Archive for the 'Design' Category

Does it GTK/QT/Win32 Really Matter for Chrome?

A recent article on OSNews highlights the changes expected to come in Google’s Chrome 2.0 for Windows and the progress being made on the Linux and OS X fronts for Google’s new browser.
In the article, Ben Goodger, lead Chrome UI developer, states
[Google avoids] cross platform UI toolkits because while they may offer what superficially appears [...]

Making Gmail a More Welcoming Experience

It used to be that when you opened your Gmail account you would see a bland, blank page with the text “Loading…” in the upper-right corner of the screen, as you waited for your browser to download the Gmail scripts and to make contact with the mail server to download the list of messages and [...]

Vista’s Purple Screen of Death

We’ve all heard of (and, quite unfortunately, experienced) the infamous Blue Screen of Death. Some of us who tested the earlier Windows Vista beta builds had the unique experience of trying out the Red of Screen Death, which occurred when the bootloader experienced an un-handled exception (we experienced more than our fair share of these [...]

Apple’s New Animation Framework

Although we try our best to be impartial when it comes down to OS wars, and we have, throughout the years, presented the pros and cons of Windows, Linux, and other operating systems, you’ve probably noticed that NeoSmart Technologies isn’t too big on Apple. Well, color us purple, but this we have to talk about.

Apple [...]

What Geni is Missing…

The (already!) multi-million dollar startup Geni has a lot going for it. It taps into the obsessive “art” of genealogy – once you get going, you can’t stop. It has tons of money (from 0 to a 100MM in two months!) and a huge work-force. Unlike all other genealogy websites: it doesn’t really need maintenance. Family [...]

My.Netscape: Two Years too Late?

Pardon the word-play, but the “all-new” My.Netscape launching tomorrow may very well be two years too late. When talking about a highly-dynamic market like the social web, it’s important to be on-the-ball with what you offer and when you offer it. It’s a cut-throat market, and being a month late can make all the difference – [...]

Hard-Wired Alternative Layout Keyboards

Although the jury is still out on whether or not alternative keyboard layouts really do stress on the joints and tendons in typical day-to-day typing excercises, and that even the speed-typing results aren’t very clear, one salient fact hasn’t been disputed: There is no real reason to ever use the QWERTY layout. Following no real [...]

The Ultimate Plugin Administration Interface

Let’s assume you have a decent web platform. It may be a CMS, a forum, a blog, a gallery, or a wiki – the point is, it works. And this platform has plugin functionality. Let’s go ahead and also assume that the process of writing a plugin and extending/modifying the functionality of existing code is made [...]

"Padding-" and "Margin-" – What’s the Difference?

Many intermediate and begginer CSS designers get confused when it comes to padding and margin values. What’s the difference? They both just shift stuff, so why the different names? Don’t they do the same thing?

Although the behavior of margin- and padding- is very similary, there is one important difference: margin- is on the outside of [...]

“Technorati is borked right now!”

There’s something thrilling about seeing a big server down on its knees. It probably has something to do with the complexity of an IT Managers job: no matter how many redundancy tiers you have and how hard you work to keep it up, something is going to go wrong, sometime. Along side famous error messages [...]