Sonora - A fast, lightweight music player for OS X. The killer feature of this app is speed. For me, the quality applications that I use on a regular basis are generally defined by their speed. Speed is such a fundamental element in any app because it’s that element which really defines the quality of the code behind it.

Since I started with a new slate on my macbook (ie just reinstalled everything and started from new), the one breakout piece of software that will forever become a part of my computer experience is Notational Velocity.

They say that the best things in life are free, well this is definitely one of the best applications that I currently have on my machine. The reason for it is simple. It’s does one thing, but it does it better than anything else on the mac.

It takes notes and allows you a level of customisation and has been thought out soo well. It’s completely unobtrusive and it’s one of the lightest programs you’ll ever run. The thing is nearly instantly loaded.

I currently love having the note titles on the left hand side, with the actual notes located on the right hand side.

I remember downloading this years ago, and then just uninstalling it pretty quickly. I just didn’t understand the beauty of the simplicity.

Everything is achieved through shortcuts, which are pretty easy to learn.

1. J and K for up and down

2. Tab for flipping between the omnisearch bar and the notes

3. Esc for clearing the ominsearch bar

4. Return for adding a new note

5. Cmd R for renaming a note

And that’s about all you need to know.

It syncs to Simplenote with a free iPhone application, which is awesome. The actual application is super simple, nothing overly complicated, and it’s blindingly fast. Seriously fast in syncing. It’s not instant or live, but it might just as well be.

For my needs at the moment, which is basically putting down ideas and thoughts, it’s nice and simple and extremely convenient. If you tried this application years ago and didn’t know what to do with it (like I did), I seriously think you should check it out again, it’s worth your time.

RSS5000 - Damn I want an iPad just for that (well and a bunch of other things, but I’m waiting for the second if not the third generation). Shame about the name, what is this? A pun on The Terminator?

Also, Minimal Mac, eh, very nice.

The Indie Mac Gift Pack - I know it feels like a bunch of adds on the site right now, but seriously I’m more interested in how amazing these websites look like. This one is completely different than the previous one, but better in a completely different way. Hover over the monsters…

Well I just upgraded to the latest Habari developer preview release. This thing has been a long time coming. I’ve not played around with it too much, but it does feel much snappier. Upgrading has been a pretty damn easy process, and the way I’ve set it up, all future upgrades will be just as easy as well - using SSH.

I’m going to be posting a whole bunch of stuff about this, because I really think it’s good for people that are complete n00bs (like myself) to get stuck into this, as it’ll make the general process so much less time consuming.

JS1k - 1k Javascript demo contest. Truly awe-inspiring what can be done with 1k of code…unbelievables (Tetris with 1k!!!)

Biolab Disaster - Damn that boy is talented. From the creator of Asaph (which runs my the Elsewhere part of this website) comes this excellent platform game, done in HTML5, CSS, Javascript and Canvas. Look mum, no Flash required.

AutoCAD for Mac - It’s a long time coming, but one of the main reasons for not jumping to a mac for business just went out the windows (get it).

Minutes Widget - One of the simplest and best widgets I’ve ever downloaded.

Screenshot Plus - Best. Widget. Ever. You want to take screenshots? This is the only thing you need. Seriously.

So Owen’s responded to a few things that I’d written. I knew it was coming, and I knew it would be a big one, so true to form the man’s gotten back to me.

To be clear, although I didn’t voice it at the time, one of the reasons why I actually decided to move over to WordPress a while back was in fact when it transpired that Owen might leave the project (I don’t know the exact details, but it seems a community member was maybe hurting more than helping). In any case, Habari without Owen is a much poorer place. Not to take anything away from others who tirelessly contributed to the code, but he’s amassed probably three times as much commits as the next guy (roughly speaking) and generally leads the way - so I listen when he’s got something to say because I respect him enough because he spends the time to explain himself properly. Forget the fact that we don’t agree on everything, I think it’s clear we both want the software to move in the right direction.

The Problem

I would love to replace the logo with something better. But something decidedly, unarguably better.

That’s the biggest problem. Who’s deciding which is unarguably better. I can argue that the question mark is brilliant and the non-descript H is rubbish till the cows come in, as I’m sure others can argue the direct opposite. The point is, it’s your opinion against someone elses. The frame work is not there for moving it forward either. We’re not going to strike lightning in a bottle, nor do I think that I can make something that is universally liked by everyone. Fuck me, that’s pretty much impossible to do. For everyone that thinks the Nike swoosh is an icon, you’ve got others proclaiming that it’s completely pointless.

The point is taking where we currently are and moving forward. Otherwise we end up hurting things more and ultimately not achieving anything.

The way forward

My suggestion? Elect a sub-group of people to huddle somewhere, create a plan, build something usable in a staging place, and then report back to the community for review. They take comments, re-huddle, and iterate until either everyone loves it, or there's no budging by one side or another. And at that point, the community defaults and uses what they've built.

I’ve created my logo. So if anything, I’m happy if I was the one making the decisions. My thought process is clear to me. The logo is out there for anyone to pick at as they please. I had an idea, I put it forward. It didn’t take me too long, hell writing up the previous 5 Habari posts probably took me longer to be honest. Like I said, if anything, I’ve got a nice t-shirt design.

I’m not adverse to exploring the issue further with a task force, hell I think it’s a great idea but ultimately I want to know that our work will be accepted, or voted upon. I want to know the structure, because the exercise will take more time out of me and honestly I don’t want to waste my time - which I’m sure you can appreciate.

The taskforce

The next question that should be raised is, does that then get used instantly? According to Owen, that shouldn’t be the case. It should be reviewed by the rest of the community, lather rinse repeat. This can work, after a fashion. I propose that this is done in a finite number of stages. When we design a building (I’m a building services engineer), the design process is broken down into 4 distinct stages (at least from an engineering POV). Concept, Scheme, Tender, Construction. In a similar fashion, we can also break it down into a few stages.

1. Concept - Ideas about what it could be are thrown on the table. The question mark, the capital H, the doorbell etc. At this stage it is important NOT to rubbish any ideas. This is to create as many ideas as is possible. No idea is off limits.

2. Scheme - The ideas with more legs are weeded out. This is going to be time consuming, because ultimately it is important to come up with one or two ideas options which can be further pursued. The point here is reduce the number of options to a manageable few that can be detailed further.

3. Tender - The few options that are thought to be in contention are whittled down to one. Maybe the execution isn't perfect but ultimately it's an idea that everyone is behind. The general thought process is there.

4. Construction - We build the logo based on the finally selected option. The detail is put in here, and the various elements are presented to be used. In the software, on the website, as badges etc. Used in 'press' releases. Whatever.

We report back at every stage. Any thoughts are processed then and then we move on. The other thing that is important is to have a proper timeline for all of this. Otherwise it’ll meander endlessly. Therefore I propose 1 month for each stage. Gives people enough time to consider, think about things, review, reflect, write emails/responses/posts if they have an issues concerns ideas.

We don’t jump back several stages. The rest of the community had the opportunity to review and present their ideas in the given timeframe. Inaction is not allowing progress which as I’ve explained has a negative affect on the software base itself.

If anything it’ll be an interesting exercise to see if design by commitee works on the internet and in an open source project. Afterall, how do you think all those buildings that you live and work in were designed? By the choices of one person? Don’t be silly.

I get the feeling that when you're done tearing the thing down, assuming you have any energy left afterwards, you might actually do something. Am I right?

I hope so. Like I said, it’s not because I think this will raise my profile, or because I want to have the Habari logo as a notch in my design portfolio (I don’t even have one, although I keep meaning to create one). This is all being done to ensure the progression and future of the software (selfishly because I enjoy using it). I’m not going to let a few with myopic vision hinder PROGRESS dammit :).

Minimal Design - And here I thought the new ‘Kode was minimal. This site seriously takes it to the next level in certain ways. Might even use his minimal gallery solution.

Wow, can you believe it’s October already? Seriously where the hell has this year gone already? Yesterday we watched Godfather and ate chocolate santa. Seriously chocolate santas are already in the supermarkets, WTF? The countdown has begun before I move out of Golders Green after 7 years and go on walkabout. Loads of shit to sort out before then, which all basically starts this week as I order by boxes and self storage options and start getting rid of clothes and unwanted stuff that have accumulated over the last few years. It’s not too bad (yeah you might hear me complaining later on this week) but I know I’ve got my work cut out for me.

In other quick and dirty news, we went and saw Joe Sacco at the ICA this week, which was brilliant, since he met everyone later on and did some signings, which was really cool. His latest books sounds like it’s going to be amazing, so I can’t wait (Footnotes from Gaza). We saw a few images and it does look like it’s going to be a keeper.

On a completely separate note, I’m looking for a good font creator/editor for Mac. I’ve not found any that won’t break the bank (I’m looking in your general ugly direction Fontlab). Fontographer is no longer part of macromedia/Adobe, but surely there’s a nice indie developer out there who has made something that can be used to make a font? I refuse to believe there is nothing else out there.

Cairo - Windows Shell Alternative - I would have KILLED for this before I moved over to the mighty Mac. Now I don’t imagine a day where I will go back to Microsoft, but this would make it more bearable. Might try it out on my Toshiba Protege that is collecting dust, and sell that sucker on.

Make Photoshop Faster - Does what it says on the tin. Need this now that I’m colouring ‘Coffee Beans’.

Developer Color Picker - I’ve been using Hex Colour Picker, but I’ll give this a try and see whether it’s any better (love anything Panic are involved with).

Google Chrome OS - It’s official. Coming in the winter of 2010 to brighten our days. That’s over a year away really, but still exciting news for operating system enthusiasts.

SourceForge Redesigned - Don’t typically go there anymore as I’ve more or less found most of my software requirements in one way or another at the moment, however this was a site I used to visit all the time back when I believe in open source software (but that’s a discussion for another time).

Google Service Logos - Nice list of the befores and the afters. What’s interesting to me is the sheer number of services that Google actually provides. I’ve probably only heard of like a hand full of these and only ever used 5 of them (but I use them on a daily basis).

Tweak Your Finder - Nice little collection of things to do to make the Finder better. I like the plugin for the quick look in folders.

“Outside the Box” Navigation with jQuery - Although I absolutely LOVE how stacks looks on OS X, I can never get around to using it because I hate the dock at the bottom of my screen. However the implementation onto a website looks so appealing.

Wheee! - Part of the promotion in getting Firefox out to everyone, the community was called upon to create some adverts. I’ve never seen this before, but I did get a chuckle, so many years later.

Native Google Chrome for Mac OS X - Still version 0.1, but you can definitely see that it’s still the fastest browser on the market; that and the Omnibar works so much better than anything Apple of Mozilla have created.

Tweetie for Mac - Another couple of hours, another twitter application for the Mac. Yeah, sorry Tweetie looks like it just took it all several steps further than everyone else. Check out the video and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. Coming out on Monday.

MacHeist 3 Charity Breakdown - For all the flack that MacHeist gets for being something that rapes the indie developers that contribute their software for such a low price, there is this little element of the whole deal, which somehow doesn’t get a lot of press. Nearly a million dollars donated to charities. When’s the last time that a Windows bundle made money for charity? Seriously. I was a windows boy for years. Not once did i buy a software bundle (does that even exist), and therefore no money ever made it to any charities from that effort.

Bluebird - Yet another Twitter client. This however looks a little better than Twitterific, which has just stagnated, although not as good as my current twitter client of choice, Destroy Twitter.

MacHeist 09 - For those in the Mac community, you probably know about MacHeist. I bought last year’s bundle which I believe was a hell of a lot stronger offering than this year’s. Is it me, or is it not selling as quickly as the previous bundle did? I could be wrong, but it seems to be stuck under the $300,000 mark (for charities that is) for the last few days. From all the apps on offer, I only am interested in LittleSnapper and maybe iSale. Apart from that, the rest of the bundle doesn’t particularly interest me (Espresso would be nice, but I already own Coda).

Integrity - website broken link checker. Just going through it all right now but damn that’s something I should have downloaded a while ago.

Linux Turns 15 - 15 years ago today, version 1.0 of Linux came out. I used Ubuntu for a year, but the lack of the kind of software that I wanted just wasn’t forthcoming. This isn’t to say that there isn’t great software, just not completely for me. I am happy to see how Linux does see poised to take over the mobile world (who would have thought it) - in the forms of WebOS and Android.

Switch Display Options - Added to my collection of options I might use for my eventual illustrations category on the site.

Safari 4 Beta - Nice to see some good little additions making it into Safari. Now if only they could get the plugin architecture sorted out, it might stand a proper chance at making inroads on Firefox.

Snow Leopard screenshots show interface tweaks - Although pretty minor, what’s great is this small incremental design philosophy that I think I’ve really come to like about OSX. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken. Address things that users are looking for/complaining about (as much as is possible). I guess it’s all down to coming up with a solid foundation and not letting your ideas get the better of you.

Saulius review Pixelmator Sprinkle’s new feature - I’ve been using Pixelmator for nearly a year now and month in an month out the guys have been doing a bang up job of moving the software forward. What’s incredibly pleasing to see is just how far this little application has grown in a year between version 1.0 and the current version 1.4. A great deal of the gripes that I had have been rectified and here’s hoping that the few I have left will be addressed soon (grouping layers and better text control).

