The amount of information that we’re bombarded with increases every day. Processing the numerous links to websites, videos and photos is one thing, but how do we keep track of what we’ve seen so that we can refer back to it at a later date?
Bookmarks are the traditional solution; file away a link to the website in your browser for safe-keeping. Yet I’ve found myself bookmarking websites very rarely of late, relying instead on my memory to recall which appropriate websites I could visit or what I could type into Google to find what I was looking for. Does the bookmark paradigm scale effectively to deal with the massive amount of information that we encounter?
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Published in Productivity, tagged bookmarks, organisation, relevance on 20th May 2008. No comments.
Safari is a fine browser, but I’m put off by its lack of seemingly basic features, like a new tab button. Sure, you can get plugins to solve this, but you shouldn’t have to. However, one thing it does right is colour. Observe:
This image, taken from my GTA IV review demonstrates why colour profiles can cause havoc on the Web and why you should care. As you can see, the Safari image is more saturated and the Firefox one washed out. This is because Safari supports embedded colour profiles, while Firefox does not.
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Published in Websites, tagged colour, Firefox, Safari on 10th May 2008. One comment.
My review of Grand Theft Auto IV is now online at Thunderbolt:
As our alter ego Niko Bellic sails across the Atlantic towards the unknown promised land of America, you can’t help but draw parallels with Rockstar’s own journey. Having conquered the last generation of consoles, they now face an uncertain transition to the Xbox 360 and PS3, where the pressure to exceed the already high standards is enormous. With such a burden, this is perhaps the most important game in the series since Grand Theft Auto III…
Published in Videogames on 10th May 2008. No comments.
Although CSS is not a complex language to learn, the amount of best practice advice out there is overwhelming. It seems like there are essentially two tiers of CSS knowledge; the first will give you to a reasonable understanding so you can make a basic website, while the second will help you progress to a professional level. There are plenty of books that cover the first tier, but not too many that do the second. This is where CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions comes in.
Andy Budd’s book is aimed primarily at those web designers and developers who already have a good understanding of (X)HTML and CSS. It starts with the basics, then quickly moves on to the advanced techniques that you bought it for. The first chapter goes over code structuring, meaningful markup and using appropriate selectors to get the job done, while the second is a recap of the box and positioning models.
CSS Mastery then covers in detail background images and image replacement, styling links, lists and navigation, forms and tables, layout, hacks and filters, and bugs. Budd then includes two walkthroughs of entire designs, the code for which can be downloaded as it can be for the rest of the book.
Technical books can be dull and suffer from a lack of clarity, but CSS Mastery is written in a style which is easy to digest and understand. Multiple alternatives are given to problems like drop shadows and rounded corners, giving you a great overview of which one is most suitable to you.
Although I consider myself to be a pretty advanced CSS user, I definitely learnt a lot from reading CSS Mastery. Sure, there are plenty of tutorials on the Web, but few are as well written and edited as this.
Links:
Book website
The book on Amazon UK
The book on Amazon USA
Published in Book reviews, Websites, tagged CSS on 7th May 2008. One comment.
As you may know, I work at the University of Nottingham Students’ Union magazine, Impact. We produce seven issues per academic year, which works out to about one a month. All of our files are stored on our main Mac Pro computer, which until recently was not backed up at.
This left us very vulnerable, so I ordered Leopard (the newest version of the Mac OS) and an external hard drive. They arrived last week and I installed both on Saturday, just as we were coming to the end of the latest issue’s production. I set up Time Machine just like I do at home and left it to do its business.
So I walk in on Monday to work on the magazine and turn on the Mac Pro. It went to the white screen with the large Apple logo, but stayed there… and stayed there. After 20 minutes, I was getting anxious, but then I remembered that I had just installed Leopard and Time Machine. So I reformatted the hard drive, restored the entire machine from the backup and little over an hour later we were back up and running as if nothing had happened.
This little incident points out a few things. Firstly, Macs are not infallible. Secondly, when they do let you down, it’s extremely easy to recover and get on with what you’re doing. Time Machine is an absolute godsend. Most importantly though, it’s absolutely imperative that you backup your data. Be paranoid about it. We could have lost a month’s worth of work and a year’s worth of archives. We dodged a bullet though and I dread to think about what could have happened if we weren’t prepared.
Published in Software, tagged Impact on 6th May 2008. One comment.
Gamespot has some nerve. I went to read their GTA IV review, only to be shown this:
It goes without saying that GameSpot is a big website, but they obviously have no idea about design or usability. Pop up windows are now universally despised because they interrupt the user experience. They should never be used unless the user is expecting them to appear.
Any content that is going to automatically pop up in a new window when you load a page is not worth reading. It’s as simple as that. Even worse is that you’re not told what you “may” be missing out on. It could be anything, but one thing is for sure; no-one is going to bother to find out.
This is such an elementary error that I almost have pity for GameSpot. Their site isn’t exactly well designed to begin with, but this is a total shambles.
Published in Usability, Websites, tagged GameSpot on 1st May 2008. No comments.
