Why interfaces lie…
by Jacob on August 12, 2010
New rule. “If you are a developer you cannot trust your designers”. If you happen to do both, Don’t trust yourself. Hold your thought on this one. Right now, I will deal with the title. “Why Interfaces lie”. Recently, I was browsing through some websites, most of them of significant importance. To name a few domains, governmental, state run companies, online services, real-time booking services and smaller user-base networks. I noticed one thing they had in common. ‘Weak Interfaces’. I noticed their online interfaces had loopholes that might still be unknown to the developer of the backend application.
Take an example. Google’s default search engine results number is probably set as 10 and documented the same in its early development stages.
I was able to bring the number to 1 result per page by simply modifying the value of the first option entry by firebug and blindly believing there was no validation for the lower bounds.
It is pretty sure from the interface Google doesn’t want a single result to be listed. Though this does not create any concern to integrity of the database, it clearly brings to light how weak the constraints set by the designer are.
SQL injection through input forms and Header injections to manipulate cookie information and authenticate websites are prevented to some levels now. However a large number of basic validations are not done just because the backend programmers believe the data received through interfaces are safe. The information relayed across these containers have least amount of respect for the limits set by designer. This works almost everywhere and the validation is often implicitly neglected. The interfaces today are very highly manipulative and unless a refined form of validation is applied to the process logic level some back-doors can create unexpected results.
I was able to a process an online recharge of 5 rupees when a certain telecom company’s basest recharge option was 55 rs. This is no fraudulent action. However it denotes the decreasing credibility of the bounds set by the designer and increasing amount of validation that needs to enforced at the business end. A much more substantial implication would be on the resources. The company let me process the recharge denomination through the online banking portal of a third-party organization and reverting it back when it finally detected the anomaly at an inner core level. Thus creating an alarming denial-of-service (DoS) scenario taking advantage of this hole. This signifies the importance of a refined way of treating interfaces.
Color Cross
by Jacob on May 24, 2010
Recently, I came across Alex Girón‘s experiment with CSS3 and @font-face. It really captivated my mind and intrigued myself with the possibility of creating good banners with just some html code and css attributes. So I quickly fixed up my own experiment to satisfy my curiosity.
The idea was to spread a list of square boxes behind a random quote. So I decided to use an ul list and style each li to random width boxes and spread even more sparsely. Then I used a function to color them with varying intensity and creamed on it more transparency using the opacity attribute. Some -*-transform and a good font substitution was in line until I was almost there.
View it here. Make sure to refresh it until you say, “Its cool!”. 
Get ChunkFive font kit.
Quotes from designwashere.com
Update: You can download the script from here.
The funny world of web design
by Jacob on June 30, 2009
Its been quite a while since I have been focusing on web development and related avenues. One thing is for sure! It is a really funny place to be in!
PLATFORMS
Web designing is no longer about some html-tags and css attributes concerning only the normal computer user. There are a variety of platforms that are being used for accessing information. It leads to more and more developer environments with newer functionality. The designer branches out to specialize in each one of them at each stage of development leading to multiple roles.
CATCHING UP
The biggest problem for a web developer nowadays is staying updated with the latest advancements in the web-o-sphere. The amount of content related to the field is getting enormously large by the minute. New technologies change the way content is being perceived. Just when you finish trying out and experimenting with some prevailing method, you find a better method already available and then you turn your focus on it. The notion of browsers and feed readers to just relay the articles has now changed to providing the content that is relevant. Intelligent systems rely on the user activity to chuck out what is not needed for the user. Thanks to some really nifty web applications, we can still survive.
DOC-TYPES
There is clearly a lot of buzz related to the future of web standards. There are people who support either xhtml 2.0 or html5, bombarding each other with valid reasons that cannot be dismissed by any at this early stage. There are people moving from xhtml 1.0 to older doc-types like HTML 4.0 stating it would be easier as it provides the ‘minimal mental shift’. Other people just want to choose a side when its ready and supported by all browsers and would gladly continue the current standard of xhtml 1.0. I think people should start using the next level of specifications and only then we can elevate them to the next standard! Fortunately there are a lot of examples and good articles that can give newbies a taste of these processions.
FONT-EMBEDDING
CSS3 @font-face is going to relieve the old web-fonts that have served us well over past years. It is time to give them a rest and give a look into new types . It may take some time but it seems to be the way we are going. Embedding fonts in websites seems to have disheartened many type foundries as fonts can be easily downloaded. Even when typekit was announced, people were unhappy. This time it was the customers who already had a license and expressed discomfort is buying a license through typekit again.