Palm Pre Software Product Manager interviewed - Great little interview with the Palm Pre software product manager. What’s interesting are the potential future products that use WebOS as the software of choice.

Chevereto - Open Source Image hosting script. This looks like a pretty cool idea, however I haven’t had much love playing around with it, as the software hasn’t really been fully translated into English (I don’t know what the interface is like for accessing the uploaded images). Definitely one to watch.

First Screenshot of Chrome for the Mac - Easily my favourite app on Windows (after Excel). Although I’ve been using Webkit proper for a week now (much faster), the speed and the general feel of Chrome is exactly what I want in a browser (along with plugins like Firefox). It’s just a matter of time before Chrome becomes a real player.

Together - Interesting little note and file compiling application. Particularly like the web as pdf feature.

Eventbox from The Cosmic Machine - A Mac only app, which helps integrate a number of social media networks in one single place.

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex out - Exciting times for those on Ubuntu. I sadly moved over to OS X last year after battling for a year to try and make Ubuntu my primary machine. Sadly the ‘nix is just not ready for my needs, however I still like to support the project and Canonical because the thoughts and story behind this effort are to be commended.

Polaroid software - If you’re on a Mac (and I can understand why you wouldn’t be) then Polaroid is an interesting idea for making your old photos interesting again. I do like the shake to develop the pictures feature.

Many Tricks - I’ve only been on a mac for a year so you’ll have to excuse me while i compile my indie software developers list of useful apps.

I’m here to also confirm what everyone on the blogosphere has been saying, the Genius setting in the new iTunes 8 actually works. Creating playlists from a single song that actually is PERFECT. It’s like listening to the radio but it’s actually all of your tunes, stuff you hadn’t heard in years sometimes that work perfectly with the tune you’re listening to constantly today.

And can I also gush at the visualiser which is an absolute peach, yeah, I think I will a bit.

Habari Article on Linux.com - Slowly but surely the revolution will begin.

Fancy Zoom for jquery - will probably use this for the projects pages when I get a chance to complete them.

Dell Inspiron 910 has finally been officially released. I’ve been waiting for a netbook for a while, but the truth is at 300 quid, I’m tempted to just wait until the new Macbooks are released, spend an extra 250 quid and get a mac. The killer though is the weight. 2.2kg as opposed to 1.1kg. Then would I go for the Ubuntu flavour or for the Windows XP flavour. While I want to support Ubuntu, it’s not for me, at least not now.

Cappuccino Web Framework - Interesting web based framework for developing applications online, one to a look out for in the future.

So Google is going to be releasing a browser later on today, called Google Chrome. You can also have a look at the comic book that Scott Mcloud did for them, that introduces the browser. And finally you can have a quick look at the first screenshot of the browser. The proof I guess will be in the pudding. Will it load quickly, will it look good on a mac, will it be extensible, will developers actually support it, will it be worth the effort of moving over? Will it, won’t it, guess we’ll find out part of that question in a couple of hours when it’s officially released.

I’ll be honest, it’s been a while since I was even remotely excited about a new application. Chrome definitely fit that bill. For some reason or another I really wanted to test this little application out. I wanted to see if Google had done anything worthy of their name.

I use Google for searching, I use Google as my RSS reader, to store my story online within Google Docs, and obviously I use Gmail and have done for many years now. These things I use on a nearly daily basis (except for Docs). So playing around with a browser from them obviously was somthing I had to try out. If you look around the blogosphere and the net, everyone’s got a friggin opinion about it. Some have decided to take extreme views on the subject, while others are all playing the waiting game to see what the deal actually was with the browser once they had it in their hands. Others still are pretty optimistic about the whole affair.

I’m not new to this new browser game. When Flock was announced a few years ago I was pretty excited about that…until they dropped the ball, added more cruft and shite to the actual browser and well to be honest made it ugly rather than this extremely slick entity that it could have been. With the exception of Safari usage every once in a while, Firefox has been my default browser for years. I used it originally because it was soo ahead of the game when compared to the available products on the market at the time, probably IE6.

So does Chrome give me that same leap? No, of course it doesn’t. It couldn’t because the idea behind Firefox revolutionised the net in many ways. The truth about Chrome is that it does what it says on the tin and it does it well.

1. The tabs - I thought these would be the biggest annoyance, having them at the top. Truth be told, after 5 minutes, I love them there. They sit perfectly and work great, because there is nothing above them. Effectively the browser uses all the screen real estate wisely. That is something that I really have to applaud Google on. They seem to have achieved this by actually making the rest of the browser minimal as well.

2. OS integration - Yeah, ok it's not OS integrated properly, but seriously for once I don't care. The additional stuff associated with the browser as soo small and unobtrusive that you don't really care that it doesn't have the Vista shite (I'm on holiday in Athens, thus using whatever is available, and this case it's shitty Vista). I can imagine that when the Mac version comes out, it'll be very nicely integrated with Leopard. Hell the icons are practically from Leaopard, but decidedly different at the same time so that it keeps it's own identity, that is if they keep these icons and give me the proper grey.

3. Front Page Tab - Love this. I didn't realise that this was a good idea, until it came as a default. In the same way for FF3 I didn't know what a great idea the star and you've bookmarked a site is (in the navigation bar) in the same way I didn't realise that this actually saves me a lot of time, by displaying the latest sites I've visited and the latest sites I've bookmarked.

4. Speed - Yes it's fast. Scrap that, it's FUCKING fast. I mean, seriously that's the fastest browser I've ever opened. Hell IE7 on Vista isn't this fast. There's got to be something going on here. Is everyone else seeing the same lightning speed at opening up that I've noticed?

5. Task Manager - Now that's a good idea. Much in the same vein as OSX, which allows you to kill any application that is giving you grief, so too does Chrome allow you to shut off any tab from the task manager. The task manager also allows you to have a look and see what amount of memory is being consumed by which application. Case in point Facebook is a power hungry bitch.

Looking forward, what do I want? Of course not everything is rosy and I want some things to be sorted out in future revisions of the software.

1. I want this on OSX. So it's really a matter of time I guess. Make sure it's got the same speed as the Windows version and make sure it's got the proper OS colours as opposed to this light blue. It's ok for Windows, it's not OK for OSX.

2. I want this to be open to plugins and extensions. This is the power of Firefox, that no other browser has ever had the chance of coming close to. You can find nice things you like about other browsers, but ultimately Firefox has got it all and then some. So unlike Safari which is a real pain in the ass to develop stuff for, and even then it's not a proper system, Google really should learn from that and have people develop extensions because that is what will make people take the leap.

3. Sort out that loading bar which is at the bottom of the page. Rubbish idea. Safari does it correctly by loading in the navigation bar. Use that idea instead, it's much more intuative; in the same way the tabs at the top of the page is a great idea.

Edit 1 - Seems they are serious about bringing in more developers to help out and extend Chrome, there is also the Chromium project which has been set up for this purpose. It's going to be pretty interesting to see where this browser will be in a year's time, damn interesting.

Expect breakages, spills and loads of stupid things to go on the site, for a long while, until I get my freak on and actually get to the bottom of where-ever it is that I want to go. Either way I’m hoping to make something to move past my cables design from a few years back.

Edit 1 - So the colour scheme in my mind has settled down a little. There are three more base colours to come, but really that’s only going to be in full view once I’ve sorted out the artwork that is going to be pasted all over this site (from which those three base colours will come from). I’m still playing around with the typography and trying to see if I’ve missed something fundamental in the last 6 months that I’ve been out of the game. More about that laters I guess.

Christian wrote a little post asking why the Habari community was snubbed in the recent Smashing Magazine 10 Weblog Engines Reviewed post.

Why was Habari not included in this list? Well it was included in an honourable list. Instead though they included Joomla and Drupal. All very good applications in their own right, but far too bloated to be considered weblog engines (they’re designed for bigger sites are they not?).

In any case, I feel that the reason why Habari wasn’t included in here is a collection of things, but it is telling. While I wouldn’t go so far and say that Smashing Magazine in the authority of the internet Zeitgeist, I will say that they generally put a lot of effort into their posts and do a certain amount of research, so their not so much dismisal but rather short billing is indicative of where Habari stands right now. The problem is that I don’t think that Habari, the community or software is to blame here; rather I feel it has something to do with the net landscape as we are right now.

You could say that Habari is still pretty young in it’s cycle, however it’s a HELL of a lot more developed than the bit of software called WordPress was when I started using it (version 0.6 I believe). Back then WordPress didn’t have ANY themes. The plugin library was in the single most infant state you could imagine (if you compare it to now). The less we talk about the interface the better (that ship is stll a rudderless pile of shit as they change it more for version 2.7 if the latest betas are to go by, and believe me I don’t care enough to go there anyway). I don’t think the reasons for the lack of credibility can be attributed to the software’s limitations, because if you’re looking for something to post a blog, and enhance your site with any one of the currently available plugins, Habari is a pretty solid foundation that is only moving forward, moving into the future, because honestly all of those other ones that are on the Smashing Magazine post feel like the past.

So what is missing? Blogs are now a standard part of the net landscape. Open source projects are a dime a dozen (hell that list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, since it doesn’t include Habari or Chryp, to name a couple). Blogs are not this new and exciting medium that they were 4 years ago. People know about them and have had one at some point in their lives, even the completely tech neophytes out there will have dabbled. The options to create something online are a lot larger than before.

The other thing is that Habari hasn’t had a catalyst that exploded the scene. There was no Moveable Type changing their license rubbish and now back again (or whatever). That was the push that WordPress needed, initially. Right now, work is being done on WordPress but honestly it feels more like a rudderless titanic. Then you’ve got Textpattern….seriously is the project still alive? A while back I heard of a Textpattern fork, not heard anything else about it since then, but then again I’ve not been actively seeking any information so they could have moved forward?

The thing is that to draw people in there has to be some form of marketing push. What I mean by that is the word of mouth about Habari really has to begin in full steam. The great thing is that people are starting to do this, slowly but surely. Michael is talking more about Habari, as is Owen and Chris. Remember those badges that lived on the side of blogs? Remember the ones for Firefox? The thing with those of course is that the actual image usually pretty distinctive. The firefox logo is extremely iconic. Something akin to this would help spread it out again. It could be a community push that al those actively running their sites on Habari should have the badge to wear proudly.

Clearly there are other things that need to be done, however as with the Habari motto, the word really needs to be spread in a number of ways which can only be a good thing for the software and the community.

I was listening to Gruber’s podcast the other day, and they mentioned the blue screen that appears for Leopard users after an upgrade. They attributed this to a bit of software that might have been installed (can’t remember what the name is) which can get itself installed so that it can be used by another programme, like the Logitec mouse software. Not sure if anyone knows what I’m talking about, but if anyone’s got any links or whatever regarding this could you please drop by and tell me what the deal is, because it’s really annoying to have to wait 10 minutes sometimes for the system to get itself going again. I don’t have a Logitec mouse (although that’s another post for another time) so that’s not the problem.

Nothing new to add to the general conversation of redesigned website to be honest just that this is what has been going on with my thought process lately (ok from yesterday). I’ve been sitting on a redesign for the ‘Kode for many months now. It’s been going on for so long that it’s kind of embarrassing to talk about. So much so that I kept flitting back and forth between designs last year in an attempt to get my act together.

However what I’ve gone and done now is gone back to the design I’m most proud of, from both a functional point of view but also from a code base. It’s a solid and relatively light code base which I’m pretty happy with. There are somethings that I know I can do better with however I don’t have the energy to start from scratch and don’t want to dive into someone else’s code really, especially as I want to be able to tweak this to suit my own needs completely.

So I’m going to be tweaking and adding something new to this site every day. Some of the tweaks may be pretty drastic to be honest, while others will be less than obvious. I’ll bring the copy in my static pages up to speed. I’ll sort out some links that are dead. I’ll start to sort out my categories properly and generally bring the design in an evolutionary method to where I want it to be.

I’m through with these drastic redesigns, maybe a slow burn approach will present me with something that I find more enjoyable to use, as my enthusiasm for writing is directly linked to the look of my site. So if you’re reading this on your feed reader, you might want to check the site from time to time to try and spot the differences.

It’s not a question of getting everything right the first time out, it’s a question of slowly evolving and adding and tweaking in a methodical and periodic fashion.

In a word, RUBBISH. The newest MacHeist is up and running and basically it’s a really poor showing this time around. See the last time was an AMAZING collection of applications that included Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. This time around you have some of the same applications and a few random new ones as well, but NO killer application.

Don’t get me wrong I REALLY rate Awaken, use it every day, I really like Coversutra, use that every day (tried using Cha-Ching but couldn’t really get to grips with it at all); crucially all three of these applications were in the previous MacHeist that was held not 3 months ago. What is the application in that bundle that would make you excited? Seriously? It’s not there. Unless they start adding some good stuff, there is no way that this Heist will be as good as the previous one and for good reason. Who exactly are they trying to get on board on this?

On a personal note, there is really no application out there that I want, apart from maybe a better FTP application (there are a couple of good ones knocking about but I’ve not decided which one i should go for) and a better torrent client (transmission is doing exactly what I want and the development is constant so hopefully there’ll get some basic UI issues sorted out and add being able to search and add torrents from within the application itself and I won’t need a new torrent client either).

