Mark Poppen

I’ve been wanting to write a post on this a while, because I think you might want to know why I am or am not following you on Twitter. Here are the 1 do’s and don’ts if you want me to follow you. I sure as hell don’t want to be an arrogant guy, I just don’t think Twitter is a popularity-contest. I see it as a communications-platform, so I don’t use auto-follows, auto-dm or programs to get me more followers.

Let’s start off with why I’m not following you.

1: Bio: None

If you want to connect with me, great! But you need to introduce yourself a little.

2: Marketing, Social media strategist, Guru-marketeer, Successful internet-something

Please, spare me the “I can tell you how to make money online”-bullshit. I’m a designer, I love my job and I don’t want to be in your pyramid-scheme. Keywords in your bio that trigger my non-follow are: marketeer, sales (unless for an actual company), market, money, successful, profit, empower, affiliate, MLM, social media, “guru”, and my personal favorite: “The Google mystery solved.”.

3: Mentioning the same URL tweet after tweet

I know you want to promote something, but you don’t have to be an ass about it. If you’re interesting as a person. It’s very likely it only takes 1 tweet to have me check out your product..

4: 1000:2 Ratio

If your following-count a whole lot higher than your followers-count, there must be something wrong. Either, you blocked all your followers, you’re a spammer or you’re REALLY not interesting..

5: The hot chick profile pic.

Yeah, really? I follow a few designers that are a delight to the eye, but they actually have something to say. A female model called “Eric”.. probably not.

6: Tweets about formula 1

Huh? Yeah. It’s nothing personal, really, but since I’m a HUGE formula 1 fan, I don’t want spoilers in my timeline. Since I’m not able to watch races live, I have to watch the rerun. And it’s a lot less fun when you know who won on forehand.

And these will give you a great chance of me following you.

1: @replies

This, to me, indicates you’re actually interacting with people, which means you’re not a bot. Always a plus.

2: RT’s

Not a necessity, but it’s a bonus. There is a thin line between retweeting every tweet you see and retweeting valuable stuff, though.

3: Designers

I follow most designers that follow me. Who knows, we might work together in the future. I get more and more business through Twitter, so please, do follow.

4: English or Dutch

Tweet in English or Dutch, so I can understand what you’re talking about.

I use Twimailer. This is a service that intercepts the Twitter mail to you about new followers. It re-formats the email, so you can see if a follower is a spammer, right in your email. It shows, information like the bio, website and location, the profile picture and the last Tweets. I found it to be very useful in sifting spam from legit followers.

Of course, you can follow me: @MarkPoppen

I don’t know how it came to me, but I woke up with the question: What would big sites look like in Comic Sans? So, when I got to my computer, I opened up a bunch of major web sites and converted them into Comic Sans. I was surprised that not all sites looked ugly instantly..

While doing this, I noticed there are a few sites that have a horrible css.

What does your website look like in Comic Sans? Leave a comment with the link to your website in Comic Sans (make a screenshot).

When I’m online (that’s about 50% of a whole day), I scour a lot of blogs, and some of them amaze me how the authors come up with the topics they write about. I recently read iBouaghtamac.com, which is a great resource for Mac related tips. I noticed Brent had one of those little tabs on the side of his website with the title “Suggestions?”. When I clicked it, it opened a nice overlay, powered by Skribit, where I could dump my suggestions for the site. Not layout or design-wise, but “what should Brent write about”.

I thought that was a great idea, and I started investigating if I could get Skribit on my site. Turns out the service is free! (well, unless you want pro-features like modify your own theme and moderation).

So, please, if you like reading my blog, and have suggestions for me, for let’s say a tutorial, review or any other kind of article, let me know through that little tab on the right side of the site. Thanks.

The other day I thought it was a good idea to check “Always use … to subscribe to feeds”, when I opened a feed-link in Firefox, but then I got a shortened tweet with a direct link to a feed, which I had to copy and paste. Since TinyURL was hiding the actual link, and Firefox opened the live bookmars right away, I couldn’t see what the actual link was.

Now, I though that was a pain in the butt, so I wanted to change that. I scratched myself behind the ear, asking myself “where in hell am I going to find that?”. After looking around in Firefox, clicking every wrong tab, going through all the menu’s, all the options, I found it in the spot where I least expected it. But now that I think of it: It’s a very logical place to put it. For the ones with the same problem, here’s the answer:

Preferences > Applications > Web feed.

When I started @designfeed back in November 2008, I didn’t know what to expect. Actually, I thought it would be a dead project right away.

