« February 2006 Entries »

Speaking? Tips.

Over the past few years, I’ve been invited to come speak at various events. No big surprise there, as I’ve probably met a bunch of you at them. Since there’s a chance that some are publicly speaking for the first time in Austin this year, I figured I’d share a few things I’ve tried along the way.

Continue Reading… | Comments Closed (38) | posted to Events, The Industry

Homage and Otherwise

I guess you know you’ve made it when someone…

• Typo-squats one of your URLs. See: http://www.csszendgarden.com/. Notice the extra ‘d’. (Thanks Alan)
• Builds a Windows app to address your complete and utter failure of an on-site navigation. (We all know by now why I can’t change the HTML on-site, right? Hence this kludge to make it easier to navigate.)

I’m more just surprised by the latter than anything, since no one wrote me. It’s not a terrible idea, and was already done twice prior by other sites. But I was forced to block one after the creator put up Google ads. Hey, if I’m not making a dime…

And to be completely fair, there are tons of great ideas people have spun off, from Gigastyle to CSS Zen Sentiero to Camaleon CSS. And the latest comes from Microsoft, no less, in the form of their Mix design contest. With direct credit too, thanks! (If you enter though, look out: they may just have got me to help judge…)

One thing I should take the opportunity to get out in the public, since I’ve said as much before in private emails — if you decide to create a similarly-themed project, I’d prefer it if you were to avoid ‘Zen’ and ‘Garden’ in the name. Get creative, brand it as its own thing. Cause if someone happens to stumble across ‘Javascript Zen Garden’ one day, they’re likely to assume the two are connected, right?

Not much I can do to stop anyone of course, since I have no trademark or any legal protection of the name (not that I’d want to go that route anyway). But, there’s enough mind share in the term ‘(technology abbreviation) Zen Garden’ at this point that I wouldn’t mind avoiding the potential confusion. It would certainly be nice. And I thank you!

Comments Closed (20) | posted to Ephemeral, Zen Garden

El Camino Real

Ditto.

Ditto.

Ditto!

The reason you’re hearing a lot about Camino all of a sudden is because it really is quite good. I’ve been using it off and on for a few months now, and have just recently taken to leaving Safari unloaded all the time.

Sure, I miss a bunch of stuff from Safari. Hitting Cmd + a number for keyboard access to various items in my bookmark bar was a really nice feature. I was just getting used to viewing PDFs in-browser.

And most importantly, anyone have a Sogudi equivalent for Camino? Weaning myself off of that one is going to be the most difficult . Typing “wiki whatever” for an instant Wikipedia search, or “g whatever” for Google, and being able to custom define these shortcuts, means quick keyboard access to search results without mucking about with multiple page loads. It’s bliss.

Update: Turns out Sogudi-like functionality is built in to Camino. Bliss!

But I don’t miss other stuff. Safari’s method of physically auto-completing a URL always annoyed me, as more often than not I had to then edit out a longer path or query string. And what is up with the beachball lately? Echoing Tim Bray, I’ve experience more than my fair share of slowdowns lately over pages that shouldn’t be slow. The snappiness of Camino is more than enough to make me overlook the rest. I’ve finally got my Powerbook back.

For now, I’m sold. We’ll see what a few months of kicking the tires does.

Comments Closed (34) | posted to Browsers

Recently

Whoops, it’s been a while. Still alive. A few things flying across my radar lately:

CSS Problem Solving Survey

One of the SXSW panels I’m sitting on this year needs some help from you. Got a particularly thorny CSS problem? Go tell us about it, and we might have a solution for you in March. Ethan Marcotte has more information about the panel.

Speaking of SXSW, if you haven’t booked your hotel/flight by now, um, see you next year.

Yahoo Does Something Wonderful

To kick off the new Yahoo UI Blog with a bang, Yahoo has opened up a whole bunch of other UI-related stuff, free of charge. Like the Design Patterns Library, a collection of common solutions to UI problems. Or the Yahoo UI Library, a collection of Javascript for common UI components.

And finally, something which is sure to become an instant favourite amongst those who argue for/against bending over backwards to support specific browsers, Yahoo’s Graded Browser Support and their corresponding Support Chart. Practical, well-explained guidelines that you can use immediately, as put out by a major technology company — print them out, give them to your clients or boss, and rest easy. Yahoo’s done the tough explaining for you. Fantastic.

IE7 Beta 2 Preview

Not beta 2. Beta 2 preview. Meaning, expect a lot of change, and more preview releases, before the final version of IE7. Eric Meyer/Douglas Adams said it best: don’t panic.

Unitless line-heights

Speaking of Eric Meyer, check out this explanation of line-height. I had no idea. (This is the same bug I wrote about in October, mind you.)

Eqo

Last night I caught a technology preview of this new mobile service. It’s still pretty beta, but in a nutshell: Skype on your mobile phone. ie., never pay another cent to your long distance carrier. Lots of caveats at the moment, but definitely one to watch.

Photoshop transform handles out of reach

Once again, Veerle has an Adobe tip that’s going to save me a lot of time. No more zooming out to 8.25%.

NetDiver Best of the Year, 2005

Pure design inspiration.

Comments Closed (11) | posted to Browsers, Links, Software