FontStruct is a website that lets you create fonts using an EXCELLENT flash interface right from within the website. You don’t have to start from scratch as it’s even possible to clone another font that has already been created and modify it to your needs. What I love about all of this is the option to actually control EVERYTHING about an particular project straight away, down to the font. Having created a font years ago, I know how difficult it is to keep your house in order. The interface on FontStruct keeps things organised for you to actually put more effort into the creative process. Now the issue of course is that it might not seem as flexible of being able to come up with any font design you can, but honestly I think for the average hobbyist that might not be an issue really. If you really get into it, then I guess you can start learning how to do it from scratch…although having said that, I have NO IDEA what the standard tool for font creation is nowadays? Font Constructor looks pretty cool. Also there is a pretty extensive list about the different programmes available (even talks about FontStruct).

Elsewhere.brokenkode.com (powered by Asaph) is a an images dumping ground for things that inspire me and has been up and running for a week or so. I’ll hopefully get around to skinning this as well, but I’ve got to say that Dominic really did a good job on this little application and can’t wait to see future iterations.

Late last year I made the move to a mac and while there was a bit of getting used to certain things I’ve been really very happy with everything that it’s offered me in terms of getting on with computing in general. However the thing that I’ve missed the most is Firefox with all of it’s plugins and general speed and open source goodness. I tried Camino and i’ve got to say it’s good in some respects but trying to get any of the blasted plugins to work was a mission in and of itself. It just seemed to me like it wasn’t really there in terms of both backing and development as Firefox, which is just as well. So for the last couple of months I’ve been using Safari, and while I like a lot of stuff in Safari, I think there is room for improvement.

Enter Firefox 3 Beta 4 which was released earlier this week. DAMN that’s MUCH better.

I’ve installed GRApple Yummy theme, which is basically a correct integration of the theme into Leopard and I’m away. Firefox 3 is faster than Safari at loading up, it’s slowly starting to get all the various plugins updated as well and crucially it now also looks the part as well. I’ve not really played around with the browser much yet but one of the more welcome additions is the fact that now I can look for plugins and themes from within Firefox itself rather than going to the mozilla website and searching. It’s inspired me so much so that I installed ScribeFire straight away and I’m writing this from within there which I’ve never done before, just because I can.

So the guys over at Pixelmator have just released yet another update on their excellent little image editor. Now the thing that has impressed me more with this little editor isn’t soo much the actual editor, because the truth of the matter is I don’t think it has got what I need (which is surprisingly a small list) what’s impressed me most is their diligence in releasing new updates for the software each and every month on around the 20th or so. While some people on the forums expect them to be releasing things on a daily basis, I really like how they’ve decided to release once a month and see how much stuff they can cram into that month before releasing it to the world at large.

It just means that I’ve got something to look forward to from them and makes me happy to see that they are developing constantly to improve on the editor. What you can also notice from their updates log is the fact that as time has gone by, they’ve definitely been getting better at closing out issues as the lists have become larger and larger.

Does Pixelmator get my thumbs up as a Photoshop killer? Honestly not yet but as three minor requests that would make this editor my choice one, which I can’t imagine as being too difficult for the sole coder (I think it’s only one guy doing the coding right?) to deal with, however it might not be a major priority at the moment. Here’s the list:

1. Rulers and Guides - Listen if I'm going to be doing any digital work of any description I need these things. So I need to be able to add guides, move them about and snap to these guides. The ruler set to pixels as a minimum before you move onto something else is fine as an initial release if you're thinking doing everything else will take too much time. Maybe limit the functions to their most basis before expanding might be a good idea?

<li><p>Text Function - Yeah this is pretty poor. Now while I might be ok with the limited font functionality how I would really like to have a full text box that I can resize as a minimum rather than being able to just put some text in a straight line. I know it's a really minor thing, but in my eyes it's what separates a good image editor from a great one. If you can add this into the next iteration that would be AWESOME.</p></li>


<li><p>Folders for Layers - Not sure how difficult this is but again this is one of those things that makes organising my layers something manageable as opposed to a complete and utter free for all.</p></li></ol>

I’m not going into any more detail as I’m sure the other things will come in time, however if I can get the above items by March I will love you guys forever.

Firefox 2 is slow as donkeys on a Mac. It’s true. Even with my 2Gs of RAM I can still notice the strain, that and it’s constantly crashing for some reason (usually whenever I use Gmail. Alas I’m eagerly waiting for Firefox3 to be released which is looking a lot better for everyone. In the meantime here are a couple of plugins I’ve found for Safari that I think are really useful: (I’ve updated it with a slew more cool little plugins, based on the comments)

1. Safari-stretch

2. DeliviousSafari

3. Piclens

4. Inquisitor

5. SafariStand

6. SafariTidy

7. And of course we shouldn't forget Pimpmysafari

Anyone got any other ones I should look at?

Today was the first time I used Awaken from Embraceware. It was a whole new experience for me waking up today to a bit of Soundgarden. Tradiitionally I’m jerked out of bet through the bitter sound of my cheap £4 alarm clock that’s been going strong for YEARS. I tell you what, I am most definitely not going to miss that horrible, horrible sound.

A lot of people have been asking me about what I think about the new WordPress admin that’s coming for version 2.4. No actually I am telling big fat porkie lies. No one has asked me what I think, but I’m not going to let that stop me. Lets talk the new WordPress admin shall we.

Swiped directly from the demo site that can be found at hyper123, this is what the glorious new WordPress admin in version 2.4 is starting to look like. I say starting to look like, because you can see that they’ve got a while to go in sorting out all the breakages everywhere. In fact by Matt’s own addmission, it’s only 10-20% complete, which is why they’ve decided to wait until March to release this version, because obviously they’re not there yet.

Now obviously i’ve got a slight bit of interest in what’s going on in the admin, simply because I (and others, whom I really shouldn’t speak for) gave a year’s worth of our free time (more or less) to the creation of a revamped admin panel for WordPress. The powers that be, (well Matt actually) didn’t like it, which is why it never got included into the core.

So nearly 2 YEARS after the efforts that we did on that particular project, we are now finally getting a new administration panel design. Others seem to have tried and failed as well (the likes of Brian and i believe some other Automattic employee, I’m not into the WP community since they went commercial). Is this the thing that Happy Cogs have produced? I’m not sure.

Obviously they’ve decided to go away from the colour scheme that was introduced due to the Shuttle project. What you think the blue that you see came from somewhere else? Yeah no. The other thing that has changed, so far, is the dashboard. Last thing that I can see is the comments now have a number at the top to tell you how many comments in moderation or whatever. Apart from that nothing to report really.

For my money however, this is really like putting a bandaid onto a broken leg. Seriously. It’s past the time for this. This would have been bloody relevant several years ago, not now. Now, well it’s completely outdated and anything less of a complete and utter redesign (and that includes rethinking how your menu structure actually works) if you want it to be something relevant, fresh, exciting and ultimately usable by the widest range of people….but in that case you might as well start from the beginning and building something truly new and exciting…oh wait we’re already doing that.

So I got a load of help from the previous post about where I should look for more information about what kind of Mac I should go for. Unfortunately for me, I mentioned this to Graham at work, who’s a big computer hardware nerd…the man has got more computers in his house than spoons (and he’s been collecting for many years). So I mentioned my recent desire to make the jump. I said that I was probably going to hold out for the new Macbook Pro (if it comes out this January as rumored), with it’s ultra thin and slim stylings and trimmings (he already knows how much of a nut I am about computer portability, when I need it portable that is). Soo what does he do? He sends me the link for the Eee PC from Asus. Why did you go and do that for Graham?

For those in the dark (and believe me in a couple of months you won’t be in the dark at all about this), the Eee PC is one of the smallest fully functional laptops on the market for £220 (that’s about $400 dollars or so). 22.5cm across by 3.5cm thick and coming in at a measly 920grams!!!!! Preloaded with Xandros (a Debian based Linux distribution), it’s an ideal toy for the guy and gal on the move. I’ve put that image there because it definitely gives you a feel for the actual size of this thing. We’re talking slightly larger that a typical moleskin, which is just absolutely STONKINGLY small. How fast is it you ask? Well it starts up in about 20 something seconds, which is pretty damn impressive when you’re on the move.

No, I’ve not gone back on my thought about getting a mac, but I have had to rethink what equipment I want and need. The thought process is simple, get what you actually need. I’ve been working on my machine now for about 3 years roughly. It’s got a 64bit AMD processor coming in at 1.8GHz (or something like that). It’s got 512mgs of RAM and a 160Gb hardrive. I don’t ever do any video editing or any rendering (even though I bought this machine 3 years ago under the pretence that I would start getting into 3D modelling). So what do I use my computer for? I edit photos in photoshop, surf the net, code and programme some stuff, use vector illustration programmes (that do sometimes need some juice) and watch downloaded TV series, listen to music and well that’s about it. So is it really necessary to get the beast that is the MacPro? Do I really need the absolute latest processing power? Barring the occasional photoshop work, nothing I throw at my computer will really flex it’s muscles.

So I decided to get equipment that would eat anything I personally threw at it. So I’ve got myself a mac mini (since I already own a 20inch screen, I originally though it was 19inch, bonus!). I increased the RAM to 2Gigs and opted for the version with a DVD writer (since I do still do need this even though I’ve got two external hardrives). It’s arriving in a couple of weeks, and I’ve already started making a list of applications I might need. Expect a lot more silly questions being posted as I try to get to grips with the system. You guys having been doing this for a lot longer so I’m most definitely going to be leaning on you guys for advise and help.

There is definitely a market for the ultra portable computer, however it’s also important that the manufacturers realise that they should be catering to what the consumer needs as opposed to creating products that can do 1000 time more things than the user will ever likely need. Asus seems to have realised this ahead of anyone else, but it’s going to be very interesting to see how the other manufacturers react to this. Is this move going to change how we see computers? Is this going to be the tipping point for Linux? Or is it just a bit of a fad? Am I getting over excited over nothing really? Or is this going to be the ipod of ultra portable computers? I haven’t been able to see an Eee Pc up close since it sold out in like 2 days from release in the UK, but I’m sure sometime next year I’ll have a look at it and make my mind about whether or not it’s actually worthy of the hype.

VectorMagic is a free online application that turns your bitmaps into vectors. It’s the work of two students at Stanford and I’ve got to say that it really does work a charm. I’ll keep an eye on this just to see if there’s any legs in online photo editing tools.

The Phiculator is a great little application, that you can download as a flash file as well (don’t know but I love applications that come as flash files). It calculates ? (phi), the golden ratio. To put things into a design perspective, if you’re trying to make a website that is 850px wide, it gives you the size of the column that splits this 850px line in an aesthetically pleasing way. So your main column would be 525px in that case. Also I really love James Mellers’s site as well.

The second official release of Habari, version 0.2 is out the door. Everyone has been working real hard, always with love, always with passion. One of the things that this release includes is the user manual which is included with the release. Yes, when you download the software, you’re downloading the manual as well. For the manual we’ve chosen to use the awesome Tiddlywiki for this purpose. Don’t be afraid get involved. Spread the Word!

Olav’s just released his Blueprint CSS framework. What I like about it is the overall idea and clever little things like how to implement the grid structure.

Ars Technica has a great little article about Hack Week. Novell recently has a week where they freed their developers to stop work on their daily routine and work exclusively on an open source project of their choosing. Great little idea which seems to have spawned a lot of great contributions back to the open source community as a whole. Slowly but surely I guess we’ll get there, eventually.

Christian presents a great little list of things you didn’t know (or may not have known) about the Firefox web development toolbar. Anyone have something similiar for the Firebug plugin?

You know when you’re in the dark about something and then someone wakes you up and you get that realisation that things could have been better, you just didn’t know any better, because nobody bothered to tell you about it?

What am I talking about? I’m making less sense than normal? I’ll tell you what I’m blathering about. I’m talking about how fonts are displayed on the four major web browsers, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari 3 and Opera 9.

If you’ve visited the ‘kode in the last week, you’ll have seen some more changes in my every evolving design process. Currently I’ve given up altogether with putting a design mockups and opting for the completely different approach of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Subsequently I’ve decided to do things in glorious black and white and start thinking about colours and design elements once I’ve got the basic structure and functionality working as I actually want it. However what I have done is use fonts as big bold elements in the design, going above 16px font-size to bring things to the forefront.

Fortunately for me (as this is what actually opened my eyes) was that this effectively brings out the font rendering inadequacies in my favourite (and de facto) browser, Firefox.

Firefox

Opera

Internet Explorer

Safari

The fonts are all smoothed (the only part that I felt was a bit off, but that’s only because I’ve been staring at this for a while trying to find faults) is the bottom of rounded characters which become slightly more blurred. I haven’t checked to see what other things this browser has to offer because I’m still a bit gobsmacked by the way it rendered a simple page. I understand that Safari is based on the same framework as Konquerer, is that correct?

Final Thoughts

I’m looking at javascript libraries and it’s honestly proving a bit of an arduous task. We’ve got Moo.fx and Moo.fx2. The first has been superceeded by the second (obviously). Both it would seem can be used with prototype.js (or the lite version), however Moo.fx2 can be used as part of Mootools, and this is where things become more complicated.

