None for ages, then two come along at once. True of buses - and it seems downloadable iPhone GUI assets, too. There was a nice YUI! kit I wrote about a couple of months ago, but the latest PSD from teehan+lax goes one step further - providing a more comprehensive set of buttons, scroll wheels, tabs, pickers etc that are also fully editable, making iPhone application mock-ups and prototyping much easier.
A brand new and cracking t-shirt search engine, that allows you to explore by keyword, tags, colour or price range. I just spent about an hour perusing - and kind of tempted by this one (Fulfills my love of The Smiths and steak in tandem!) Courtesy of the inimitable Mel Kirk.
An interesting video from Aza Raskin, head of User Experience at Mozilla about Ubiquity - a graphical keyboard user interface plugin (only available for Firefox, currently) that allows users to apply textual commands elements on the page. For example, using address information to generate a Google maps image that can then be inserted into an email automatically.
Even though the project has just kicked off - it has a lot of possibilities. When I think about all the sites I visit on a daily basis, the simple tasks that require going back and forth between pages - or something as simple as posting a tweet about a nice site or news story, a plugin like Ubiquity could really tie them all together, save a lot of time, and make the browser a much more capable and - more importantly - intuitive tool for the user.
It reminds me a little bit of Quicksilver on the mac, and loosely Spotlight. I use Spotlight on a daily basis, to find files or even quick calculations - Quicksilver though, I had trouble remembering keyboard commands. Although can see it’s potential, I hope Ubiquity isn’t developed for only those who can remember 4-key combinations or abstract keywords… my mum would find it useful too! It doesn’t look like that though, the use of nice simple terms in the demo are spot on.
I stumbled upon this great interview with design icon Joshua Davis, produced for Flashforward08 San Francisco, the other day.
If you come up to me, and tell me that you don’t know where you get ideas from - then you’re just not lookin’.
On Friday, John Resig announced a re-design of the jQuery website - which had previously functioned very well, but was - for most people - a little on the bland side. It was bland, but I, I like thousands of others, visited on a daily basis to download the jQuery framework, for documentation, examples and plugins. It worked - it did its job and everyone was happy.
Yesterday, within an hour of John’s announcement - and John Resig is someone I hold in extremely high regard, he’s doing fantastic things for the industry (both in regards to JS and his work at Mozilla) - there was a torrent of negativity about the new design. And it all centered around pretty much the same thing.
An illustration of a rock star with the strap line ‘Be a JavaScript rock star’ managed to upset a large swathe in the development community - some simply dropping in their two cents, while others - unbelievably - were willing to go as far as saying that, because of this illustration (that really wasn’t too bad at all), they were going to sack-off using jQuery and use another JS framework. It was like being back at school again!
Thank god for people like Jonathon Snook who - despite a couple of reservations about the re-design (and not the illustration, which he thought was fine) - wrote a considered and constructive comment that at least positively contributed to the discussion. ‘FAIL’ doesn’t really help now, does it?
So the design was changed - some people will like it, others (the types that would prefer to navigate all websites through a Linux terminal, for example) won’t. Jonathon summed it up well - ‘Some people just don’t like change’. Sorry to rant, perhaps that’s why I don’t like comments on websites… for the couple of bits of insightful feedback you gain, there are more than enough people ready to pull your (proverbial) pants down, and run off giggling.
Luckily for you, that’s not why I write this article - I’d like od.co.uk to talk about the downright brilliant and otherwise quirky things I see and/or do everyday. So the banner has since been removed, and to appease the pitchfork wielders, John mentioned an extremely cool easter egg on the jQuery homepage that can be access using the key combo below (known as the Konami code, I found out today!)…
… not telling you where it takes you - that’s the thrill of the hunt. I will say, it is very clever. Go forth and play!
There was a nice article over at Smashing Magazine today, ‘5 Useful Coding Solutions for Designers & Developers’. Good luck saying that in one breath! It was a good read though, covering in detail the process of recreating nice interactive features on a variety of sites, including Kobe and Jeff Croft.
Coincidentely, I used something similar to the Coda slider effect mentioned in the article today, which deserves some praise - the jQuery Cycle plugin by Mike Alsup. Not only does it deal with the transition of images, but HTML content too, includes a transition engine and automatic pagination.
Mike did a cracking job; I tend to find plugins generally need a bit of hackery to get them working well cross-browser, but Cycle worked straight off and is incredibly flexible.
A lengthy interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs together, talking about this history of Microsoft and Apple - I watched this awhile ago, but I came across the link on my del.icio.us tonight and remembered what a mature and insightful interview it was. True, there were a couple of shots across the bows and a cheeky remark here and there..! I enjoyed it though, because it shows that you can have respect - even admiration - for your rivals. There’s nothing wrong with that.
In fact, perhaps you can learn more, and become better at what you do, through being open to your competition?
It’s a 7 clip extravaganza on YouTube - the other 6 parts can be found in the ‘Related videos’ panel on the right hand side.
One minute I was looking at the Ace of Spades, the next? Waking up in casualty from SHOCK, and acute AWE.
Always loved the Creative License series, but this is ridiculous - Adobe, I salute you.