I have come a long way from the days of reading Molly Holzschalg’s Web by Design book back in 1998 and try to stick to web safe color palettes. I have become more sophisticated actually following my handy color wheel software and other books I have acquired over the years on graphic design that help me along the way. The whole process of choosing a good color palette for a design is in my opinion the most interesting part of the graphic user interface design process. Not to mention that deciding the focal point of a web page can be a little challenging when an image competes with the actual message of the web page. It has to scream harmony and that’s what I love about putting it all together.

The process is a little sexier with Colr.org where you can get a head start in the creative department getting a quick color palette based on your own image. When I learned that it was inspired by del.icio.us principle of tags and rss feeds, I just knew I had to use it.

Last week I attended UAF iDesign conference. We focused on discussions about tools and best practices on instructional design, distance education and learning object development. One of the subjects that I was particularly interested in was mobile learning. I did volunteer to bring up the discussion about the University’s readiness and the challenges that we might be facing in the near future with mobile technology and distance education. I ended up in a working group to explore the technology and apply it to already existing projects. I am very excited about the possibilities.

There was a recent discussion about frameworks at TechRepublic.com which I am a member of.  The published article was complete with a comparison chart.  It all sounds good, giving heads up to the OOP approach which I am familiar with but haven’t dared to deploy yet a real world application using it.  I did make a comment about deploying faster using the procedural approach but in these days while OOP gains momentum, I guess I will have to adapt.

Go look at the article if you’re interested in frameworks for Coldfusion.

Last year you were surprised about the news about Adobe and Macromedia. I confess that I didn’t like that one bit at first.  I have always been a fan of Illustrator and I can’t really say that I don’t think highly of PhotoShop but if I want to be honest with myself, I have to say that Fireworks has done great things to improve my web workflow.  Needless to say, I love working with Fireworks and I was also worried that it might go away like I heard a lot of you were too.  Well, do not let your fear conquer you. The old discussion has been revived about what graphics editor is better (Photoshop or Fireworks). There was even a discussion about desired new features for the next Fireworks software in Google Groups. Who is to say that web designers would prefer one or the other graphic editor. In fact, it has always been a matter of preference in which way either software made your workflow more efficient. In my humble opinion, they should just look for features that would make Fireworks stronger and not look for features that would bloat the already bloated Photoshop product. Wouldn’t you want your web designer life be a little less complicated, well add some custom brushes to Fireworks and then I’ll be happy!

If you are confused of the difference between Photoshop and Fireworks, Stéphane from Pixelized wrote a good article about it:
- Why choose Fireworks