BROWSERS WOES IE6
Everyday I hear people cursing the hell out of IE6! I mean it is a ‘trending topic’ that just refuses to die. I wish it did! Many designers have nightmares when it comes to optimizing their website with IE6 which still many ignorant people seem to love. Microsoft is desperately trying to make up for some lost ground by some rather weird advertisements and campaigns for IE8. Many netizens deal with IE6 by simply ignoring its existence, use hacks, javascript workarounds or by simply blocking the browser access. A smarter option would be to use a generic stylesheet for IE6 that simply displays the content in a structured manner.
AND MORE NEW PROBLEMS
Its like Microsoft keeps on committing new and new mistakes with Outlook 2010 deciding to go with table based layouts for viewing HTML emails disabling the goodness of CSS. Okay! So what do people who care do? Send a strong word! Fix it! Microsoft responds and defends their reasons to use the Word rendering engine and the discussion rages on. Just when we thought about the standards support of IE8 and the browser moving towards the right direction; Imagine, having to do table-based layouts for your emails.
With all these different options and methods prevailing, its really amazing how the developer community sticks together and engages in generative discussions to push us all towards a future that is bright and promising. After all its our funny little world of web design!
What college taught me…
by Jacob on June 14, 2009
- The pen is the most difficult object to borrow in a college. Everyone simply has just ONE.
- The farther you get from the blackboard, better-looking the blackboard becomes.
- The time between two lecture periods seems like eternity. Either the first teacher has to relent or the second has to resign.
- Assignments are reproduced with 5% accuracy at each stage of mass copying.
- You feel the friend sitting next to you is sleeping better than you do.
- Sitting under a fan and listening to a lecture is probably the safest things to do in college.
- If a teacher takes two hours of topic at a stretch, it ought to be the end of the semester.
- While writing exams, the girl next to you always seems like a university topper.
- ..and the boy next to you seems to be thinking all the time.
- The teacher invigilating your room is always thinking that you are about to do something off the rules. Oh come on!
- No matter how hard you study, you always forget question number one.
- One who wears washed and well ironed clothes everyday to college is abnormal.
- He/She who visits the library often wants to replace their existing backpacks.
- Define ‘Optimism’- When you leave college…
- College canteen is the first place where you start to appreciate your moms cooking.
- When a teacher approaches, catch your topmost button of your shirt. It gives you satisfaction that they got the wrong notion of your respect.
- If you enter the computer lab and everyone suddenly leaves, wash your feet and come back.
- The beautiful girl standing in front of the library holding a file is your new stand-in lecturer who will leave in two months.
- The college bus always stops 100m away from where you are standing.
Version V: “rize”
by Jacob on June 12, 2009
My website has entered its fifth incarnation. Its been a long time since I have neglected this space. Earlier the content used be just a blog at a different location. I have transferred all of the blog, portfolio and other content to this domain.
Platform
I did stick around with good ‘ol wordpress, entrusting it with a weak database structure that was inherited from old vestec modules. A few tweaks and it was good to go. The portfolio entries too followed suite and collapsed into the wordpress structure.
Archives
The depository containing the entries will sport a new look. I based the design on the beautiful typographical poster of Mike Geisser, called Weapons of Mass destruction.
Journal
The journal is about 3 years old. The styling is particularly inspired from Jonathan snook’s website, adapting his three-column goodness in a healthy way. Ofcourse! Nowadays, It simply wouldn’t do with your latest tweet basking in top-sidebar. The usual link-love, delicious crumbles and other connections are tucked neat into the elegant sidebars.
Compatibility
The biggest news for IE6 is that it no longer has any privilage for accessing my regular stylesheets. Earlier I had plans to just disable content for the imcompetent browser. I’ll go easy on it this time thanks to
Streaming one’s life is the next thing.
by Jacob on August 20, 2008
Lifestreaming. Hmm I am seriously considering revamping my website into one. I usually got confined to my wordpress blog but now I sport myself in many of the social media. Aggregating my participation in all these spheres of online life to my website would be more appropriate.
Many netizens have raised the question, ‘Is it the next big thing?‘. Jeff Crofts‘ and Nathan Borrors‘ websites’ are very good examples. Lifestreaming has a more formal name, Social Media Aggregators.
The concept is not new and has been tested with some added features every passing day. Blogs surely were the pivotal point towards Web 2.0. Many aggregrators are been developed, some of them being Friendfeed, SocialThing, Tumblr and Profilactic. I have checked out a few and found it to be really interesting. I think, people simple love to share, boast and ‘blah blah’ a lot about their life. This simple fact is going to take forward the concept of lifestream probably with some new features. The old personal log with comments is restrictive and has found a whole new ramification. Much of these stream elements revolve around twitter, flickr, Del.icio.us and Last.fm.
Of course I like custom designs and code snippets. Jeremy Keith has given me a sound base to get one such application working in php. Yay! Now I can experiment a few and look forward to my next redesign.
