I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and while I thought I had a solid opinion on the matter, I find myself waffling on the issue. Who cares about older browsers? If you haven’t done so, I highly recommend cracking out a copy of Firefox 1. Start bouncing around to a few sites and check out what’s broken. Sure, most stuff is fine but you’d probably be surprised at what’s broken… Read the rest here
It’s the honeymoon phase of learning a new platform. That part where you really enjoy the features that it offers. It’s fun and exciting. You’ve yet to discover all the weird quirks and limitations. This little screencast is of my little frolic through the fields that is Webkit in Titanium… Read the rest here
If we hang out in the same online joints, and I think that we do, you probably also caught word of Jonathan Snook’s adoption headache last month, and the fundraising campaign he has been running to get some help. I donated when he first put up the page, but noticed that things have tapered off a little since then. They’re getting much closer to the adoption date and he’s still only a third of the way to his original goal. So I decided to help more: For the next two weeks, every dollar that comes in from any Chalkwork icon purchase will go to the Snook Adoption Fund. … Read the rest here
I was proud to be a part of the Web Typography: Quit Bitchin’ & Get Your Glyph On! panel at SxSW 2009, along with Jon Tan, Ian Coyle, Elliot Jay Stocks and our super moderator Samantha Warren (photo above by Keith Muth ). Thanks very much to all those attendees who tweeted and contributed to the discussion with some great questions (including Håkon Wium Lie, the inventor of CSS no less). Apologies to the many folk who couldn’t get in. Typography panels are always really popular at SxSW, so it’s a shame we ended up in a relatively small room which had filled to capacity about 10 minutes before the start. … Read the rest here
One of the things that I’ve found mind-bendingly annoying about Leopard (besides its complete refusal to allow classic window management) is the “this file was downloaded from the internet, are you sure you want to open it?” dialog box. Yes, damn it: I just downloaded the file with the express intent of opening it. Stop bothering me. Keep it up and I might mistake you for PC . What’s even worse is that the dialog requires mouse input to get past. It would be just within the limits of acceptability if the dialog buttons responded to keyboard input; if I could hit command-O or something to invoke “Open”, then I’d probably keep the safeguard in place, because I could just charge past it with a quick twitch of the fingers. … Read the rest here
I was recently interviewed by the Independent on Sunday to get a design perspective on why Friends Reunited ultimately failed. However rather than the design of the site, I think the design of the system was ultimately to blame. Friends Reunited was one of the first “Social Networks” in the UK, long before the term had even been coined. Like all good web applications it made something that was difficult to do in the real world, incredibly easy. You could now re-connect with people from your past and spark up new friendships. It also tapped into two basic human traits; curiosity and gloating… Read the rest here
I was recently interviewed by the Independent on Sunday to get a design perspective on why Friends Reunited ultimately failed. However rather than the design of the site, I think the design of the system was ultimately to blame. Friends Reunited was one of the first “Social Networks” in the UK, long before the term had even been coined. Like all good web applications it made something that was difficult to do in the real world, incredibly easy. You could now re-connect with people from your past and spark up new friendships. It also tapped into two basic human traits; curiosity and gloating… Read the rest here
So, in what may be my last ‘media centre’ post, here’s a solution that I’ve finally found to work for me: a Playstation 3. This wasn’t in consideration until recently – I already have a Wii, which suits gaming on a family level really well. The Wii is small, white, minimal, fun and child friendly. The PS3 is a large high definition console for the serious gamers (which I am not). … Read the rest here
My journey to find the ideal Media Centre has brought me via Plex and Boxee . Both are media center applications based on the popular open source XBox Media Center ( XBMC ), with Boxee focussing on the social network slant, and Plex solely on OS X integration. Plex has a very slick interface, and everytime I mention Boxee, there is the inevitable “Why not Plex?’ cry from other Mac users. At the moment, the answer is that Plex doesn’t yet offer me much over just using Front Row. The slick interface has more character than Front Row though, particularly in it’s use of online databases to provide metadata and large format photographs: It doesn’t always get the show/movie right however. The Secret Show recordings were believed to be ‘Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show’, and this couldn’t be manually removed… Read the rest here
The logic goes like this. The traditional marketing funnel is broken. You can’t just throw a bunch of money at an advertising campaign and have that turn into customers. At least not to the levels you could when there were just three channels or four channels of communication. The web and social media has changed all that. So rather than waiting for customers to come to you, you have to go to them and engage with them in the same way they engage with each other. … Read the rest here
How many times have you played out the following scenario? Makes local changes to your style sheet(s). Upload the changes to the staging server. Switch to your browser and hit “reload”. Nothing happens. Force-reload. … Read the rest here
After a wild couple days, it’s live. Well, live-ish. Blick Blocky Retro, the ninth iteration of this veritable site, has made its debut. Why? I’ve been working on this redesign for close to a year now. … Read the rest here
Yes, it’s bothersome when my work is ripped off. I spend a lot of time crafting custom code, designing what I think are great layouts, illustrating or writing copy. And then some random person out there on the internet grabs my work and claims it as their own. If it hasn’t yet, this will happen to you. Many times. My favourite advice ever on the subject came from Jeffrey Zeldman: “Don’t worry about people stealing your design work… Read the rest here
It’s that time of year when people see the big number roll over and decide to reminisce over good times and bad, and talk of where they plan to go until the big number rolls again. This blog post will be no exception. On the Personal Front It’s interesting to look at last years pontificating . In some ways, things haven’t changed. … Read the rest here
I’ve talked a lot about OS X apps recently, and I’m slightly nervous of doing it again so soon. Let me make it clear though, that I only blog about those that interest me, and for no other reason! I’ve mentioned before about creative spongery , and how I collect images, screenshots and type samples from the internets and shove them into iPhoto. I loved the idea of being able to use one app to do multiple jobs. After 3 years of doing this, I became bothered by having my photographs and family snaps in particular, mixed up with ‘work stuff’. iPhoto is an excellent app for storing though, so I decided to create a new iPhoto library and switch between the two. … Read the rest here
I’ve talked a lot about OS X apps recently, and I’m slightly nervous of doing it again so soon. Let me make it clear though, that I only blog about those that interest me, and for no other reason! I’ve mentioned before about creative spongery , and how I collect images, screenshots and type samples from the internets and shove them into iPhoto. I loved the idea of being able to use one app to do multiple jobs. After 3 years of doing this, I became bothered by having my photographs and family snaps in particular, mixed up with ‘work stuff’. … Read the rest here
I’ve been with the same ISP for years: Eclipse Internet . I never had any cause to complain until recently. I’ve been finding that certain types of requests simply weren’t completing; file uploads, some forms, Ajax requests… I started googling for any similar reports. I found quite a few forum posts, all of them expressing the same sentiment; that Eclipse used to be good but that since getting bought out by Kingston, service had really gone downhill. Most alarmingly of all, I read reports of traffic shaping . … Read the rest here
