It turned out that creating the plugin from scratch for WordPress 2.5 was a much more enjoyable task than I expected. Since Happy Cog did such a great job in cleaning up the interface on all the forms and buttons, all I really had to do was enclose it in the Leopard inspired design. So what are you waiting for? Go download it! Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments as well as any requests for future versions.

After reviewing the comments and the e-mails I’ve received with regards to Leopard Admin’s future, I’ve decided to make the plugin compatible with WordPress 2.5. I’m not sure when I’ll have the time to upgrade the plugin but I promise it won’t be too long. I will also make it a point to write about topics other than SXSW or Leopard Admin. All the changes will be coming soon.

Wow, I didn’t expect that. As soon as I read that Happy Cog was involved in redesigning the admin panel for WordPress, I knew right away that Leopard Admin was in trouble. Big trouble. The folks at Happy Cog are some of the best in the industry and as expected, they’ve done a fantastic job. I should have seen this coming.

As expected, Leopard Admin completely breaks down in WordPress 2.5 RC1:

I’m not sure what I should do. I’ve delayed the Leopard Admin plugin for so long that it might never see a full release. Here’s the dilemma I face: if I don’t support WordPress 2.5, the plugin is as good as dead. If I do support it, I can’t imagine there being a large demand. People used plugins such as Tiger Admin and SpotMilk to improve the look and feel of their WordPress administration panel. With WordPress 2.5, that improvement is no longer needed.

The good news is only a hundred people have downloaded the current beta of Leopard Admin. I haven’t shared it around the interwebs and so it hasn’t really picked up any momentum. I could kill the plugin right now and it probably wouldn’t have a huge impact on anybody. At the same time, I’ve invested a lot of time and effort into it. It feels like such a waste to just let it go. I’ll have to reevaluate my options and make a decision soon but please help me out. What do you think I should do?

SXSW Interactive lived up to the hype. In five short days, I was inspired by great panels, met amazing people, had a lot of fun at the endless parties and generally learned a lot about what it takes to be a great designer. I have every intention of doing it again next year.

Inspiring Panels and One Awkward Interview

I can’t say that all the panels were great. Some weren’t applicable, others were dry in content, and there was at least one awkward interview that people couldn’t stop talking about. However, two panels really helped solidify my views and gave me great inspiration as a designer. Those panels were Respect! and Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts. I won’t reiterate everything I learned from the panels but some key messages that inspired me were:

• People don’t respect what they don’t understand. As designers, we have to educate our clients, our coworkers and anybody else that’s involved in the project the process we go through. Everybody should be involved in the beginning of the project to manage expectations and to keep everyone in sync.
• We need to work closely with copy writers from the beginning of the project. There’s often a very antagonistic relationship between the designer and the copy writer because designers often have to wait for the content which slows everybody down. Don’t use Lorem ipsum and use real content even if it’s a draft.
• Reemphasize on the principals of the project. We need to continually update our clients on the status of the design process because a web design is often not the highest of priorities in their minds.
• Design is more than pixel dust and colors. Design also solves problems.
• The designer should make the design decisions. Do your research and set yourself up to be the expert.
• Design is emotional and subjective. There is no minimum requirements to have an opinion about a design. You would need to know something about Ruby to give an opinion about Ruby code.
• Good design does not correlate with less resistance. Better design implies that it is different and different is scary, especially for clients and managers. If you’re comfortable with the design, it’s probably not that great. The common quote that clients or bosses give is “exactly the same but different”.
• Clients and managers don’t want to take risks and again, they want to be comfortable.
• When a design is costly, people expect a lot of design. Paul Rand was the designer of the 20th century - his work was expensive but the final logo results were very simple.
• “You don’t create good design by being original; you create original design by being good.”
• Compromise is avoiding conflict. Great design is conflict.
• Design is making decisions and packaging them as a whole.
• “No”. It’s a great word to get great design. Consequently, are you willing to be called an asshole?

Wow, that list turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. As you can imagine from just my notes, these two panels had a lot of substance - information you can chew on and digest when you go back home.

Meeting People that are Changing the Web

You’ll meet a lot of web wizards at SXSW. I was fortunate enough to meet the Pownce team, Cal Henderson (flickr founder), Kevin Rose (Digg founder), Mark Zuckerberg (facebook founder), Gary Vaynerchuck (Wine Library TV), and many more. It’s quite intimidating to approach them at first but most of them are very down to earth and will spend what little time they have to chat with you.

Endless Parties and Some Crappy Pictures

There isn’t much to say on this end. As can be expected, the parties were a lot of fun. Check out my flickr photo set for the conference. I didn’t take too many pictures and the quality is pretty poor. I’ll do better on that front next year.