Back in a Jiffy, The tale and the irony.
by Jacob on August 15, 2008
Its been a long time since I have blogged. Infact, a very long one. I haven’t been a serious blogger. The only reason why I use one is to share with people something new, striking facts and my views and experiences about life. As expected, the philosophical posts get very low clicks. but the popular ones include design, code and maybe open accusations. So let me start off another season by the usual words.
I’m extremely sorry for inactiveness of this blog and will strive towards a better maintained personal log. Duh! I feel kinda weird after that line. Maybe this post will become the last one in the next 3-4 months. The suscribers to this blog must be of some really patient species branched from apes some 5-8 millions of years ago and from humans some one and a half years ago. You didn’t get it? My blog is nearing its second birthday. yay! hmm. What do I give my tolerant readers as a gift for bearing with me? Maybe a free WordPress theme. Maybe some screencast series. Blah! If you could have wasted precious mbs of bandwidth of stupid ‘geek’ pastimes like screencasts, then you surely would have seen a steamy youtube clip by then.(or maybe something that steams even more.)
So I will speak about about a few things I learned in the past few months while I was away from my blog. After Tejasvi, I found Vestec CMS didn’t have an edge in todays market if it were to based on just a bunch of functions and methods. MVC is the buzzword. So I may implement this either with a standard MVC platform like Cake PHP or Codeigniter or even try to model one myself. As for new changes, I added a new, improved interface to the admin section.
Moving away from code, I designed a few web interfaces for some companies and found out some bare truths. The most prominent among these is the fact that designs with more white in it are guaranteed to be a sell. According to my experience, a blue-white color scheme is the most liked scheme. A dark design is the riskiest thing you might want to do. Unless it is exceptional, clients are sure to have some second thoughts.
My N73 and its wide possibilities made me Google about S60 application development. After some persistent use of the ‘submit’ button, I found out it that it needs some time and dedication. Maybe a bit extra than the usual. Some newer version of the platform is due to change the level of knowledge so it is better to go into mobile development until I get used to the terms and jargon of their codex.
Well then, I seem to be in pretty good form right now! Calculating this spirit, I think you guys can expect some more posts before the blog nerve gets blocked. Yes! Do expect some goodies from me soon.:-)
Tejasvi 2008
by Jacob on March 22, 2008
It was a venture I took part in. From late November to March, Tejasvi took every ounce of energy in me. Together with some of the most dedicated and talented organizers, during an ambient, colourful and exuberant evening at Tagore Theatre, I spend a moment or two, enjoying the much deserved success…especially when the electric performances of Stephen and Sayanora made the crowd dance like anything Yes! this is my latest tale. What I did for Tejasvi…
1) Website Design – Tejasvi’s official website needed to look serious enough so that we would get some participants. A new festival is seldom welcomed with less interest and vigour.
The entire website was crafted in PHP/MySql with each event details being loaded into the decent interface dynamically. It included some new features and algorithms, of which most were devised together with Asti. Unique ID system, Online participant tracking, suggestion portal, mailing lists and a custom inauguration module… Tejasvi ’08 is the web project I enjoyed working on the most. It soon became the best reference of the festivals’ rules, regulations and prizes. Over a period of one month, it hit whopping track records in Google analytics.
This simply shows how influential a website can be on a festival’s success.
2) Flyers
Over 3000 flyers were printed at the efficacious St Joseph’s Press. Orangish, 2 fold papers spread across Trivandrum did make Tejasvi’s presence felt!
3) Poster and Brochure Box
One glossy poster based on multi laser light streaks proved to a sincere reverberation for the theme of the festival. ‘The radiant you’.
The brochure box is the most innovative design productof Tejasvi. This is modelled on Japanese origami techniques with two 170 GSM papers used. The box when unwrapped would unveil the entire schedule and prize money of all the events. ‘Event cards’ depicting the event format and rules were the contents of the box.
4) Certificates
The most hurried part of the entire design process. Still it looked decent. (er..I think so.doesn’t it?)
5) Badges
6 types of square badges were printed. The Design, derived from the poster but based on different colours.
6) Registration Software
This PHP/MySql Web application was devised in such a way that all six computer systems got updated informations regarding festival schedule, timings, participant details, order of appearance and team codes. Dedication counters too worked effectively with systems though it cost us 100 m CAT-5 cables and two 8-port switches for the LAN at Tagore Theatre. The system’s highlight was a fully computerized registration procedure with the details being retrieved at the ‘Certificate processing’ team. Monetary particulars were also dealt through this efficient, transparent and dynamic arrangement.