Ok so you go over to Mootools and when you go to download the library, you get like 40 options (most of which I honestly don’t understand in the first place so you end up with something that is 42k rather than 3k).

It also seems less friendly than moo.fx on it’s own, but it does definitely look a hell of a lot more slick and polished and you can see a lot of time and effort has been placed into the overall setup of the information and the site itself.

However for a complete noob like me, it’s a bit overwhelming. So I decide, maybe it would be better to use JQuery. From first glance it doesn’t look as ‘polished’ in it’s overall slickness as the moo.fx but I know that WordPress, Habari and Drupal are going down this particular route in terms of their preferred library of choice.

Finally we’ve also got script.aculo.us as well, just so that we’ve got all our options in front of us.

Honestly I’m a bit perplexed as to what to go for. It seems that for a site, Mootools will provide all the kinds of animated effects that I could possibly want and the community behind this one is pretty strong with loads of documents and tutorials all over the place. However something tells me that jquery is the way to go, even though it’s not as flash. What’s a guy to do?

Dimension, the latest iteration in Opera’s incredibly cool mobile browser will be released on the 19th of June. For all those who are somewhat in the dark about this browser it’s one of the essential downloads for anyone’s mobile phone. The thing is the Opera guys and gals have been incredibly tight lipped about what the new features of the latest version is actually going to be. Personally I would like to have the option to see the ENTIRE webpage and then zoom into specific areas. Would DEFINITELY make my browsing experience that much better.

Also as I’m browsing on a phone, what I would also like is the option to SAVE things so that I can read them once I’m in a tunnel or something. It just kinda seems that much more logical. Cache has never been as important I don’t think.

Interesting developments over at Six Apart. Lets dig up some of the things I said back in the day about this shall we. For all those in the dark, MT was the defacto CMS you would choose if you were in the market to get yourself a blog with comments setup on your server back in 2003-2004. Of course what happened was the Six Apart crew got a bit greedy at the time and all this free effort by the community was kind of slapped in their collective faces when they introduced the updated version 3.0 which was built off the backs of the community and sold back to them. The original pricing scheme was a complete farce but they revised it when they got the unexpected (erm yeah) response.

What this did was move all those people who were originally using MT to convert to an alternative. Some went to Textpattern, most went to WordPress.

3 years on, SA are now doing what they should have done way back for version 3 and maybe have kept some form of dominance. Currently however I feel it’s far too little too late. Do I give a shit about MT? Not really. I’m not interested in remembering how to write templates using MT-Tags and other bullshit. I’m not interested in revisiting the past. I will say however that the admin looks nice, and it’s also very cool that the actual engine dealing with that is the same as the one dealing with the blog itself, so I’m definitely going to bring that up with the Habari folk.

Ah yes, Habari, whatever happened to that initiative you might ask? Loads have been happening in the background but nothing massive for me to personally talk about. I’m sure once I get some more free time I’ll return to more active contribution and discussion, but I’ll leave that post for another day.

Google Reader Theme by Jon Hicks. Awesome doesn’t even begin to describe this. I wish someone would do something similar for Gmail, because there is just soo much cruft and rubbish in gmail. The code is great and the functionality is great but google couldn’t design themselves out of a paper bag in most cases. Their forte is making applications usable and fun but not pretty look at.

Better Gmail. Ok so it’s not as cool looking as the Google Reader theme, but it’s a definite step in the right direction. My favourite part and something I really wonder why google hasn’t sorted out instead of just giving us more and more space is icons for the attachments. Such a simple thing and yet so essential to searching for things in a human fashion.

Great little interview with Jakub Steiner and Andreas Nilsson over at Gnome Journal. The most interesting part of the interview was this little side project, Art Libre Iconset. An integration of Gimp, Inkscape and Scribbus would be great, not that I use Gimp (but that’s another post for another time).

Blender 2.43 was released today. To my mind (and I’ve said this many times before) is the most professional open source project EVER. This is how open source should be. Every release is golden, and this one is a keeper. From the new website, the excellent release log, feature videos and the list honestly goes on. Download it NOW!

Honestly, I’m amazed by the quality of the Zotero plugin for Firefox. Zotero is a little plugin that enables you to collect and store information, tag it and a whole lot more for all your research needs. Easily one of the best plugins for Firefox I’ve stumbled on in a long time (I’ve seen it before but this is the first time I’m actually using it so that makes it different in my eyes).

It’s been a truly exciting time for Habari on the design front (not that it’s not been exciting on the code front, but I can only really properly comment on all things design to be honest). Since the last time we talked, Michael has been a busy boy with absolutely everything under the sun. All these ideas have been filtering through the designs as we build towards a unified look for the administration panel.

Remember these mockups are just that mockups, we’re still meandering trying to sort things out, this is an open design process so things are going to change. Don’t think that what you see here is gospel and how it’s going to be, don’t be quoting me fekking Jakob in my face about usability and whatnot. These are the formation months, trust me we’re going through MANY MANY loops and discussions. So with that in mind let’s begin shall we.

The Installer

Stage One:

Final Stage:

We’re still playing around with loads of things here. The header and footer are still up for discussion but the main ideas are there. We’re definitely going for the easiest installer award with this release.

Create Page

Michael’s been pretty busy and he’s got his ideas regarding the media browser on ‘paper’. Once we’ve ironed out all the kinks and how it’s going to work I think it’ll be the most special media browser on any blogging platform.

We did have a great deal of interation of ideas between us on the logo. Work is still ongoing in this area and probably will be for a little while longer as we try and find ourselves the best fit for what the logo means to the community and how people will view us effectively.

Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!

This is the first (hopefully) weekly instalment of the comings and goings on in the Habari Design Community. As this was our first week ‘out’ it was obviously a pretty wild and exciting ride with an immense amount of interest from all people around the world. What’s fascinating to me is that the people at the table currently trying to shape the design aspect of Habari. We’ve got Michael and myself working on all things admin at the moment, with comments from the entire community. Bryan Veloso has joined the team and he’s going to be handling all the website related stuff (from main site to wiki design to whatever the hell else we can keep him busy with) and we have the truly talented Yoram who’s kindly offered to do the icons, so as far as I’m concerned we’re in pretty good shape regarding the graphical direction the project is going to have.

Logo

A great deal of work has been done in the logo department. However we're still not really decided on the direction we want to take as the current options on the table haven't been a unanimous 'HELL YES'. There are merits to all of them but I think with respect to the logo it's better to just wait for that one idea that jumps out at us and really makes us all smile rather than settling for a right here and right now solution. Here's a few examples of what are on the table:

Installer

A lot of work has gone into the installer as well. I'm not going to comment on the design of the installers, because that's out in the wild going through the motions.

We’re still hammering through these back and forth, but the idea is there, one click install, degradable JS that makes parts of the install appear as and when the previous section has been completed and verified.

Administration Panel

Very minor tweaks going on here, except of course the colours. The pink is displayed for when you hover over the log out button.

Publish

More work going on this part. We've been having a lot of discussions regarding the number of buttons we should have. The subtle addition to these mockups is the slider for the tags (think increasing/decreasing the tags on display).

Remember nothing is set, everything’s up for discussion. As always Spread the news!

It’s been one hell of a couple of days since we first talked about the Habari project. There’s been a slew of reaction to the news all over the internet (go to the pingback section of that post) and to be honest it’s far exceeded all expectations I could have had because I honestly don’t have any. See I wasn’t completely sure how everyone would react over the news and therefore I was preparing myself for a little bit of a fight, in so much that we would have to prove the meritts of the software before we got people actually wanting to join and help build the community.

This in turn got me thinking to what all this meant and so I’m writing this post for several reasons. A couple of them is to dispell any rumours, a few others is to point everyone in the right direction should they want any more information, while others is to address concerns I’ve heard from people over the last couple of days.

On Community

There's been a lot of speculation as to why we're doing this. I'm not going to speak for the others (because they're doing a pretty good job of it themselves to be honest) but I'll tell you why I'm doing this. I've been talking to (read: boring) many of my offline friends with just how cool this is going to be. The first thing that they ask me is "Why the hell are you doing this to yourself? Why are you working for free again? Why are you spending your free time doing this?" I can only answer by saying that it's incredible fun to be part of an online community of like minded people who are trying to make one of my favourite pastimes (ie blogging and tinkering with my website) a more enjoyable experience. I love being involved in open source projects and this is without a doubt one of the biggest things I've ever been involved with.

When I first started looking for an alternative to Movable Type I had two options. The first was WordPress the other was Textpattern. I chose WordPress for the community. That community however has changed. It’s core has shifted into something different. The thing is though I can’t really say that this is the community’s fault. This shift actually can be attributed to something else. The fact of the matter is that WordPress developement has stagnated as far as the .org user is concerned.

The only explanation I can give is that this is because the WordPress development shifted it’s attention. Shifted from the .org section to the .com section. I’m not going to condem the guys for doing this, in fact in most cases I understand them doing this. However this move and shift hasn’t gone unnoticed and obviously a lot of energy flying about the WordPress community has either gone into the ether, ignored or shrugged aside. All these thousands of people out there that have contributed in the past feel as though they have been forsaken. That could be part of the reason why a great number of people genuinely got excited about the prospect of a new system, written from the ground up that might address questions. It’s all about the community. It’s all about the people that you interact with and that help you along your way.

What you think the latest release of ‘features’ on WordPress.org is a coincidence. It’s obvious (to me at least and this feature could have been in development for months, in which case I apologise) that this is a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that obviously has made them sit up and think about the situation. It’s not every day that several prominent developers (Robert, Owen, Michael), at the very least in the past otherwise they would not be in the credit box on wordpress.org, decide to leave and start something on their own; it’s a sign that something isn’t exactly right in the community. My absolute favourite one however is this one (I only saw this because it was lying in my referrer log), so yeah go and hammer that link and lets get it up there at the top :) lol.

So you're aiming to kill WordPress?

Don't be silly. Nobody is trying to kill WP. We're not aiming to make software that is better than WordPress, we're trying to make software that is better than ALL blogging software out there. Lets be clear about this there are quite a large number of open source projects that allow you to do essentially the same thing. Their degree of complication obviously varies, however the fact remains that there are many alternatives. As it stands it's considered that WordPress is the best alternative that's available on the market. So it's obvious that people would think that we are in fact trying to create something that out does WP. Also many of us have come from a WordPress user base, however that doesn't mean other people from other backgrounds cannot join the fun. But would we really be getting involved and doing something if we didn't feel like there was a void to be filled? Room for one more solution that offered an alternative way of doing things? We're ultimately here because we feel that we can contribute back and put our efforts into something that can aid people and can provide a fun platform to share their thoughts, photos and media.

We don't even have a developer's pre-release. The reason it was announced in any fashion was because one of the core developers moved his site over and was the first person to actively use the code for his site. That's a MAJOR success, one that deserved to be celebrated. In a weird twist of fate, outing slightly earlier than anticipated was actually an incredible great thing. Why? Because people that were on the fringes, thinking that this was just all wishful thinking might actually hold some legs. As such this little buzz has gotten several people wanting to contribute, and here's one reason why:

Habari is a fresh start. We’re all in the unique position that we’ve been blogging for several years now. We’ve all had our share of experiences with open source and we’ve all seen several different packages in our time. We’re at the stage now that if we had a fresh start we’d do things slightly differently and hopefully better. And that’s what we’re aiming to do.

Habari Contribution Model

I guess that might be the greatest draw to the Habari project. We're pretty open for people who want to contribute to the project, in fact the way that this project has been set up, it's ideal for people wanting to contribute as it's got a completely different structure in it's development, in that it's a meritocracy. It's a great way to make sure that the software comes first and that there is no one person who veto's everything or has final say in everything.

So were do we go from here? Well one of the things that I shall be doing as I'm coordinating the designers on this team is to give a recap every Sunday of this week's activities on the design front. What we finished off and what we've got to look forward towards. I'll be including pics and so everyone is always welcome to chime in and add their two cents to the design either here or in the dev mailing list.

Spread the news!

It’s unreal just how much faster doing this tweak actually makes Firefox load websites. Seriously best Firefox tweak I’ve done in a good long while.

Well Chris broke the news about, Habari, a new open source blogging CMS platform. While he didn’t want feel it correct to mention in the post who was involved, I’m going to step forward and put my hand up as the designated pixel pushing monkey of this motley crew.

What I find amusing is that as this news was released by Chris, I read this post about how any new blogging software would not stand a chance because of WordPress. Man I love a fucking challenge. I mean reading that post you’d think we’d be fools to even consider making a WordPress alternative. I guess all I can say to that is: Colour us DAMN foolish.

History Lesson

Back in November Chris approached a few of us to see who would be up for helping design for the new project he was working on. His timing couldn't have been better to be honest with you. See I had a MASSIVE itch that just needed to be scratched. I had definitely not said everything that needed to be said about blogging administration panels, especially since the last one I was actively involved with didn't exactly go exactly the way it should have.

