Tom blogs

Get in touch

Category: Websites

  • User centred design, the GDS way.

    User centred design, the GDS way.

    I was recently in Brighton where the city council hosted a Government Digital Service session on user centered design. Here are things I found most interesting.

  • Two new old tools – Mindmup and Tricider

    Two new old tools – Mindmup and Tricider

    Here’s two free online tools which do something you’d usually have to pay for. They’re not new, but they’re new to me.: Brainstorming/mindmapping/cloud thinking Whatever you call it, there’s often the need to get a load of ideas or thoughts out of your head and onto paper (or screen). www.mindmup.com is a free web tool and app which lets…

  • (Very) Honest webdesign feedback.

    (Very) Honest webdesign feedback.

    How can you get really honest feedback about your website or digital project? Richard Littauer realised that when he gets drunk, he gets very honest, and it turns out people are willing to pay for his honest appraisals of their work. So he set up The User Is Drunk. In fact, so many people have been willing…

  • A guide to getting responsive – a site for all sizes

    A guide to getting responsive – a site for all sizes

    I’ve been spending some time recently researching the evolving world of responsive design and want to collect here some of the information, guides and tools in one place. For starters, here’s a general overview of responsive design including tips and examples: Responsive Web Layouts For Mobile Screens: Intro, Tips And Examples – www.hongkiat.com/blog/responsive-for-mobile-screens/ Now for some more technical articles which…

  • Everybody thinks they need an infographic

    A quick definition of an infographic (which I’ve just made up) “To present a selection of data sets in a way which adds context and value in a visually appealing way” The key here is adding context and value. Not just big numbers in a big font next a picture. There are sites devoted to…

  • If you are the product social media sells, how can you cut out the middle man?

    For years people have been trying to educate users of social media sites such as Facebook and twitter with articles such as “Facebook: You’re Not the Customer, You’re the Product” (Time.com, Oct 2010), “You are Facebook’s product, not customer” (Wired.com. Sept 2011) and “If You’re Not Paying For It, You Become The Product” (Forbes, May…

  • How to test responsive designs for free

    “So what is a developer to do? Thankfully, there is a growing number of browser-based tools available that emulate the screen sizes of a wide variety of devices. Different tools come with different feature sets and varying levels of utility, of course. We’ll look at several of them here.” From www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/07/how-to-test-responsive-designs-for-free/

  • I am Tom Steel

    I’ve recently built a new “home” page to link my online appearences together – this blog, my photo site, LinkedIn profile and twitter account. You can find it at iam.tomsteel.co.uk and there’s a link in the header of this blog. I’ve played about with a bit more CSS3 with text shadows and also used some media queries…

  • Dog shaming

    Everyone who has a put has been shamed by that pet at some point. Our cat once stole and ate a whole block of cheese. I didn’t think cats liked cheese. It seems a more common problem with dogs, as the blog dog-shaming.com helps publicise. If you have a dog, and you’ve been shamed, maybe you can contact dog-shaming.com

  • What do you share with who? Web 2.0 is slowly being locked down.

    I often go through phases of using different social networks to update different people in what’s going on and chat to friends and colleagues. Each of my main networks (twitter, facebook, instagram, Flickr, Google+) is used by different groups of people in different ways, and it’s partly this that gets me active on one and…