If I were to market all these designs, I would have got more than 35K bucks. I thank everyone who helped me in this endeavor. I have worked with true interests and in a honest attire. This means that I would refuse myself to take part in next years’ festival. When i briefed my juniors, I said.
“Next year! We would have already made a platform for you to continue, To begin anew is a hard task. To emulate on a existing model, is much more easier”. To my friends, I say. “Don’t stop with what is already available. Do build on it! Make it taller, stronger and mightier”.
Oh come on! I am starting to sound like John F Kennedy in his famous presidential address. “Let the word go forth…’
What’s hot? What’s cool?
by Jacob on January 14, 2008
Ok so it is really hot out here and I think I will write about something cool.err..wait! Why not I write about some hot stars or some cool gadgets? Recently, I attempted a paper on Discrete Structures. It gives me sick thoughts but the futile effort enlightned me of some new concepts.
From the timeless centuries, people always differentiated cold and hot stuff as the extremes. My mission is to prove both are empirically the same. So let me present my latest in “Verbal Order Theorems”
HC Equivalence
“For every exclamation related to an object’s visual aspect, the extremes namely ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ are equivalent.”
Exercise 1:
What’s cool, What’s hot in the given set of colors?
{ a) black, b) pink, c) blue, d) red }
Solution
Pink! is usually associated with girls and they have fought for it ! Pink as hot? A part from that cursed period in history when pink was associated with boys! Aaarg! naah..with an exception of a pink bikini, I don’t think! Man! Red’s always hot! The inheritance maybe from a hot red chilli or a red haired Julian Moore. Black..aaah! The ultimate definition of coooooool stuff! A black Aston Martin DB9, A black Lamborghini Reventon to a F22 Raptor. Black versions rule! Blue is cool. References maybe from a clear blue sky, bluish-white global warmed glaciers or eccentric underwater action stunts from “Into the Blue” or “Deep Blue Sea”.
Excercise 2:
Give the structural validity of the statement “I am a cool guy and many girls think i am a hot”
The predicate subject is ‘guy’ i.e, myself. Here the basic assumption is “I am visually appealing to myself as well as the girls.
Let ‘Y be the guy’
Y:Y E {Humans;Male}
C:Cool
H:Hot
i.e.; C=H’
To Prove: (Y->C)+(Y->H) is always a tautology.
|C|H|C+H|
|0|1 | 1 |
|1|0 | 1 |
Here I have limited my test set to 2 order relation since C=H’
Hence Proved!
Exercise 3:
What is cool and hot in Transformers: The movie?
Transformers had some of the coolest graphical treat ever. Now thats the cool element! What’s hot in the film? Megan Fox! That would be quick and spontaneous. You tend to associate the sensuous elements with ‘hot’. Sensuous here refers to the theorectical substitute of “cool”.
Exercise 4:
Dude, don’t tell me ‘Vertical Limit’ and ‘Volcano’ are empirically same. Ones’ dealing with cold avalanches..brr. and the other one has hot lava on the roads..
From the ‘Vertical Limit’ to the catostrophic ‘Volcano’, Hollywood has portrayed it to be something similar, Action!! But then it is cool action, cool graphics something associated with geek stuff!
Inferences: Everything around you is cool, You mind selects some as hot because of its inconsistence in singular allocation of concepts. Want that line in simpler words? Come on! Why should I? After all, I spend hours reading some stupid logic books. In most of them, they simple refuse to get to the point! Damn! I wonder whether that cost me my grades.
Conclusion:
I have included many ‘ad words’ into this blog post that was absolutely meaningless and absurd! The purpose of this post is to get more linkable words into my blog posts so that my advertisers are happy. But then theorem stays and is proved!
What my blog did for me in 2007?
by Jacob on December 28, 2007
2007 was a very good year for me, if blogging is concerned. I had some great events which revolved around this blog. Last year i switched from wordpress.com to an independent blog at dynz.net. It was part of the ‘togetherness initiative‘ by the dynz. My co-workers blogs got attached to our company website and rest was the same.
Recognitions:
In August, Smashing magazine selected my 404 page design for their ’404 pages’ inspirational post.
That’s what does when you get listed in some popular blogging directories. Almost half of my traffic have come via Smashing magazine. Thats an incredible jump in Alexa rankings, link backs, back urls etc.
One Down!
In September, I celebrated my first year of blogging (a blog post..so much for the celebration.) . It listed down some of my prominent milestones in the last year.
Redesign: Only one redesign was applied to this blog, Sed. As I said earlier its 404 page gained massive recognition. However i had released a lot of concept blog themes which ultimately had to be scrapped off!
Functions: As a medium to convey my ideas , my blog has helped me a lot. It made me reassert some facts in life. It made me think and review. Some of my common incertitudes were clarified with some excellent discussion.
Well, I wish 2008 would be even better.