I wanted to have sort of a feedreader, but without me having to go to Google reader (or any reader for that matter), I wanted the design news to be brought to me in an app that I use constantly (Tweetdeck in this case), so I thought putting a few feeds that I like and following @designfeed would help me with that, and it worked. I kept up to date with the feeds I put in there, so I started adding more feeds. Since the emails from Twitter for @designfeed end up in my Otherinbox I didn’t really notice that @designfeed started getting followers, so I kept adding the feeds I liked, and apperantly, so did others.

When I did notice the followers, I started looking through the replies, and there were people ReTweeting, suggesting feeds, and thanking for the tweets. I was surprised!

A few months later, @designfeed is still around and kicking, and I keep adding feeds, as long as they’re design-related, in English, established and useful. The number of followers keeps growing every day.

So, I want to thank all of the followers and everyone suggesting links for supporting my “accidental” project.

If you appreciate me doing what I’m doing, you could donate something via PayPal via this button:

I’m not saying that if you don’t, I will quit @designfeed, or that kind of bullcrap. Sure, it takes time to add feeds, but I do it because I like doing it, and because I think it’s useful, so only if you want to donate, go hard

You can also follow me on Twitter.

(Oh, if you want to make sure I actually am the creator, before you donate, just say the word, and I’ll send you a DM through @designfeed)
Please leave comments for suggestions (that don’t fit in 140 characters)..

Who? Naldz Graphics is a website for awesome tutorials on graphics. You should check it out if you want to learn something.

Anyway, Ronald, the owner of the site, is a heavy Twitter user, like I am. He created a list with no less than 150 designers, who are active Twitter users and you should follow. Guess who’s in that list? Moi!

I’m happy to be on the list, because it will probably mean that I get a bunch of new followers, which means I get to meet new people (designers), which helps me be creative.

Thanks Ronald!

IE6 must die.

In this post I already told you how much I hate IE6, and I’m not the only one, so I decided to stop squirming around it, and simply stop designing around it, unless a client pays extra.

This might be useful for some of you out there who also want to avoid the agony of IE6. I recently started using this code, and so far it works pretty good.

In the <head> of your HTML:

<!–[if IE 6]>
<style type=”text/css”>
#ie6 {
display: block;
}
</style>

In the <body>, before anything else:

<div id=”ie6″>It seems you’re using an old browser. In order to view this site correctly, we advise you to <a href=”http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/default.mspx”>upgrade your browser</a>, or try the free <a href=”http://www.mozilla.com/firefox”>Mozilla Firefox</a>.
</div> <!– end #ie6 –>

And finally in your .CSS file:

#ie6 {
font: normal 12px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #333333;
background: #FFFF66;
display: none;
}

This way a yellow bar telling people to upgrade their browser shows up when somebody is using IE6. In any other browser it will be hidden.

You can use/edit/redistribute this piece if you like. Any comments are also welcome.

A sweet way to keep in touch with other web designer is using Twitter. Tonnes of resources, great people and a lot of help.
As anyone else I started tweeting through the front page of Twitter, which doesn’t keep you in the loop really, because you have to refresh manually. After that I’ve tried a few other clients, like Twhirl and TwitterFox.
I saw more and more people using Tweetdeck though. My first encounter with Tweetdeck was, let’s say “meh..”, but that was because I didn’t download it, but just took a peek at the screenshots. Recently I gave it another shot, and actually downloaded it, and I must say: this is the best one yet!

It’s an Adobe AIR application (so it installs cross-platform), and has a unique multi-column way of displaying tweets. 1 Column for the main timeline, 1 for your replies and 1 for direct messages. You can also add columns for 12seconds.tv, twitscoop and search.

Tweetdeck made Twitter my main social network and if you want to reach me, follow me

Tweetdeck is my twit-app of choice

I was working on a little project for a while called RotateCanvas. When I bought the domain I wanted to use it as a design blog. That worked out for a while, but I found out that writing tutorials were very time-consuming, so I kind of lost interest for a while. I had a spark of insanity (awesome DVD by the way), and I started jotting down some ideas for a new purpose for the domain.

I came up with a digital design galery, so not just for websites built with CSS. You can also add logo’s you’ve created for example. I also wanted to add comments in to help give the designer some pointers of where the design could be better, or just an “I love this design” works too.
Also I wanted a little competition in it. Not to win prizes, but just for kicks, so I added a rating/top10 to it.

Anyway, after a lot of tweaks (and I’m not done yet), RotateCanvas.com went live, and so far, a bunch of great designers added their designs already.

If you have a design online somewhere, please DO send it in, and I’ll put it up.

Gotta love it:

WYSIWTF

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