My magic moment from the conference was when Matt Jones taught me the new "IA gang sign." Here he is joined by Brad " Yeah I live in Palo Alto and I'm really an interaction design wanna make something of it" Lauster and Izumi "yes, we do have IA in Japan it's spelled Ray-Zer-Fish., don't make me kick your ass."

Damn, you tough!

Anyhow, it involves spelling backwards, so I keep doing it wrong...

I know I've noted tis before, but since we're talking large font versions..

The Sacramento Bee -- toolbar is another example of a tool for changing fonts.

a confusing, mysterious tiny tool. But we're moving in the right direction.

My biggest question is how can be let people with poor eyesite be aware of the large font version without overwhelming normally sighted folks? it's nice design challenge.

Clip-On Tie: The Diary of a New York Art Museum Security Guard

"If the fable of "The grasshopper and the ants" was amended so that the world ended before the turn of winter, then the grasshopper would have been wiser and the moral would have vindicated him. In a story, the location of the ending is very deliberate. "

A List Apart's font switcher is a great explanation of EXACTLY what we went through on B&A. Sometimes B&A's "large font version" is smaller than the regular version, simply because large font is em's. and em's are... well... unpredicatable. EH is in em's (you're soaking in it!) but it's a personal site and I can torture my readers as i see fit. (and you complain with equal joy!)

B&A has certain goals to meet and px were sort of what we got stuck with. (long story. don't ask)

I pray every night now for the next generation of browsers to use standard code, but hey, what's the odds of that?

Until then i guess it's up to us to try to invent things like the "large font version", IHT's scalable fonts and so on to try to treat our readers right.

One more thing... several people have written to me to ask why have a "large font version" when I could just use em's. Well, other than em's lively behavior, I've seen in many many many usability tests (including the ones we just did this week) that the bulk of surfers have no idea how to change their font size. So when they come to a site that is hard to read, they just leave.

So if your audience is not made up of web professionals, consider adding a clearly labeled large font version. If IE and Netscape aren't going to do the right thing, I suppose it's up to us.

Of Nerds And Words / The etymology of technology terms we know and love is a really fun article tracing the roots of our new vocabulary. (via fury)

While it took an 18th-century satirist to name the world's best-known Internet directory, another site, Google, the darling among Internet search engines, owes its name to a 9-year-old boy.

How to Win Business with Proposal Infographics

"Information" graphics, on the other hand, add substance as well as style. They are the graphs, charts, diagrams, organizational charts and conceptual overviews that help make your proposal easier to understand. They liberate the powerful knowledge locked in the text of your proposal. When viewers see good examples of infographics, their reaction is, "That's meaningful."

God it feels so good to be surfing again. so many nice articles out there!

How can I not like an article whose number one bit of advice is "hire a Usability Specialist"

Win Consumers with Better Usability

From IT ARCHITECT ADVISOR: Create Usable Web Sites - - ADVISOR.com - -

"Hambrose says today's Web site design mentality is analogous to what occurred during the Victorian Era, when designers added elements to furniture, for example, "just because they could do it," even if those design elements didn't serve any valuable function. "

Argh, flash, run run!

I'm pondering over a new concept I call "fear of design." More on this later...