I felt pretty burnt the last time round to be honest, so much so that I really thought it was best for me to steer well clear of any open source involvement in the future. However like I said in that post the most important thing that I got out of the online experience was the collaboration with the guys. If it was anyone else asking me to do something apart from Michael, Joen and Chris I’d have probably declined there and then. I didn’t join the team because I didn’t have anything better to do (as it will become clear in the coming months), but alas because I really want to create something that I can be proud to have been involved with and that I will find a joy to use. Something that I can contribute towards and that others can contribute towards as well in an open fashion.

So when Chris came forward I was all too happy to say yes. Considering that I had actually contacted another developer (I’m not going to mention him by name but needless to say he was also having a similar itch which says a lot about how things stand in the current open source blogging world) about starting our own blogging CMS, it was interesting that others around me felt the need for an alternative as well.

Shuttle vs Habari

The great thing about the Habari project is the fact that it's a clean slate. Imagine starting on the ground floor. There were no presidencies, no set stringent codebase that couldn't be altered, no existing userbase that might be confused and the list goes on. This is a decidedly different beast than Shuttle.

Those who don’t learn from the past end up repeating the mistakes again and again. So my approach to the graphical development of Habari is slightly different. Simply put, I’m going to be as transparent about the design process as you can imagine. I’ve seen several times in the past couple of months on the project, that through being open about the design I’ve been able to seriously move it forward in ways that I very well might not have considered. Ideas are what will make things move forward. At the same time it’s important that one person takes the bull by the horns and really goes to town on the design. Others should jump in with as many suggestions as possible, all the time because that’s how the innovation will continue and the project will not stagnate.

The Design

I will be going into a lot more detail in future posts regarding all the design decisions and what everything does and how it all fits together, so be patient, it'll all pay off in the long run I promise. As we've only recently kind of decided about colours (although knowing me I will probably tweak them, but I'm trying to be very good about this and sticking with this colour scheme), posting this will give people a feel of the quality of final product we're going for (and I'm not going to even talk about the code, the others are more than capable of that).

The following jpg is but a mockup, however Chris has implemented a fair chunk of this believe it or not (with probably like a 2 week old mock up), I’m telling you the man is a machine that will not be stopped. His dedication has forced me to make sure that I bring my very best to the table. It’s a bit of pressure that I’m actually relishing. Keeps me honest about things.

Final Thoughts

Easily one of the coolest gadgets I got this year was the Blackberry Pearl (or 8100 model). I’ve been playing with it for like a day now and I know it’s going to be something really special to use for a good long while. Although it’s a nice site, the images really don’t do it much justice. It’s honestly a thing of beauty in design if you have it infront of you. It’s only slightly larger than my previous Ericsson and packs a serious punch with respect to the number of features it’s got in it.

The only annoying thing I found was the flap you put the SIM card in doesn’t stay set, but opens until you put the battery in there. Minor annoyance but it’s a real shame as this could have scored some more points of rock solid construction. Another thing that is really starting to PISS me off, is the fact that none of these phone manufacturers have clocked onto the fact that it would be nice to have a normal earphone jack as opposed to some piece of shit they’ve concocted for you to plug in your earphones.

The Future was Orange

What’s interesting is that I was able to get the phone and a whole new package that suits me down to a T while paying less. The issue with a lot of these packages that many operators provide is that they’re honestly not tailored very well for the average user. They either give you an immense amount of time in “off-peak” hours that are not always useful, so you end up not using all of them, or they give you too little minutes during normal times. The good thing however is that after a year and a bit of using my phone regularly I’ve got enough bills to know exactly how much a use and of what. No need to guess these things (as I’ve had to in the past).

Enter the T

hmm got to check how much that costs on the internet to see if it's cheaper.

Well now it’s just a few clicks to check the net there and then.

Opera Mini

Seems that Opera is definitely the little browser that could. Seems that this little browser is a hit on the Nintendo market. I’ve got to say that Opera Mini (opera for mobile devices) is MILES better than the standard BlackBerry browser. For a start they’ve cut away a lot of the clutter that the BB browser has when the menu is pressed. People on that size of screen don’t want to scroll FOREVER. We want something quick and to the point. Sure the browser is being updated pretty regularly as far as I can tell. It’s got RSS integration which is essential for all mobile devices as far as I’m concerned.

The Home page is EXACTLY what you want to see when you first log into the browser. Oh sure I’m as self obsessed as the next guy, but having BK as my home page on my BB seems a bit of a waste of space, although it’s definitely interesting to see how the site renders on a mobile phone (I’ll be sorting out a seperate mobile spreadsheet in the not too distant future).

The Application Opera Mini has attempted to access the network. Would you like to allow this?

If anyone’s got a way of stopping this fekking annoying message coming up everytime Opera is used please, pretty please with a cherry on top drop something in the comments and I’ll update this post accordingly.

For those in the T-mobile camp wondering how to sort this out onto your Pearl, here’s the steps I took:

1. From your Pearl go to http://mini.opera.com and follow the instructions.

<li><p>Chance are after you've tried to connect it'll fail on your ass (it did on mine). Thankfully Opera have already forseen this problem and posted <a href="http://www.operamini.com/help/connect/?provider=T-Mobile&region=UK">this page</a>. Note that this is for the UK market, although as you can see they've sorted everyone out for the rest of the world as well.</p></li>

<li><p>Go to Options > Advanced Options > TCP and then put the information you got from that page.

Turn off, remove battery, turn on and it should all work.

I started writing a best of 2006 about a week ago, however I’ve had to break that down into several posts because it got far too large and I didn’t feel that I would be doing each topic justice, if I bulked all of them into one post. So for the first topic of conversation I’ll talk about the best of the Net for 2006. This is mainly about design on the net, internet applications, websites that caught my attention on the net for one reason or another. So without further adieu here’s the Squeaky Kode Trophies for the year of 2006.

Addictive Site of the Year

Best Advert of 2006

Best Designed Site of the Year

Best Internet Application

It’s taken me a long while but I finally bit the Flickr bug as well and got myself an pro account as well. I’ve got to say that I don’t use it as much as I should do but that will be changing in the not to distant future.

For my feed reading I’ve jumped on the Newsgator bandwagon. I’ve got a lot to write about with respect to FOFRedux and will hopefully go to using that application in the not too distant future sometime next year, but in the meanwhile I’ve found the Newsgator service to be exactly what I was looking for.

So I guess it’s not so much that I had a specific internet application, but rather the fact that I actually decided to use several of the plethora of applications out there for use in the first place.

Best Internet Related Software

Best Firefox Plugin

Blogging Networks Politics

If you think I’ve missed something pretty fundamental just drop a comment and I’ll be sure to add it into the list or create a whole new category for it.

Over a month ago I was on the hunt for a laptop. In my quest for a small laptop I actually looked at the Fujitsu-Seimens model and the Sony Vaio, and hell I even looked into getting myself an ibook or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays (the cheaper kind not the medal ones). Alas none of them really floated my boat, because they were either too thick, or too heavy. I wanted something far more portable than any of those models could provide me with.

In the end I settled on a Toshiba R100. I got this particular model for a couple of reasons. The first was because I’d actually seen the model in question as all the directors in the company got these things as standard issue earlier this year. The beauty of these particular laptops are that due to the fact that they don’t have a CD player makes them incredible light and super small.

As you can imagine, the standards Windows install lasted a total of like 5 hours on my machine as I quickly found a way to install dapper drake straight away. Once I’d done that I decided that it would be a good idea to try installing beryl on there, bad idea. For all those thinking that you can get all the funky 3D effects on this machine, you can’t. The computer has a Trident graphics card, and as such this extra layer it would seem is not possible. You could try but what happened with me is that it basically screwed up Sudo for me and things were not installing and a whole slew of other rubbish came of it. So word to the wise just avoid it on this machine.

I’m writing my findings down here in the hopes of a couple of things. I can’t be the only person to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, or even the only one that wants to have Ubuntu installed on this machine, so I’ll going to chronicle my findings here and fill it up as a resource for other helpless souls that are tearing their hair out as well, and hopefully I might get some answers to some of the bugs that can be found on this machine.

Installing Dapper Drake

Installing Edgy Eft

The problem is that Vesa doesn’t work, and the trident driver is just not good enough. There’s a bit of a bug involved here that I don’t know what the deal is. When you log in you’ll only see a quarter of the desktop. You’ve got to CTRL-ALT-F1 to restart xorg quickly, log back in and it’s all working nicely. Fekking annoying bug if you ask me. So I reported the bug on Launchpad, and someone got back to me less than 24hours later. Still hoping for a resolution to this, but it’s great to have someone get back to me directly and so quickly to try and solve my issue.

The next problem I had was in the keyboard (in fact I still have this problem, which is a real pain in the ass to be honest. Basically, when I log in, the keyboard letters are recognised, however the rest of the keyboard, and I’m talking about the symbols buttons, come up with some utter giberish. Selecting another generic keyboard solves the problem. If anyone has got a solution to this stupid bug I’d really be grateful (once again I’ve logged a report in as well about this).

So is Edgy worth it. It’s a more polished graphically at least distribution to Dapper. The login screen isn’t as scary as Dapper. The icons have been polished and look a lot more professional to be honest. Things like he new help icon and the new login screen are all great little additions that basically make the package look more professional. The new chocolate background is also pretty cool. I am glad that they didn’t go for the community created screenshots that we previewed. I’m with Mark Shuttleworth on this particular subject. It just wasn’t right.

One thing I have noticed (and maybe that’s because the harddisc is smaller and less complicated than on my desktop machine,) but Nautalis is actually faster on this install. It’s changed ever so slightly with the latest addition of gnome.

Applications

XFCE I thought I’d try another windows manager instead of gnome. XFCE was the obvious one. I’ve got to say that while it does seem lighter, it’s definitely not as polished as gnome. There are certain things in it that really do need some work. Some pretty fundamental things. I’ll definitely have a look at it in a few months/years to come, but for the moment I think it’s got a way before it’s as solid as gnome.

Thunar One of the great additions however is Thunar, which I think is a fantastic little application, very light and gets me to where I want to be straight away. I’m using a completely different icon to be honest, mainly because I love the screen with the stars, after all I am attracted to the stars.

Abiword Another great little find is Abiword. It’s got a pretty rubbish splash screen, but it is supremely lightweight Word replacement. It looks exactly like word, only slightly more slimmed down. For the type of documentation I require however it’s absolutely brilliant. So much so that I’m thinking about making it my default word processing tool of choice on my desktop machine as well. Hopefully the same developers can have a look at making an Excel alternative as well using the same ideologies, it just works really well and has got a very clean user interface.

Wifi

Linux equivalent project is just a list of links for programmes that do the same thing. Good one to have handy, although it didn’t really give me anything new, hopefully in time it’ll expand though as a resource.

I’m currently in Greece for a full 2 weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this break for well over a month now, hell I’ve been looking forward to this break for at least 3 months. I didn’t go anywhere during the summer period, which was probably the worst thing to do for my psyche to be honest. The summer was a very dark time for me with very little bright spots which was clearly reflected in my mood and how I dealt with those around me. Being a traditionally pretty patient person, I noticed myself getting more irate with things and situations that I would normally brush off, or at least see the funny side. Hasn’t been the case for at least 3 months now.

I guess I can attribute this to the situation in Lebanon which seriously hit me very hard. I can probably attribute it to work which has been very far from enjoyable these last few months, or I can attribute it to unfinished business from several areas that kept me down (my list of unfinished projects is pretty extensive). Needless to say, I need a break and a break I shall have. However I’m never happy until I’ve got things off my plate and I’ve been very good at not putting anything new on my plate but actually finishing those projects that I had opened/started/committed to first, after all I’m a finisher, not just an instigator.

Since it’s good to have a list I think I’ll make this list to remind myself what I have to look forward to in getting these monkeys off my back:

Finish the Splash Panel Redesign.

Stathi's and Priya's Websites.

Broken Kode Season One

Broken Kode Prints

Chameleon Theme

Also on a completely different note, I really need to get myself a laptop (any recommendations for small dinky laptops, like the Fujitsu Lifebook or a Vaio would be welcome) as I’m currently using my dad’s windowz install using an ADSL connection that might be a little difficult to sort out on Ubuntu and it’s seriously painful to get anything done (which isn’t helped by the fact that it’s a shitty CRT screen that’s got a tinge of purple going through,…nice), the ‘Kode has never looked this bad.

Democrcy Internet TV Platform - in all it’s open sourcy goodness. Just in time for the new Battlestar Galactica series (how the hell did so many months go by since season 2 ended, it really does seem like an eternity), the new My Name is Earl series and the new Lost series (still need to finish watching the rest of Season 2).

