Giving users feedback is one of the most important things to get right if you want to have a successful website or application. Today I uploaded my first video to YouTube and was more than impressed with the multiple forms of feedback I was receiving. There was never a point when I felt lost, out of control, or confused about what was happening, how it was happening, and how long it would take. My experience was a reminder that good sites help you to complete a task as simply as possible while being easy to use.

Here is my quick 3 minute review of the process

I just logged into Facebook and was surprised with the new design of my home page view. I thought I would take the opportunity to share my first impressions of the redesign. I'm interested in your thoughts as well, leave a comment with a "like it" or "hate it."

Icon design is a fascinating niche that requires its own bag of tricks and techniques. One popular technique I've been seeing around lately is a perforated metal texture. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch take a look at the Settings icon. If you look closely you will see a very subtle but wonderful perforated metal background. Textures such as this add a level of polish and detail that can set your icons apart and can help make you a leading icon designer. Today I'll walk you through how this texture is created using simple shapes, basic gradients and easy to master transformations.

Read the rest of this tutorial and watch a video demo over at HiDef's blog.

I've been spending that last few days taking a close look at Drupal 7 and I have to say I'm blown away with the improvements. Over the next week or two I'll be moving my site over to D7 even though it isn't recommend in its current dev form.