January 2003 Archive

Roundup

I like Mark Pilgrim’s In brief blog format.

Mark Pilgrim: No clock. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t, I just can’t. No more midnight builds. No more 3AM debugging and then slip down the hall and into bed. No more laptop. No more wireless Internet access.” Burn out happens to everyone.
Jeffrey Zeldman redesigns While-U-Watch™. We like the white.
Ben and Mena Trott take on Tokyo Disneyland and Disneysea.
Lance Arthur: Cathood. “I’ve taken the plunge. I’ve gone off the deep end. I am drowning in the sea of pet ownership. What was I thinking? Clearly, not much more than, ‘Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, this is the cutest goddam cat I’ve ever seen!’”
Andrew Womack: The Non-Expert: Party Jokes. “The Non-Expert goes to a lot of parties and knows a lot of great jokes. Here’s a few of them along with ways you can work them into your evening.”

Groundhog Day is on February 2. Remember Groundhog Day, the movie? In the film, Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) travels to Punxsutawney, PA to cover Groundhog festivities. The trip is only supposed to last one day but due to a blizzard, the crew has to stay overnight. He wakes up the next day to find out that it’s Groundhog Day all over again. And the next day, and the next day, and the next day.

Sometimes my life seems like that. The same day over and over again. I need change.

Best of CHI-WEB and SIGIA-L

Scott Berkun has once again updated his wonderful Best of chi-web & sigia-l page, which provides links to the most popular summaries on both lists.

Validate Your Weblog Entries

A while back I put out a request for a tool that will validate my weblog entries. Today, via the Movable Type support forums, I found MTValidate, a Movable Type plugin that does just that.

Brad Lauster Redesigned

Hey look, interaction designer Brad Lauster (dot com) redesigned. The new design is great looking and highly functional. Nice work, Brad!

All XHTML/CSS Weblogs.com

Dave Winer asked the CSS guru’s to create a CSS version of the center table on weblogs.com. Douglas Bowman answered with a near-perfect reproduction that works in almost every major browser. Excellent work, Douglas.

Apple Word Processor

In the rumors department, Daniel Kapusta and Thomas Vander Wal are talking about Apple’s new Word killer called Document.

New Kuro5hin Text Ads

Simon Willison mentioned Kuro5hin’s new text ads and a Q & A with Rusty Foster about the format. Text ads aren’t anything new, but text ads that allow comments are. I agree with Simon that it’s a great twist to Internet advertising and one that we can expect to see more of.

HTML’s Time Is Over? Hold On.

David Heller: HTML’s Time is Over. Let’s Move On.

As the web finds users and builders demanding more and more richness, we need to re-evaluate the technology that 99% of it is built on. No matter how sophisticated our back ends get, the front ends seem to remain stagnant. Yes, HTML transformed to XHTML, but that is such a small step and it is a problematic one when we consider the still eminent requirement of multi-browser, multi-platform, multi-device support.

Are users and builders really demanding more richness? Anyways, it’s the users that matter and I don’t hear them screaming for this stuff. And correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t multi-browser, multi-platform, multi-device support the big advantage of using XHTML? The article goes on to make some good points, but this intro paragraph makes no sense.

harrumph! still beautiful!

Heather Champ’s latest is pure beauty.

Web Undesign

In a recent Graphics International article, Liz Bailey writes about Undesign and the emerging trend of simplicity in web design (via Jason Kottke).

The new, uniquely online aesthetic - termed ‘undesign’ by some after Tibor Kalman - isn’t so much about utilitarian minimalism as usability, reductionism and subtlety. According to Justin Kirby of viral marketing specialist Digital Media Communications Ltd, “The web has finally found its voice. Design has become a way of bringing content out, not an excuse for lack of content.” He sees undesign as a backlash against overdesigned visual language on the web: designers from print, video games, contemporary music or street fashion whom he accuses of ” ? not understanding the craft of information design”.

When it soon emerges, Web Simple will aim to be a starting point for just these types of sites. The first several Web Simple features have already been selected, but I’m always accepting submissions. While all sites are welcome, I’m much more interested in commercial sites than personal sites. Email submissions to simple at this domain.

Update: The Web Simple project is over.

Is Linkrolling the New Blogrolling?

I first saw what I call “linkrolling” on Anil Dash’s weblog. Now, Jason Kottke has made his popular “Weekly Remainders” a regular feature on his homepage. If many more of the major bloggers start this, I think we can expect to see a lot more linkrolling in the future. And for those of you with big ideas, linkrolling.com is still available.

SBC Claims Patent on Web Navigation

Jeffrey Zeldman reports that SBC is claiming they own a patent on site-wide or “framed” navigation.

Every Web site that uses a common form of site navigation could be hit for thousands or millions of dollars in licence fees, claims a US company holding a patent on the idea. SBC Communications, a major American telco and ISP, says that it owns the right to links that stay visible on the page during navigation — and wants up to 5 percent of company revenue annually as a licence fee.