Thank You + iPhone

None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the fine folks at Spheric that sponsored my flight and badge. Thank you! Meeting up with Adam MacDonald and David Chan of Spheric was awesome as well. They know how to have a good time and I hope we can all do it again next year. Thank you to all those that I met; I hope to keep in contact with all of you throughout the year.

Oh and I couldn’t resist. I bought a 16 gig iPhone. What a great trip.

I never expected to get so busy this week and while I was on track to releasing a full 1.0 version of the plugin, I got caught up with work and SXSW preparations. It was silly of me to think that I could do it all. In any case, I didn’t want to let anybody down and have people continue to wait for this plugin. Consequently, I’m releasing a beta version of it. There are known issues but I would appreciate your feedback and if you could, please submit bugs in the comments to this post.

The current page for Leopard Admin is just a placeholder and I promise I’ll have screenshots and the page will look much nicer than it is. Here’s a preview of what I have in mind:

I will continue working on the plugin and this site after I return from SXSW. Until then please feel free to take the plugin for a spin and share your experience with me in the comments. Thanks again for all of you that waited this long.

“Leopard Admin” is a WordPress plugin based on Steve Smith’s popular “Tiger Admin“. In short, the plugin beautifies the WordPress admin panel with a look that’s inspired by Apple’s Mac OSX Leopard. The project was heavily delayed due to the same reasons why this blog went on hiatus. I’m forcing myself to continue working on it and publicly announcing a release date of March 5th, 2008. The deadline will give me the pressure I need to get it complete. Most of the CSS is already in place but there are still some pages that don’t look right. Here’s a preview of what’s to come:

Because I’ve imposed a strict deadline on the project, I can’t promise that it won’t be completely bug free. I’ll need your help in finding bugs and testing it with various browsers (Leopard Admin won’t support IE) and so I’m guessing a 1.1 release will be made soon after. In the mean time, please accept my sincerest apologies to those that feel let down or disappointed from having to wait so long for this. I’ll do my best to make the wait worth it. Stay tuned.

Since I first heard about this conference in 2006, I’ve always had an interest to attend. There’re all sorts of web conferences available lately but SXSW was the first. I’ll be going with some members of my team which will make the event even more fun. It’s going to be a great chance to meet all sorts of new people and I look forward to meeting a lot of designers that I’ve been following since I started my career.

As I mentioned in my first post, I’m on a small mission to get to know more web designers and developers, both locally and abroad. If you are attending, let me know and hopefully we can meet up. It’s gonna be awesome.

P.S. If you’re a newbie like me, you might want to read up on some tips

Despite it being quiet around here, I have been extremely busy over the last several months. Having joined a great team, and touring Europe for 5 weeks with Erika in the fall, it’s no wonder I had so little time for this blog. Nevertheless, the dust has settled and I’m finally finding some stability after some drastic changes both in my personal and professional life.

Wait, who are you?

I’m an interaction designer at a company called Spheric. I do most of the design and front end development for the various Ruby on Rails projects we do. I aspire to become a respected designer within the industry and to eventually learn some programming as well. To learn more about who I am, visit the about page.

So, what are you going to blog about?

This site will be a basis for me to share my thoughts about the industry that I work in. Specifically, I hope to discuss and possibly give tips on a wide range of design topics including, graphic design, front-end development, user experience, and user interface. The blog will remain a personal blog and I may on occasion go on a rant, but I hope to keep that to a minimum. Most importantly, I want to use this site to connect with other designers and developers. There’s a lot of you out there and I’m looking forward to engage in some web-related discussions. I’m also hoping to connect with more designers in this year’s SXSW conference and this blog will be a nice place for me to point them to, if they wanted to learn more about me.

Some quick thoughts about the design

Having created the first mockups of this design back in September 2007, I have been itching to get it out into the open. It’s evolved over the months and I’ve been tweaking it whenever I had the chance. The design for the most part should be complete (some minor details need to be worked on) but if you find any errors, please let me know in the comments. The design is grid-based (grid is the new black). The header image is inspired by Mac OSX Tiger’s default wallpaper and the login button is mostly for my own convenience (though I do have plans to encourage my readers to register to the site in the near future). While I do my best to ensure the same user experience across all browsers, I encourage my readers to use Safari or Firefox (get the new beta while you’re at it). I recommend them because I use certain CSS properties which only those specific browsers have adopted so far (like many web developers, I cannot wait until IE6 is a thing of the past). I’m an advocate of web standards and CSS driven websites, but I will step outside the validation rules to use tomorrow’s technology.

The old site

I really didn’t like my previous blog. I wasn’t focused with my writing and I was just starting out as a designer back then so I didn’t know what I was doing. Despite my near-shame of it I thought it would be a complete waste to delete it permanently and so I have archived it. It’s a good reminder on how far I have come. For my ego’s sake, let’s pretend it never existed.