In my experience, most web design clients don’t know much about design, and even less about the web. This isn’t a fault, and it doesn’t make them a bad client. It makes them a regular web user. But sometimes the knowledge gap between a designer and their client can lead to communication problems. I have found that with a little education my clients are better equipped to understand my decision making processes, and we are able to start talking to each other, rather than past each other.

If you didn’t blink, you may have noticed that for a few days recently Wikipedia’s entry for Web 2.0 included a subsection describing the visual elements of Web 2.0. Gradients, colorful icons, reflections, dropshadows, and large text all got a mention.

A few days later the “visual elements” addition had been removed after a vote by wikipedians. The objection, I suppose, is that no set of visual criteria can accurately define something as being characteristic of Web 2.0 - if Web 2.0 can be understood as an approach to generating and distributing content, then it needn’t be tied to a particular visual style.

Nevertheless, it’s true that many Web 2.0 sites do share a distinctive aesthetic. Wikipedia’s editors may not think it’s a worthy part of the Web 2.0 discussion, but I say bring it on! Let’s take a look at the some of the communication issues facing a Web 2.0 site, and see how the “Web 2.0 look” can help to solve them.

You can pick up a standalone version of Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) at Tredosoft.

For a long time I was wary of designing email newsletters. I had read how difficult it was to construct an HTML newsletter that displayed as intended in all the popular email clients. I had heard about the horrors of creating layouts using tables. I had been warned about the perils of using CSS. But this year I have had several clients request that I design email newsletters for them, and had no choice but to school myself in the arcane art of HTML email design.

Here’s a roundup of the news articles, weblogs and just-plain-cool websites I’ve been visiting recently and think are worth sharing.

Last week I was putting the finishing touches on a small website I created for a friend. Specifically, I was jazzing up the image gallery with an ‘Image loading…’ animation, so that visitors knew to hang around while a new image loaded. In the process I made an interesting discovery about the way Safari (Safari 1.2 at any rate) handles javascript image source swapping.

If you plan on designing a kick ass AJAX application then you better make sure you’ve got a kick ass load indicator. That way your visitors will know that stuff is happening while you weave your AJAX magic behind the scenes.

I’ve read a few articles recently where the author gives a run down of their top development or office productivity software - the “must have” tools that make you and your computer happy campers. Never one to miss a bandwagon, I’ve decided to create my own list of the web development and productivity tools that I use on a daily basis.

Swift is a new PC web browser based on Webkit, the open-source HTML rendering engine under the hood of Apple’s Safari browser. For web developers this opens up the possibility of testing websites in a decent approximation of Safari, without requiring a Mac on hand.

Podcasts, they’re so darn addictive. I’m even willing to forgive the misleading name (I’m sure I’m not the only podcast listener who isn’t an apple fanboy). But quality web and graphic design podcasts are few and far between, so I thought I’d share a few of my favourite shows with you. Because I’m a geek I’m going to throw my favourite technology podcasts into the mix too.