Peter Chester

So it just dawned on me, after having spent yet another weekend on this project, that maybe there should be a cap on the time or the number of revisions allowed within the scope of the bid.

Oh wait, we do have a cap in our contract. So (scratching my head), why am I now working on revision #4,536,136? Oh, that’s right, because this is for the one client that we have for whom we did not prepare a formal contract for.

This brings to light a fundamental concept… Contracts are for people who think they don’t need contracts.

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vague dead.line [vāg dêd'lîn]
noun

1. An unclear time limit. Often implemented with the intent of relaxing time boundaries only to produce an impending sense of doom.
2. A clearly stated deadline that has been utterly ignored and therefor requires de-emphasis. Usage: “Yeah, we figured 3pm sharp was a vague deadline and that it would be OK to get it to you at 6pm tomorrow.”

I’m on a Mac Powerbook. For months, I’ve been having trouble saving images for the web in Adobe Photoshop. What would happen is I would File > Save For Web and Devices… and find that many of the colors are de-saturated in the preview window.

What happened to my colors???

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per.ma.beta [pûr'mə-bā'tə]
adjective

1. An indefinite state of incompleteness. Often symptomatic of highly humble or insecure engineers or agile development and web 2.0.
2. A state of endless anticipation for advance to a higher level. Usage: “Johny wanted to get to third base with Suzy for years. Realizing his relationship was permabeta, he dumped her for Sally 3.0″

It can be hard to explain why a really simple UI design should cost more than a complex one. Here’s how I like to look at it:

Good UI does the work for you.

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Last night at the Webbies Video Awards, Jennifer Daumler, Director of PR at Level3, asked me “what kind of clients do you look for?”
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When you refresh the browser with a flex app running fullscreen, obviously the flex app should be focused…. but it’s not

Here’s a really easy way to set keyboard focus on your flex or flash embeded code. Basically, just paste the code below into the bottom of your html. After the page loads, this code gets called and sets the focus on your embeded swf. Continue Reading »

We had a situation requiring up and down buttons, and we wanted them to scroll a list. The catch is how to animate the scrolling. Here’s how we did it. Continue Reading »

I know it’s super simple, but I’ve been banging my head on text layout for a couple of hours. I wanted 2 text boxes to have less space between them (leading) than the default. After trying many approaches, I finally figured out that I can set a negative paddingBottom to achieve the desired effect. Continue Reading »

I had this realization the other day that seems to have given me cause to disagree with Buddha about the meaning of enlightenment.

Skillful Balance
From the time that I first started longboarding, I have been on a quest to find the best spot on my board to maintain perfect balance. I have gotten pretty good at finding it. Now what? Fighting to maintain a stronghold on my balance is a great practice in skill, but it is not artful. It’s like putting primer on a canvas.

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