David Emery OnlineFirefox 4: CSS3 calc()
Firefox will support the CSS calc() value, which lets you compute a length value using an arithmetic expression. This means you can use it to define the sizes of divs, the values of margins, the widths of borders, and so forth.
Oh god, it would be so awesome if all browsers would adopt this – most importantly WebKit, which on the sites I look after has a majority share (!).
Visit ➔Finally, a fluid Hicksdesign
I’ve been wanting a fluid layout on this site for about 5 years. I had a brief redesign back in 2005 where I flirted with it for a few months, but it was soon switched back to fixed as I couldn’t get it right.
Lovely stuff – I’ve been a long proponent of fluid width designs, and now with the rise in smaller-screen browsing and media queries now seems the time to really start getting stuck in.
A List Apart – as ever – is leading the charge, this is all you need to know on the subject.
Visit ➔W+K: Honda commercial
Great new ad for Honda from W+K, love the photography style
Well isn’t this beautiful:
While we’re on the subject of adverts, I really like the new Cadbury’s Flake ad as well:
Visit ➔Say Hello to My Little Friend
The other day, after spending my usual ten to twelve hours in front of this laptop I decided to restart my machine. I checked my email. I refreshed my Tweetie. I double-checked Facebook. I loaded Google Reader to make sure I was entirely up to date on all the news from Helen Thomas’ Middle East snafu to the number of gallons of crude still bubbling into the Gulf to the latest legal wrangling over Gary Coleman’s will to Sandra Bullock’s backstage reception at the MTV Movie Awards. Finally, after a quick check of my realtime blog stats, I took a deep breath and pressed the restart button.
Within five seconds, I picked up my iPhone and checked my email.
Suddenly self-aware, I paused. I looked at my sweat-beaded reflection in the still darkened laptop screen and I realized that yes, I am high on my own supply.
Well, this certainly rings a little too true.
I’m not sure it’s a problem, though, just a product of modern culture.
Visit ➔Safari 5 has implemented geolocation
Steve Jobs mentioned in his D8 interview that they take location privacy very seriously, and the ‘don’t ask for 24 hours’ checkbox is nice evidence of that; there’s no ‘Always Allow’ option.
Of course, I’d still like to see disclosure granularity at the source—ala Fire Eagle—but this is an improvement on the ‘OK/Cancel’ interface that the iPhone throws up.
I think the lack of an ‘Always Allow’ on this is a serious omission; yes privacy is important but there’s a bunch of sites – like check.in for example – that I go to solely for the purpose of using geolocation features. Having to say ‘yes’ every time you go there is fairly pointless, and breeds geolocation dialogue-box blindness (if you see it all the time, you’re quickly going to start clicking ‘yes’ all the time without thinking about it).
Visit ➔No cloud-based iTunes in Apple’s WWDC keynote
As you’ll know if you read our earlier liveblog, the rumours that Apple would have an iTunes announcement during CEO Steve Jobs’ keynote at its WWDC show today were inaccurate. No cloudstreaming iTunes, and no web-based iTunes.com store. Sorry folks.
I would have been very surprised if Apple had announced a cloud-based iTunes service yesterday - it was always going to be about the new iPhone, and it's worth remembering that this is a developer conference; new features for iTunes aren't very interesting to developers.
My bet is that we'll see iTunes 10, complete with some form of MobileMe-based over-the-air library functionality, in the traditional music/media focused September event they normally do. Same goes for a new version of the Apple TV, which will tie in to all that cloud malarky.
And the new iPhone? My only question is whether to get it in white or black…*
* Although it will be my second new Apple gadget in the space of a month, which makes me feel like a consumer whore. A happy consumer whore, though, with lots of nice shiny things.
Tools of a different trade
Photoshop and Fireworks are great tools …for tweaking photos and creating icons, gradients and textures. When it comes to laying out web pages however, they are worse than substandard. They are actively harmful. They reinforce the incorrect idea that there is a way of representing the browsing experience in anything other than a browser.
It’s always nice to see yourself quoted somewhere, and it’s also nice to see this issue gain a bit more relevance now we have devices like the iPad.
However, I do disagree with the idea that you should forego Photoshop and other such tools for the most part and design in the browser. Yes in the browser it’s much easier to see how a design will react to different window sizes and the like, but – certainly for me, at least – I think it can lead to unimaginative design.
It’s just too easy to make things simple when designing in a browser, and be lead by the code as opposed to being lead by the design. It is hard to visualise how a page will behave when designing it in Photoshop, but I find that’s better then trying to visualise design from within a text editor.
Visit ➔Of 3G iPads and MiFis
Today I asserted on Twitter that a 3G iPad is far superior to a WiFi iPad paired with a MiFi device. To save myself answering the "why do you say that" question twenty times, here's the tl;dr version.
I disagree with Fraser on this – I’m incredibly happy with the combination of my WiFi iPad and a 3 MiFi. I think a lot of the problems he’s encountering are down to being in a poor signal area; for example, he says he gets around 2 hours battery life whereas I’ve used mine for 6 hours without it running out.
I’ve also been very impressed by the speed of it as well; maybe I’ve been dulled by the combination of O2’s poor coverage but I’ve always assumed that mobile broadband could never approach the speed of fixed broadband; the MiFi proves this is not the case. For normal browsing, it’s pretty indistinguishable from a normal connection, which is pretty amazing I think.
Sure, he’s right in that you do have to take a little bit of time to turn it on, but when I’m out and about I’ve just left it on without any problems so it’s not much of a big deal.
In short, I’m very happy with the £50 I saved going the MiFi route rather then then built in 3G route.
Visit ➔Kazaa, Skype Founders Launch Twitter-Like Music Service Rdio
Janus Friis with Niklas Zennström, who disrupted music distribution with the Kazaa file sharing service and phone companies with Skype, unveiled their Twitter-like version of a digital music service at the crack of midnight Thursday morning.
Rdio offers instant access to more than 5 million tracks from all the major labels and several indies to listeners in the United States and Canada through a web browser, downloadable software or mobile app. It’s available for free for three days and then for fees of $5 (web only) or $10 (web plus mobile).
Looks like a great service, but I can’t help but think that the pricing model doesn’t quite work; the lack of a free, ad-supported version (even if it’s limited to x amount of hours per month) is going to hamper adoption.
It’s why Spotify is doing so well, obviously; their subscriber levels are doing nicely, no doubt in part due to their mobile app, but I don’t think they’d get many people starting off on the paid plan without growing to love it via the free version first.
I also imagine it’s exactly the existence of the free plan – the one that makes it all work – that’s stalling Spotify’s launch in the US.
Visit ➔