Sometimes, you’ve just gotta wonder: what are they thinking?

WThRemix Reminder: Entries Due February 17

Don’t forget that WThRemix entries are due February 17. That’s a little less than a month away. How do I submit my entry? you ask. Simply add it to the registry.

Two iPod Accessories

Two iPod accessories that I recently purchased:

I purchased the CEO Classic from Marware because I wanted a case that was compact yet offered good protection from scrapes and light impact. The full leather construction is very well made and features a removable top flap for when you want the added protection but also want to see the LCD. With the front flap removed, the CEO Classic offers ample protection with a clear vinyl covering that protects everything, leaving only the top of the iPod exposed. I made the decision to buy after reading an excited review over at iPodlounge.
Another great accessory is the Sik Hotwire, which is simply a power-only firewire cable. I use my iPod a lot at work, but I didn’t want to leave work at the end of the day with a drained battery. Sure, I could unattach the iPod’s firewire cable from my Mac, but who wants to mess with cables everyday? I attach my Hotwire cable to the AC adaptor that was included with my iPod and leave it at work, so now I can charge my iPod at home or at work without having to carry extra cables around. Best of all, at only $13, it’s relatively inexpensive and much less expensive than other iPod AC adaptors offered.

Syndirella: The Glass Slipper of Windows RSS Aggregators

Finally, an RSS Aggregator for Windows that I can use. Mark Pilgrim mentioned Syndirella, a wonderful open source application by Dmitry Jemerov that works like RSS aggregators should. As usual with great applications, simplicity is the secret to Syndirella’s success. Standout features include its three pane interface, RSS auto-discovery, <content:encoded> support and a built-in scraper that allows you to specify start and end tags for relevant entry metadata. Oh, and it’s free.

Roundup The First

Mena Trott redesigned dollarshort.org.
Lance Arthur writes 100 things about me (that is, 100 things about himself, not me).
Heather Hamilton: Happiness is … . “Pooping on a regular basis.”
Maddog: Fly UI. “In each of the urinals, there is a little printed blue fly. It looks a lot like a real fly, but it’s definitely iconic - you’re not supposed to believe it’s a real fly. It’s printed near the drain, and slightly to the left.” (via v-2)
Joshua Allen: Mannitol. “not quite as sweet as sugar and poorly absorbed by the body. It contributes only half as many calories as sugar. Used as the ‘dust’ on chewing gum, it prevents gum from absorbing moisture and becoming sticky.”
Reuters provides a reminder to know when to say when.

Forrester Says ERP Usability Sucks

Lyle Kantrovich mentioned a Forrester Brief in which their analysts viewed demos of 11 major enterprise software systems and had horrible usability. Lyle concludes:

Companies need to make usability a priority when talking to vendors: they need to ask when, how and if usability tests are conducted, they need to ask for test results (ideally reported by third parties), and they need to suggest that vendors add usability professionals to their staff.

Over the past six months, my employer has been implementing a multimillion information management system that is somewhat usable but very unfamiliar to many employees, so I can identify with Forrester’s claims. It would probably be more manageable if we had a better understanding of the usability and required training before signing the contract.

Semantic Drama

W3C: XHTML 2 Text Module.
Mark Pilgrim: “…the lack of a cite tag makes my posts by citation semantically obsolete.”
Technorati: the weblogs respond.
W3C WWW-HTML List: Tantek Çelik posts XHTML 2.0 considered harmful.
W3C WWW-HTML List: Masayasu Ishikawa of the W3C responds, “Indeed it will be put back in the next draft.”
Jeffrey Zeldman: “W3C does have a problem, but it can be fixed.”
Mark Pilgrim migrates back to HTML 4 anyways.
Tantek Çelik provides more thoughts on XHTML 2 and more important things for the HTML Working Group to work on.

And the drama continues…

More on the semantic drama from Web Graphics.

Merging Safari and Sherlock: Kottke vs. Gruber

Last week, Jason Kottke argued why Safari and Sherlock should be merged. John Gruber thinks Jason’s solution is inside out:

Kottke sets the wrong expectations for Safari, admitting to being “underwhelmed” by it. Safari is not intended to pave the way to a brand-new class of application. It’s just a web browser, pure and simple, and everyone knows what web browsers are - programs that display web pages.

I agree with John and with Apple’s strategy to keep the web browser a web browser. Simplicity in design is the Mac way and one of the big reasons why the Apple Switch campaign has been so effective. Mac users don’t look to Apple to create all in one, bloated applications. They look to them to create apps that do one thing and do it really really well. And from what I’ve seen, Safari is well on its way to just that.

Safari Information for Web Developers

Mark Pilgrim has an excellent summary of Safari CSS bugs, successes and tricks.