Following on from Part 1 of this series of posts on Ubuntu, I’m going to talk about Ubuntu and Linux’s most POWERFUL concept. Installing software through repositories. The way I understand it is that these are databases of all the latest stable software that has been tried and tested to work with Ubuntu. The software goes through several checks and something called REVU, comments are passed back and forth regarding how to make the package better before it’s committed to the repository. This means several things to the end user, however I’m going to concentrate on two:

<li>You get notified of any updates to any software that is running on your machine that is part of these repositories, so you're always up to date with the latest software (that's all software, from graphical applications to files you don't really care about or know what they actually do). It's a cute little orange and white star icon that pops out at you informing you to update your system.</li>

<li>You have a massive database to search for applications that will allow you to get the tasks you want to get done at your finger tips, with the click of a button.</li></ol>

Synaptic Package Manager

In the past when I would want to do something with my computer, I'd search the Internet for some software that would allow me to do something. Traditionally there were the proprietary applications and then there was the less capable but free applications available. Every once in a while you'd stumble on some open source software that would really excel itself. Needless to say I used to spend a lot of time searching the net for applications that might fit the bill of what it was I was looking for. Ubuntu takes care of the searching for me, through the Synaptic Package Manager (pictured below). (For those newbies looking for this, just go to System > administration > Synaptic Package Manager)

You can search for applications either by category, or if you know what it’s called by name. So if you want some software that burns DVDs, or a bit torrent client then search through key words. You’d be surprised just how many applications are out there that can do all sorts of things you’d be finding if not difficult, at the very least expensive and worse frustrating on a windows machine. This little application and thought process IMHO should be the impetus of all Linux discussions. We’re dealing with THOUSANDS of developers all over the world contributing to thousands of programmes to help make YOUR (and my) computing experience easier and more enjoyable to undertake.

The issue of course is that you might need to add more repositories in order to get the very latest software which might not be verified from the Ubuntu team. This is the beauty of open source. It’s not like traditional proprietary software. There really is no need for open source to make massive leaps and bounds in one go (the traditional method employed by software houses to make you buy the upgrade), things are enhanced and augmented with time, step by step. You can even build your own repository list.

Easyubuntu

Easyubuntu should be a link on the Ubuntu desktop once you've installed the full thing. Why? Because it's got all the software that isn't covered by the GPL license that Ubuntu can't ship with or whatever the legalities of the whole thing actually is (they could go down the Novell route and offer it as an option in the install stage, which would save a lot of people a lot of time, agro and hassle). Here's a list of all the software that can be installed from running this little collection of applications. So all your drivers, Flash 7 (Adobe hasn't released 8 for Linux, however they're committed to 9 apparently), Java and the list goes on.

Automatix

I've only used Automatix for a couple of things, however the list of software that it will install is very impressive. It's not as polished an interface as Synaptic to be honest as it does all sorts of ugly things (to someone who's used to the standard Ubuntu dialogue boxes) but that shouldn't stop you from using the application itself. I've heard rumblings within the Ubuntu Community where some people have expressed not liking using this system. I'm not sure why not to be honest (as in I genuinely don't have a clue so any thoughts would be appreciated).

Resources for starting out on Ubuntu and Installing Ubuntu

Generally speaking, due in part to the architecture, and the other being that it is the most used Distro, most software runs on Ubuntu, it's just sometimes a hassle, if in case it's not found in the above methods. In that case then you've got a couple of options. .deb files (since Ubuntu is a Debian fork) has got these packages which act effectively like .exe files. Double click and install away. There are also others who have done autopackagers as well. Again these act like .exe files, so you double click and install. I'm going to admit I've tried to actually install software from the source code, however EVERY time I've tried, I've failed, and I've gone back and tried to find an alternative solution from the above. However if you are thinking about doing this here's a couple of good links to refer to:
1. Install Anything on Ubuntu
2. Ubuntu Wiki
3. Ubuntu Forums

So there you have it, methods of how to install applications on Ubuntu, there’s more one way to skin a cat and in many ways a lot simpler and more open than windows in that there is generally an open source application for everything. Some are more mature than others and that’s what I’ll be talking about in the next posts on the subject. The next topic I tackle will be about applications that provide Sound.

Ubuntu 6.06 'Drapper Drake' is a vastly superior operating system to Windows XP.

Usually people give their conclusions once they’ve established the question first and then gone through the process of explaining and proving why. I’m going to make my conclusions and therefore raise your expectations (or utter disbelief or even contempt and arrogance) and try and win you back.

To discard some initial thoughts, first off, do I think Ubuntu is perfect? Hardly. In fact a lot of it is out of my comfort zone to be honest, however I am COMPLETELY willing to jump in with both feet to try and swim. The real reason is because it’s seriously opened up the sheer amount of possibilities to me and I honestly do feel completely free with my operating system. Free as in freedom. I’m no longer constrained in so many ways that I was before and I have no doubt many other users will feel the exact same way as well.

Part of that reason is the library of open source software and ideas that are constantly being moved forward by people around the world. It’s an incredibly powerful concept that won’t become completely normal practice and accepted around the world for a few more years to come. The mainstream still fears open source. Still has doubts as to it’s power, it’s reasoning, after all we all live in a Capitalist world, where nothing is done for free, right? Wrong. Hopefully in the list of programmes that I will cover throughout this series of posts it’ll become clear that there is more ways to skin a cat. There is not one but several programmes that will enable you to do your job. The greatest part of it all, is that they are constantly being updated. I honestly can’t count how many times I’ve updated my system since I installed Ubuntu. I’ve set my timer for once a week for it to check on new updates to keep all my system fresh and up to date.

So before I made the jump to Ubuntu, I speculated as to which programmes I would be using the most to get on with the business of design and development. Some of those options have actually panned out while others haven’t really been as predicted. Within this series of posts I am intending on dispelling a lot of these thoughts that are predominant in the world at large today. In addition to that I will be reviewing and talking about software applications that I am using at the moment. Hopefully it’ll be useful to others around there to learn about software applications that are readily available for download and use. I’ll start with the nice and simple applications, that being the Internet and email client.

Firefox

Evolution

Come back next time as I review some graphical applications, music, video and cataloguing applications.

I’ve been trying to find ways to increase my productivity and effectively take my life back by the horns, which for the past couple of months has spiralled out of control.

Gmail is a staple in my life. I use it and don’t think about it. I’ve not gotten to the stage where I really use the folders as I can, however that might be about to change. So I’ve been looking into other online solutions that might be able to reach that status. Traditionally I’ve tried my very best to shy away from online services except those that are backed by one of the major players, mainly because they’re not going to be charging me cash to provide a task that while isn’t necessary to have online is nice to have. You could say it’s a bit of an antithesis to Web 2.0, and in a way it actually is. You’d also expect someone like me to jump for this sort of thing, however I don’t move into this arena without a little bit of caution, simply because I don’t like to be dependant on others that can pull the plug on me at any time or worse, decide to change the terms and conditions.

NewsGator

Ma.gnolia

Google Calander

I think I’m becoming a life hacker, hopefully the next couple of weeks will see a bit of this hectic lifestyle that I’ve been living cool down a little bit and I can actually get back to finishing off some of these projects that have been on my plate for months, some even a year.

Seems like the pay for model didn’t work? Can’t really say why the guys over at 21 Degrees have gone the route of giving Symphony away, but having done this blogging thing for a while, I can’t help but remember distinctly the outrage the blogosphere went through when Six Apart went and made the free Moveable Type into a pay for model. This is interesting in that it’s really going in the completely opposite direction. First come out with a pay for model, then give it away. The cynical side of me thinks that this means they’re trying to get people to jump on the Symphony bandwagon and then slap the price tag back on it once people have developed and spread the word about it, and therefore made a connection with it and invested their time into the product because it’s ‘free’.

Don’t get me wrong I think it’s great to give it away (because it really is a beautiful system), however I couldn’t find anywhere on their site the license information about the terms and conditions to downloading and using Symphony 21, and more importantly why and where they think they’re going with this free model. What can I say, the guys are fighting a hard battle and if they want to win the blogger market, they’ve got to be transparent themselves, they’ve got to blog about their system themselves. They’ve got to keep their users informed.

You have to download an installer which is directly linked to your Symphony account (is this a legacy thing from when it wasn’t free?) and then have to go through the motions. I’m quietly wary about where this is all going to be honest with you, simply because we’ve kind of been down this road before and I decided that I wasn’t going to be putting my eggs in one basket that wasn’t open source so I wouldn’t be rammed again.

Gnome Files. Part of the problem with open source is the fact that there are so many applications out there that can help you do all sorts of things, so much so you probably don’t even know that they exist. To help you along the way we’ve got the excellent Gnome Files website, which is basically a software information repository. Anyone have any other similar sites?

When it comes to doing things in WordPress, any idea I come up with has usually been implemented several times over, however I think (and I really hope someone has actually done this and I simply can’t find it) but the idea for this plugin came about after talking with several of my friends who ‘read’ the site. A number of them have actually complained that whenever they come to my site, they don’t understand what the hell it is I’m talking about. For example I’d say half of them are completely lost by mentioning WordPress.

Basically it’s a very simple idea, which makes me wonder that I can’t possibly be the first to voice my thoughts about it, and to be honest I can’t see the reason why it can’t be implemented by persons more talented at this than I am. Basically the idea is that you let the user take control of what he views or subscribes from your site. So the person comes to your site goes to a “user preference section” where they choose which categories they would like to subscribe to and then the front page shows posts only from those particular categories (latest being shown on top of course).

That way the user takes control of what they want to read.

Customise the RSS Feeds

It’s all about making sure the type of information you are interested in gets delivered to you in the correct way. It’s an extension of the RSS feed. It’s no longer acceptable to just provide me with an RSS feed. I want to choose the categories I’d like to hear from you, or allow you to choose what you view when you visit my site. That way you’re guaranteed to read things that actually are of some interest to you.

Anyone up for writing a plugin for me? I’ll send you white chocolate.

I definitely noticed spamming coming through, which left me scratching my head (50 in like a few hours). I guess those spammers are seriously getting their ass kicked by Akismet, easily the only ESSENTIAL plugin you want to have as a blogger of any description. Damn, was it really that bad before this plugin? The answer I guess, it was worse, because there was no solution.

Quick thoughts on the new online service provided by Crazy Egg. I’ve been using it for about a week now. It’s another way of looking at how users interact with your site. I use Mint for my stats package; Crazyegg provides three levels of visualisation of where the majority of visitors click on your site. It’s got a great ‘killer’ feature in the heatmaps, however it definitely falls in the nice to have category, and at $19/month, it’s definitely not that nice to have. See I would actually pay money for Akismet, because it provides me with what I see as an essential service, one that would drive me insane if I didn’t have it implemented, Crazyegg doesn’t.

Why can’t people who have a killer idea and have done their jobs correctly, pay some more attention to the pricing. I do believe that it’s got some great features and it looks great, but ultimately I feel it might suffer the same problems as Feedlounge did, overestimating what the majority userbase will fork cash for.

Last year when Adobe bought out Macromedia, one of the main things I complained about was what would happen to my Freehand. Well we all know what’s happening, it’s a dead duck (no news about it, and no updates since the acquisition). They’re going to continue developing the supremely bloated Illustrator. You know the one I’m talking about, it takes 7 days to load once you’ve clicked the icon, and has features on top of features, most of which are completely useless to man and beast, with the hope that you can justify buying the latest version. If you hadn’t guessed it I’m not a big fan of Illustrator, I’ve always been a Freehand guy, so obviously I’m nice and bitter about the whole situation.

Xara LX

Inkscape

Things that I would like sorted out on Inkscape:

1. Remembering my preferences - I'm talking about the panels. They keep getting reset to hidden every time I actually log out.

<li>

Sizes of panels - The default are far too big and clunky. The later versions should allow for the panels to be stacked on top of each other in a clear method, with even the option of docking them as well. The panels take up a great deal of the screen real estate, and I’ve got a 20 inch screen.

<li><strong>Multiply/Mirror tool</strong> - This is a pretty important tool for me. I don't know how to explain it, but in Freehand I can copy an element and then either multiply it as along a grid or around a point. I'm not completely sure how you would go about doing this in Inkscape. I'm sure there is a method for this, however I've not really found any tutorials or methods that show how to do this clearly. I do recommend that 

<li><strong>Tabs</strong> - This is a very simple request, and I'm surprised that it hasn't been given a priority of sorts. Every time you want to open a file, or make a new document, it opens in a completely different window. It's like the behaviour of Internet Explorer for an application. Bring me the tabs please. This can't be a really difficult addition, but would enhance the programme a great deal.

<li><strong>Icons </strong>- There has been some serious movement in regards to getting some better icons used here. Generally I believe several tango icons have been used. To be fair, it's a massive improvement over the previous version however there is still work to be done. I hope they get the same guy that has sorted out the Gimp icons.

2. Colour Palette Options - This is just an annoying behavioural thing to be honest rather than a feature. Currently if you use the eye dropper icon and pick a colour it doesn't allow you to change the colour of the stroke, but always the fill, even if you've highlighted the stroke of the new item. So you end up copy/pasting the hex number into the stroke panel. It's not the end of the world, but it's really counter productive in some instances.

Apart from these little things, I’m extremely happy with Inkscape and it’s really encouraging that there are loads of new features that the dev team are already trying to implement into the later version. This includes a history panel (which is great) and a few other additions (hopefully the above points will be addressed as well).

KDE Alternatives

I’ve been playing around with the Gimp a bit more. Yes I know, I’ve got a massive post about this and other Ubuntu goodness. To make things slightly nicer on myself I’ve downloaded this little theme that integrates the new Tango icons from the upcoming (and has been upcoming since October of last year) version 2.4 of Gimp. Anyone got any news about when this is going to be released? I downloaded the unstable version and I see the crappy text dialogue function is still missing a text wrapper (which is pretty essential).

