flexibility you need to focus on what matters.

Don’t go ahead and build the Titanic (it was supposed to be future proof, right?). It will take you a lot of time and resources, and by the time you’re done the future has already changed. Instead go ahead and create yourself a little rubber boat which can easily change course when needed.

Make quick turns, embrace the uncertainty and learn how to adapt to new things when they come your way.

Be flexible. Be lightweight. Be future friendly. Because the future can head in many directions.

I used font-smoothing with the antialiased value and the text rendered beautifully.

The font-smoothing property has three different values:

-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
-webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased;
-webkit-font-smoothing: none; 

Go ahead and use font-smoothing today, for a more beautiful web. Want more information?  Read Tim Van Damme’s article about font-smoothing.

I don’t do the same tasks on each device.

Why then, should I spend time sync everything between them? I love reading books on my iPad. It has digital bookmarks, highlighting and a built-in dictionary. It’s simply a great experience. But, I’m never gonna read a novel on my iPhone. The screen is way too small for that and I need to flip the page all the time. The experience is not that great here. So why then, do I need to have iBooks on my iPhone? Simple, I don’t.

I don’t need to spend all that time syncing books back and forth to a device I don’t use for that task. It can be spent on better things. I read on my iPad, that’s the only place my books needs to be.

The same goes the other way around. I usually listen to podcasts when I take a walk. I don’t carry around my iPad when I take a walk, so the podcasts doesn’t need to be there. They should exist on my iPhone.

Every device has it’s own purpose.

I never, ever create a web design or writing any code on my iOS devices. That’s what my laptop is for.

Instead of trying to do all sort of things on all of my devices, I give them certain roles so when I spend time with a device I know what kind of tasks it’s best suited for.

My iPhone is a communication device.
My iPad is a reading device.
My laptop is a working device.

How do you use your devices?

formSteppr takes your structural semantic form and divides it into steps by using it’s fieldsets. It creates a navigation for the steps on the fly, using the legend for each fieldset to create the navigation labels. formSteppr also adds basic validation, which means you can’t pass a step without having filled out the required information.

You can always go back a step to change your information, but you can’t, of course, pass a step. The validation messages and the text of the buttons are fully customizable. formSteppr is built with usability in mind and if you find something that would enhance the experience even more, please let me know.

So without further ado, go check it out for yourself.

Features

• formSteppr divides a semantic form into steps.
• Adds navigation between the steps.
• Basic validation for required fields, email and phone numbers.
• Customizable messages.
• Only 6KB.

Download See demo

When I try to adapt to new things it is usually based on the concept that I need to get rid of something, I need to reduce. I usually have this urge to feel lighter, and that ‘something’ is holding me back. Either it takes too much of my time and doesn’t give me anything, or there is a much better way to do it that I don’t know of yet. When I realize this I need to start experimenting. The first step is to begin thinking about the actual existence of that ‘something’. Why is it there to begin with? This can for example be a program on my computer, an app on my phone, or a physical object that I possess.

Trash it with good consciousness

If I find out that I use a thing only because I’ve always used it and don’t really know why, then I have a bad answer. I need to start imagine my life without it. When I’m in a situation like this I usually keep the thing for a while but in my mind I’ve already let go. This is a way for me to test if I don’t need it anymore. When realizing my life will be better without it, I trash it with good consciousness.

Streamline what’s beneficial for you

If I instead find out that I use something because it truly is beneficial for me, I’ll experiment to see if I can streamline the experience even more. For instance, I have found that keeping a diary is good for me, it keeps track on who I am. I have used Evernote since what feels like the beginning of time and I love it, it truly is an awesome product. Another app that I’ve been using very frequently is Day One, where I have this gorgeous journal that encourages me to write down my thoughts every day. On top of that, since I am in the Apple ecosystem, I have the default Notes application as well. So the hard question I finally asked myself was, do I really need Evernote?

It was a terrifying thought at first, I mean I’ve used Evernote for so long and it feels like a really good friend of mine. I started to investigate what kind of things I used Evernote for and found out that it was mainly for some lists, random thoughts and personal credentials.

My thoughts and journal writing should go into Day One so I have everything in the same place. Thanks to Apple I also have the default Notes application where I can store lists and other things I need to remember. All of a sudden it just hit me, Evernote was no longer needed. It had become superfluous. So I removed it. I got one less thing to manage and I felt a little bit lighter. To reach this goal I didn’t even had to cut down on functionality at all. I just needed to change a habit of mine. This was a way for me to streamline things I used even further.

I find this approach to adapt to new things very practical. It opens up your mind to the new and in the same way it keeps you focused. The most basic rule is to question yourself and your decisions, just because you’ve done the same thing over and over for the last couple of years doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do it today.