Marking Required Form Fields

Cindy Lu wrote a nice summary for CHI-WEB on marking required form fields. I mention this mostly because I visit many blogs who don’t mark which comment fields are required. Usually name and comment fields are required, but who would ever know for sure if they’re not marked?

SUMMARY OF THE REPONSES:

Color should not be used as the only cue to communicate functionalities with users. In fact, yellow may be annoying to the user or cannot be displayed well on the screen. There other accessibility issues as well.

Use asterisk, bolded text, image with Alt tag, or note “required” to inform the user the user field is required.

I’ve chosen to use a red asterisk to mark my required comment field. What are you using to mark your required fields?

Cited! Cited! Let’s Geeet Cited!

What a dreadful title. Anyways, for what it’s worth, I’m now using the cite tag for all of my quotes. I have no immediate plans for doing anything with the tag (see Mark Pilgrim’s posts by citation for a cool example) but there’s nothing like being ready for the future!

Did Apple Trick Netscape?

Update (January 9, 2003): Dave Hyatt, a member of the Safari team, responds to Eric Meyer’s entry: “This is a ludicrous claim and is completely without merit.”

Eric Meyer mentions credible rumors that Apple may have tricked Netscape:

I’ve heard credible rumors that Apple, while it was working on Safari, filed Bugzilla evangelism bugs so that the Standards Evangelists at Netscape (of which I’m one) would get the sites to fix their code to work with Gecko and other standards-compliant browsers. This would then, they apparently hoped, get the sites working in Safari as well.

Understandably, Eric, and a lot of other Gecko developers are going to be really angry if this is true. I’m going to be angry if it’s true. Here’s hoping that this, the first truly ugly apple rumor of the week, isn’t true.

The Macworld Keynote: Before and After

The keynote begins:

The keynote ends. New iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD (now bundled with iTunes as fully integrated suite called iLife). A new Apple browser called Safari that’s standards-based and open source (Apple thinks open source is great!). A new presentation creation tool called Keynote for $99. Final Cut Express, which creates professional quality video for $299. And what almost no one expected: new Powerbooks, including the most powerful compact notebook ever (12”) and the world’s first 17” notebook.

Vertical Centering With CSS

Web Page Design for Designers January issue presents Vertical Centering With CSS. Yes, it can be done in all recent browers.

(via DigitalWeb)

Three OS X Apps

Reading Jeffrey Zeldman’s OS X Switcher’s Guide made me think about the Mac software I use and love. Here are three that I love the most for their simplicity and functionality:

LaunchBar by Objective Development gives your keyboard new wheels, providing you with instant access to thousands of files with just a few keystrokes. “FW” for Fireworks, “DW” for Dreamweaver, “GBV” for all of my Guided by Voices albums, and that’s just the beginning. Don’t like the default file or app that it selects? No problem. Choose the one you want from a dropdown, and it’s automatically chosen from then out. File system browsing and app switching are thrown in as a bonus, but for a mere $20.00, it’s worth it for the keyboard access alone.
LiteSwitch X by Proteron makes app switching a breeze and much more intuitive than the clumsy dock method. The UI is similar to ALT-TAB UI in Windows but allows a slew of other options including quitting, hiding and showing. The latest version even allows you to customize the background color of the switchbar if you’re so inclined. In combination with LaunchBar, it’s a keyboard power-user’s dream.
Chimera is the web browser for OS X. It’s small, fast and simple. It features the wonderful tabbed browsing feature. The only downside is that it’s still in beta (the current release is 0.6), but like OS X, it just works.

Comment Presentation

Tantek Çelik hits comment presentation on the mark with his entry about comment presentation vs. plumbing:

A comment is a comment is a comment. Why should it matter whether it was posted using a web form, sent via email, entered into a blog, or posted to Netnews? From a blog reader’s perspective, I’d just like to see a list of the comments, and not care (nor know) about how the comment got there. Presentation/interface should be designed to present the data (information), not the underlying plumbing.

That TrackBack pop-up window has been bothering me, and I’ve been wondering where to place the TrackBack comments that I occasionally receive. Now I know.

Wala, a Semantically Richer Weblog

Well, that was fun. Taking the lead from the semantics, I finally removed all of the br tags from all of my blog templates. Actually, the only place they were being used was in the individual archive template after the label and input tags. But no more. A few display: block here and a few margin-top: 15px there and wala, a semantically richer weblog.

WThremix Prizes

The WThRemix prizes have been announced. For those that haven’t heard, the WThRemix is a contest to redesign the W3C homepage with the user and the design in mind. Along with other web designers, I’ll be judging the entries. The deadline is February 17 and it’s coming faster than you think, so get your design on and spread the word.

The Missing Square

The Missing Square: “This is a famous problem that has perplexed people for years. In the second triangle, where does the extra square come from?”

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