The last week has seen some movement on a couple of the open source projects I’ve been involved with in the past couple of years. I’ve already spoken about the first one but now I’m going to talk about the other project that I had such high hopes for which have been washed away and effectively thrown back into the faces of those that actually devoted their time into producing the goods, I am of course talking about Shuttle.

For those in the dark I’ll give a brief history of the WordPress Shuttle project. The idea first came to me after I had just finished my work on the Manji theme. I had so much fun collaborating with people online and producing something that could be used by other people (and thus giving back to the software that runs my site), that I really wanted to get back into the game straight away. I talked to Joshua and the Chris, both of whom I have the greatest amount of respect for, both of which were completely up for the project. By sheer luck Michael was having thoughts about this of his own as well. He was more than happy to join the team and in doing so brought Matt’s (Lead WordPress developer and Automattic head honcho) attention. The endeavour was now considered more than just hot air. In a very shrewd move Michael brought in Joen and thus the initial Shuttle team began work. Because a picture paints a thousand words, this is the screen shot of what we had to work with when we first started:

If you’re interested to see more, you can have a look at a Carthik’s screenshots for WordPress version 1.5.

We started work in earnest and the emails began flying between us. We were talking about everything and anything that came to our minds. We did research of all the existing blogging software tools (and the time those that hadn’t been released yet). We talked about usability, advanced users, novice users how things should work, how things should not work, what areas we should concentrate on. Seeing as we’re all bloggers we decided to give the call out to people to find out what they thought as well:

1. http://www.brokenkode.com/archives/shuttle-development/
2. http://binarybonsai.com/archives/2005/02/01/wordpress-shuttle/
3. http://www.brokenkode.com/archives/shuttle-workshop-01-dashboard/
4. http://www.chrisjdavis.org/2005/01/31/the-cat-she-is-out-of-the-bag/

My initial thinking was heading towards something completely radical to what we had. Just strip the walls down and start implementing things in a completely different way. I don’t know if I can find the very initial mockups I started flirting with but you can check out the image set to show a lot of the initial design development. This is where working in a team is paramount. I remember Joen distinctly pointing out that the fundamental structure of WordPress was fine and that we shouldn’t be rocking the boat for the sake of it but rather finding what works and what doesn’t. Making things simple for the user. I’m completely paraphrasing probably a couple of weeks worth emails beings fired between the ENTIRE design team, which of course included Matt at every step of the way (we didn’t have a mailing list until Matt set one up for us). It was agreed that we wouldn’t move to anything radical unless we felt it served a specific purpose.

I should have seen the writing on the wall to be honest. As the design went forward Matt seemed to implement things he liked and not bother with things he didn’t. So the blue hues made it into the design, as did the pods on the side, but little else. To be fair to him at this stage we really hadn’t moved every single aspect forward as you see it in the final mock ups.

The days went by and action on Shuttle was sporadic at best. We’d go through these massive bursts of creativity and energy and information sharing. Every once in a while one of us would prod the team to get it’s finger out and continue with this project. You might think it should be easy but people have lives and many things to do get in the way and it’s not like any of us didn’t have other projects on at the time.

Lets make one thing clear here. I am a finisher. I complete the projects I’ve actively put my name down for. I’m not in the business of making a claim for something and not going through with it. I’ve proven this time and time again. Even when things get tough, even when it seems like it’s not even worth it, I will continue to plough forward even if it’s only me, with the hopes that those around me will feel good enough for them to contribute as and when they seem fit. Contributing to Open Source should never feel like a chore. It should be fun, it should be something you actually want to contribute towards.

So in a last attempt before I completely gave up on the project I dived into the designs. For two weeks straight I would come in from work and spend 4-5 hours implementing the designs. I tried hard to keep with EVERYTHING we’d discussed in the past. The dos and dont. I tried to find solutions to design aspects we hadn’t really covered. I’ve not had that massive creative burst of energy in years (and this was done on the back end of creating the FOFRedux redesigned UI). I tried taking into consideration things that although I didn’t agree with I had to make concessions to allow for.

A prime example is the dashboard. We were told not to go too far with this because lots of discussions were going on in the hackers mailing list and it would probably be the one place that we didn’t have much say in. This is all well and good, so I tried to come up with a solution I could at least stomach. It’s easily my least favourite page of the entire design.

Once the mock ups had been completed I left them with the rest of the team for comments to be put on the table for them to change whatever everyone felt worked and didn’t work. We then proceeded to discuss how we were going to implement the designs. Matt was NEVER truly forthcoming about how this was all going to be implemented. We discussed the issue further, but once again he was as elusive as ever. When a response finally came back I didn’t know how to react. Thankfully other members of the team did. The designs were not some chicken to pick and choose at what you like and what you don’t like. They present a certain level of uniformity across the pages. They follow a specific design thought, and a great deal of thought and attention to detail has gone into them.

After we talked about it a bit more, and we were promised by Matt that things would get incorporated into the WordPress core, however it would take some time and it was mainly to make sure that people didn’t get jarred with the changes in one go, this was a solution I could honestly live with. The design wouldn’t be hacked but implemented gradually. So I went forward and released the mockups because they were the culmination of our active involvement in the project as things would now begin to get integrated into the core code. Of course things would change or be tweaked as the design was implemented but by and large it would remain the same.

Any which way you cut it that’s why Shuttle never made it into the design of WordPress. It has nothing to do with us being lazy or that we couldn’t be bothered to do anything but the photoshop files. Joshua had begun implementing the design on his own machine, we were discussing the logistics of how this project would be implemented into the code. However as it turns out there doesn’t seem like there was/is any commitment from the WordPress Dev team to incorporate these designs. If there was a commitment it would take 3 guys 4 weeks TOPS to deal with it all. There are well over 100,000 WordPress users, many of which are pretty capable with both CSS/PHP/JS. Hell there are people out there that are already implementing this off their own backs.

It doesn’t seem like the WordPress development team (and by definition Automattic team) are keeping to their word because the latest addition to the Automattic team is now going back to square one to start over, asking people the same questions we did when we first started the project.

Bryan joined the shuttle team late in the game and in some ways I think he didn’t feel as comfortable jumping into the design. He’s a fine addition to the Automattic team, and more importantly I like the guy, so none of this is aimed at him. He has been given new directions by the powers that be. Strip it down, build it up again from the ground if we have to. Why is it called Shuttle:Atlantis? Maybe because Matt didn’t like the first one? That’s what it boils down to to be honest. The alarm bells started going off when I read the first things to come from Bryan over of the WordPress.com blog.

... see that Shuttle finally makes its debut in whatever form we as a team see fit.

So I’d like to address those that didn’t like the Shuttle mockups. You (the collective you) got 5 people (plus 1) devoting a massive amount of their time to make your blogging experience more enjoyable; more usable; more fun. We didn’t ask for compensation and we didn’t ask for anything in return. We didn’t rush into this and we certainly didn’t hack through the designs. We did this because we believed in the sotfware. We believed in the people behind it and the people using it. None of us on the team are new to open source contribution. Michael’s contribution doesn’t need much introduction (Kubrick and K2), similarly with Chris (whose contributions extend far into the past of WordPress, Persian, plugins galore, K2), Joen does this for a living and has contributed for the admin panel on Zenphoto (including the default theme) and his wordpress theme Fauna. I have given the open source world Manji & Rin and contributed in the redesign of the FOFRedux UI. Joshua has answered enough support questions to make my head dizzy. Bryan has contributed to the world ChaoticSoul.

Open source is great because you can contribute to the source in a positive way, otherwise none of us would be actively giving to it so freely. That however is not the universal truth. At least that doesn’t seem to be the case in the WordPress world. This is a shame because part of WordPress’s success is the people involved with the world it surrounds. I have said many times before that is one of the things that elevates it above other open source initiatives.

It’s a shame really. Has WordPress really gotten so big that those in charge of implementing it no longer care for those that devote their time? As long as you’re creating a theme or a plugin that’s great, just don’t even bother thinking about contributing to the final product in any way. That kind of contribution is obviously not welcomed. There was a time when the Shuttle mockups, created exclusively for making WordPress prettier, would have been taken in with grateful arms. It seems that time for WordPress has passed.

Compare the current admin panel with those presented in the Shuttle mockups. Once you’ve done that go back to the top and compare it with Version 1.5.

Do you see something different. One was designed and thought through. The other is an ad hoc implementation of core ideas. I could go on at length to discuss the design decisions to be honest with you however I tend to allow the work speak for itself.

Ultimately I’m extremely proud of the work we did in TRYING to make the WordPress admin a better looking more usable place. The online friendships I’ve forged with the Shuttle team are thanks enough, even though the work we did was ultimately not appreciated. This is probably the very last time that I talk about Shuttle, unless of course someone implements the design aspects of the work we created as a plugin or in another way.

This is what I’ve been reading my feeds from for the past couple of days :).

I promised the guys on the dev team I’d keep it quiet until we had more kinks ironed out, but I’ve got to say that I’m so excited and over the moon that the new FOFRedux UI is now a part of the trunk code and looking SUPREME, that I had to share that bit of news with everyone. If you’re asking yourself what FOFRedux actually is, then I suggest you go over to the project page to find out a bit more about it all.

If you’re interested in actually trying it then I suggest you DOWNLOAD the latest snapshot. Remember this is NOT the latest STABLE version. This is STILL in development, so things can still go wrong. There are still loads more work to be done, but it’s still better than 50% of the other feed readers out there. Give it a few more versions and it’ll the best feed reader on the net.

One thing that I’ve definitely noticed is that after using it for a couple of days it’s made reading my feeds that much more enjoyable, which to my mind was/is the whole point of the redesign. Make the programme more fun and more intuative to actually use. I feel extremely proud to be a part of this team and supremely overjoyed with the overall results. In my mind this is a fantastic example of how great things can be achieved in an open source project and I’d really like to thank the team for accepting me into the group and allowing me to contribute to the project.

Have you picked a friends for Firefox Day? I’m stumped as I’ve been shouting about Firefox from the top of my lungs for the past couple of years…

I was talking to Kyle a couple of days ago. He was expressing how he liked the summer and then we got a bit geeky and started talking operation systems. He’s recently made the jump from Windows to the land of the Apple, while I have dumped my windows box for a shiney new ubuntu setup. Kyle not known to be one to mince words. He’s easily one of the most direct people I know online. What’s scarey is that he often says things with a decent amount of authority with proof and counter arguements to back this opinion up. He’s definitely not scared to go in the direct opposite channel to what people are talking about at that particular moment in time. So taking a page out of his book I’ll make an observation and a prediction.

In five years time the main operating system in the world will be a flavour of Linux. I’m not saying it’ll be Ubuntu (although it’s definitely on the right track), just that this is something that will happen. 5 years; that’s when the linux operating system will hit critical mass. By critical mass, I’m talking with this definition in mind:

An amount or level needed for a specific result or new action to occur.

I swear I can actually hear everyone turning off and pointing their browser elsewhere, but hear me out. Yes I am still new and excited about Ubuntu and everything is fresh and new to me right, so it stands to reason that I’m in my honeymoon period, after all I’ve been locked to the Windows operating system for the past 10 years or so. The truth of the matter is we’re on the cusp of something important. To illustrate my point, I present exhibit A. Everyone loves graphs, so here’s one that shows the difference in development cycles of proprietary software and open source software.

Yes it’s COMPLETELY made up, but I’m just trying to illustrate a point here. Proprietary software works in this way. You have a piece of software and you update it for the following reasons:

1. Make some noise so people who haven't invested in the software can do so now.
2. Make some noise so that people who have invested in the software can do so again because they thought the first version was so great.

So what should you do in order to make some noise? You add new features. You do things the competition are not doing, and you do it in a certain scheduled manner that doesn’t make people who paid for it 18 months ago feel a bit cheated that they’ve got to shell out the cash all over again so soon. Bring in discontent within the ranks which is not good for business. Sometimes what happens is that the software feels bloated, takes ages to load anything. It doesn’t really make all that much business sense spending a great deal of time on trying to clean up the code and cutting things down, because it’s not as big a marketing push as just saying you’ve got 115 new features or whatever.

Meanwhile, in the land of the open, you’ve got MILLIONS of people ALL over the world, some paid, some not, constantly chugging at the plethora of open source projects. Open source doesn’t benefit much from adding new features just for the sake of this. This is very clear with such powerful applications such as Blender (for 3D modelling) and Xara for vector illustrations. Lightweight programmes that do their functions well and quickly with the minimum amount of fuss.

What’s the downside of all of this? Well the only thing I can think of is the fact that open source isn’t really in any hurry to get anywhere. The model is based upon slow updates, on a constant basis. Open Source doesn’t really benefit from doing things quickly really. Also every once in a while you also get projects getting abandoned. However it’s good to understand that by their very nature these projects can be picked up anywhere down the line. All that’s happened is that the process and development has been slowed down (so some projects might not exihibit the above graph exactly but might have a plataeu or two. A great example is WordPress. It’s a fork of the abandoned B2 project. WordPress is now much more used than B2 ever was.

Open Source will eventually surpass proprietary software because there are more people devoted to the packages and their ranks are expanding. However the reason why companies will eventually jump ship to the land of the penguin is because of the bottom line. When you’ve got software that is completely free, operates better than the proprietary ones and can be modified to do your bidding without any consequence to that bottom line, it will begin making business sense.

Currently Linux isn’t there yet. In many respects it has definitely surpassed Windows on many, many levels. However there are other areas that could definitely use some SERIOUS polish. I believe that polish will take a good 5 years before Linux is at that stage of the fight where it can take on both Microsoft and Apple.

The common link between Microsoft and Apple is that both of these companies are slowly heading down a very restrictive road, a claustraphobic one; which is in direct opposition to Linux which has begun it’s accention up and open field. It’s early days but mark my words this will happen, it’s only a matter of time.

One thing is for sure regarding the switch to Linux is that there is soo much to learn, however I am actually really looking forward to the plethora of applications that I can start using and learning and the various things I can actually start creating. I’m going to share some of the things that I’ve found out during this last week of tinkering around with Ubuntu and Linux in general. (It’s a pretty long one again, you have been warned).

Tips for Newbies thinking on making the jump

1. Flash Player
2. Quicktime
3. Windows Media Video
4. And just about every bit of software that I want to use, (Xara which required a workaround, and Pixel)

In order to get them to work you need to go in and get your hands dirty with code and all sorts. Erm no thanks. It might be ok for someone who’s been doing this for a couple of years or whatever, I however don’t want to have to fight my operating system to get things to work. So I installed the i686 version and EVERYTHING worked straight out of the box.

I’ve currently got a partition of my harddrive for Windows, when I absolutely HAVE to go back there and do something that is only achievable within that environment (like testing a website for IE, although there must be a way from within Ubuntu, but I haven’t really researched the point to be honest).

Once you’ve installed everything, go over to EasyUbuntu and install all the bit and pieces within minutes, so rather than spending 2 weeks slowly downloading various elements for your Windows box, it’s all there within minutes. Very cool. I only had to quickly edit a file to get my graphics card working properly but that process was honestly as painless as it can get.

Initial Thoughts

There is a certain attention to detail which I am seriously liking. Subtle things like hiding or making the top and bottom toolbars appear, (the icons realign once you’ve taken this action which is a nice little touch). It’s a simple thing but it does make the desktop less cluttered. Customising the toolbars is extremely easy and intuative, while realigning the drop down menus couldn’t be more simple using the Alacarte Menu Editor.

I’m also really loving the multiple desktops. It’s nothing as flash as XGL and what’s going over at SUSE but it’s a major step over Windows XP, think of it like tabbed web browsing only for your desktop. Debian does have a few projects that are trying to make the 3D desktop into a functional reality however it’s a little while off me thinks. I’ve also installed Kompose which gives Ubuntu Expose like functionality. It’s a little rough around the edges but it’s still early days (still on version 0.52) so here’s hoping the developers over at Ubuntu take heed and included a proper working version of this in the next version of Ubuntu.

Mounting

Customising Icons and Desktop

Installing New Software

The Bad

One thing that I’ve not been able to sort out however is loading websites seems to take a great deal of time. It’s like it’s thinking about things for a little while before it extracts all the information. This is on every single website I visit. I’m sure there’s a fix for this so if anyone had the same problem and found a way out please do share it with me.

I’m running on Ubuntu now and I’m starting to get comfortable with the setup in general. I’m currently writing several posts about the experience so far however the biggest problem I’ve had to be honest is installing programmes to be honest, not programmes in the repositories because that was far too easy, I’m talking about downloaded packages. I have absolutely NO IDEA what the hell I’m supposed to do with these things. They’re as good to me as a kick in head. I’ve got a 64Bit AMD and that seems to be giving me some trouble in various places. I can’t seem to find some proper tutorials AIMED at complete novices, the support pages don’t cover the topics as fully as I would like them, which is a travesty to be honest. Ubuntu could use a Podz if you ask me.

So I’ve downloaded the 64Bit enabled Pixel programme (I’ve already bought the license) and I have no idea what to do with the resulting thing that I’ve downloaded. Here’s what’s in the folder. Now I’ve got a setup file, fantastic, I double click and nothing happens. In fact nothing really happens when I click anything (except the license of course). I’ve downloaded the file twice and it’s the same thing.

What exactly am I looking at and why isn’t that setup file,…setting up the bloody programme?

Also I have no idea how to install GimpShop because I can’t seem to find it in the repositories or anything like that which is a shame, so if you’ve got some bright ideas or tutorials to share that would be well appreciated.

You all seen the latest Inkscape? They’ve taken a page from Xara and included the colour palette at the bottom of the application. Also they’ve updated those amatuer looking icons from the previous version as well. Hopefully they’ll take a hint and use the tango icons for a unified look in web applications. I’ve not played around with it yet to be honest but they’re heading in the right direction. Here’s a prediction though, I estimate that in 3 years time it should be as mighty as anything else out there.

I’ve been pretty quiet this last week and there’s actually two main reasons for that. The first one is due to the fact that I’ve been extremely busy at work. Every summer it happens to me and this one is no different. I’ve been landed with far too much work to handle in an exceptionally small amount of time. I’ve had it bad before which is why I’m actually completely calm because I’m also a lot more confident with my abilities to handle said work and present it to the usual anal retentive standards that I demand. That I guess is part of my problem. I actually tried to deal with issues in a more relaxed manner and have found that the problem with this approach is that things come back and bite you squarely in the ass.

The other major problem on my plate is my current computer setup. I’ve talked about my thoughts on moving over to Linux once and for all. In fact I actually installed Linux Suse Enterprise Edition earlier this week. However I have no idea what I’m doing and this has reflected in me fucking up my hardisk royally. So what’s a man to do, when there’s trouble in the neighbourhood? He calls on Franchesco (the PC doctor) to sort the mess I created like a 4 year old in the kitchen. I should hopefully be running SUSE and Ubuntu and a small section for me to migrate all my files over from Windows sometime tomorrow. I’ll definitely be talking about my thoughts on the entire system and how it can be improved and how it’s better than Windows and where it falters.

My deadlines at work should come to a close sometime around Thursday, where life on the net will resume back to normal and I can start hammering all those pesky little project that I’ve got in mid development that just need that final push to complete. I’ll list through them for completeness sake:

Broken Kode v5.1

Splash Panel v1

When people come to Splash Panel I want them to be ready with their credit card in hand to go and plonk some money down for the book I’ve just reviewed. You see I don’t intend any bad reviews of books to be posted on the site. Life’s far too short for that and there are far too many great graphic novels to read that deserve my (and your) attention more.

Broken Kode : Season One

See I know how people keep claiming how Ubuntu is the way forward for the desktop linux and how it’s been ‘made for humans’. Even though SUSE Desktop Enterprise edition hasn’t been released yet, I was keen on getting in on the action a little bit in advance, so I got SUSE 10.1 (it’s the full community version that’s got most of the SDE features) just so I can start getting into the groove.

It all installed more or less without too much hassle. The only problem so far has been installing my graphics card driver. I swear to god, it’s like pulling teeth. I know there has been some serious enhancements since the last time I checked in on Linux, but alas the one thing that still remains a mindfield of pain is installing a programme. In my mind it should be as easy dragging and dropping a file into a folder and just riding the installation setup. I shouldn’t have to sort out permissions and remember syntax and type in all sorts of things to get my graphics card to work (in case you were wondering, it still doesn’t actually work).

Once I get my house in order I’ll be sure to write some more indepth posts about what and why I think can still be improved regarding how Linux does things. I don’t want to critise because that’s counter productive. I’m just going to offer a helping hand in terms of how people expect certain things to work. It’ll take some time but things are generally heading in the correct direction.

When the Shuttle images design were released for general consumption I expected a great number of people to jump on board and help out Matt in the implementation of the code. Now I’m not sure how far the WordPress team have got with version 2.1, as I’ve heard some little bits and pieces over the last week or so with Ryan doing what he does best.

However I’d like to point out Mark over at the Sidejob, who’s actually taken the images and made them a reality on his install. This is the sort of thing I like to see. WordPress is a community EFFORT. Not so keen on the yellow background but we can work with that :).

In part one of this series I talked about why I’m going to be switching over to Linux. In this part I’m going to talk more about the actual additional software and what my options as a designer and illustrator actually are. There are only a handful of reasons why I would stick with Microsoft and windows. What’s really funny is that neither actually come from Microsoft itself. The first and major reason for me would be Adobe’s Photoshop and the now defunct (and one of my favourite applications) Macromedia’s (once again it will always be Macromedia for me) Freehand. There are other programmes of course that would make me flinch, such as Indesign and believe it or not my favourite text-editor, PHP Designer.

So before I made the leap, I started thinking about this whole thing a little more. Would it be a viable jump or could someone who considers themselves a designer/illustrator to make the jump into the Linux environment? Is it too harsh a landscape that I should just bite the bullet and stay put?

You’d be surprised how much stuff is available to the Linux user, either for a very small fee or completely free, so lets have a look at these options shall we.

Freehand Replacement

The biggest news for me to be honest was that Xara Xtreme was completely open-sourced for Linux users. That’s absolutely fantastic news. That alone makes me calm about the loss of Freehand. One of the great things about Xara is the fact that the peeps behind this application seem to know what’s important. Don’t force additional features on the programme. Just make it really good at what it does. Make it fast (easily on of the fastest vector programme on the PC at least). Where Illustrator is the heaviest programme in the world Xara Xtreme flies. This is a huge boon to the open source community and people should really be jumping on this bandwagon as soon as possible. Version 0.5 was released a month ago and they’re looking for more people to help out. I guess the main reason why people haven’t jumped is probably because they’ve not heard about it. I just finished reading this review over at Linux.com and it sees things in a very similar way. If Xara do actually implement things properly it really could be one of the greatest gifts since Blender and Open Office.

While Inkscape is a good little programme and I would never dream of bad mouthing the valiant efforts of the open source community, it feels clunky to me. There are certain aspects of the programme that could use with a lot of polish and I’m sure it will eventually get there in due time. After all we’re still on version 0.42 of the programme, not exactly the most mature offering. Xara offers some level of maturity RIGHT NOW. It’s got around 10 years of experience behind it

Photoshop Replacement

Pixel seems like it’s going to be a kick ass application. It’s still in the Beta stage, but even at this stage it seems to be pretty mighty. I’ve downloaded the preview version and I’ve got to say that it’s incredibly nippy. It’s obviously not as polished as Photoshop, but I mean c’mon we’re on version 9 of that programme and it’s backed by a huge amount of developers. Just looking at what Pavel has done here, it does look as though he’s emulated the photoshop scope completely (which I dunno Adobe might have issues with this at some point) but he does add some seriously cool little features that PS doesn’t have which make perfect sense. Like an additional tab that has different configurations of the work space for any one document which enables you to flip and highlight different functions etc. It’s subtle stuff but it’s a got legs.

Indesign Replacement

Flash Replacement

Xnview Replacement

One thing as Marco rightly pointed out in the comments of the previous post is that it’s really important to have applications. While Linux isn’t over flowing with proprietary products to use within, that seems to be a trend that is changing. Hopefully people will start doing what This move also gives hope to the future of other software manufacturers out there and a nice trend of them trying to cater to the Linux market. They don’t have to be as fantastically cool as Xara and open source it but at least they can make it available to the Linux market.

One of the things that magazines and tutorials and graphic designers and illustrators all over the world try and hammer across, is that the programme that you use shouldn’t really matter to the final work that you produce. To a certain degree I agree. It shouldn’t matter, except when you end up fighting with the actual software to achieve your vision. That’s when it become counter productive. Currently my thinking is that maybe, just maybe the tools on Linux will enable me to achieve my vision. It’s an experiment and I’m always up for experimentation. If I don’t succeed then at least I’ll have given it my best shot. If I do succeed, then I’ll have broken away from the shackles of being bound.

I’ve been writing this post for a couple of days now, which is a bit unusual for me, so grab a coffee because I’m about to go into a pretty long one, so long I’ve had to split the topic into two parts. For this first post I’ll be talking about Linux, open-source, microsoft and specifically the new SUSE Enterprise Desktop distribution from Novell.

I’ve been a Windows user ever since I actually started using a computer. Over the past few years I’ve become more and more disenfranchised with the actual system. The reason behind this is very simple. I’ve been using the same environment for over 5 years now. Some would say well that this means I’m perfectly happy with the system that I’m actually using. In some ways I am, but that’s more due to familiarlity rather than anything else. The easiest way to put this into perspective is the difference I feel when using Firefox and if I’m FORCED to use Internet Explorer for some shitty programme at work (usually the bane of my life, timesheets).

In the same way that the Mozilla foundation took on Microsoft for a position in the web browser market and kept on pushing and pushing so is Novell primed to try and emulate that success, however taking on Microsoft at something that even Apple has found it terribly difficult to do and that’s take a decent slice out of the coorporate market. With this release Novell provides a completely viable alternative that is both INNOVATIVE, fresh and well thought out.

With that though in mind, Windows hasn’t really moved forward in these 5 years. Oh sure we’re “blessed” with SP1 and SP2 along with a couple of sellotape additions to the operating systems but it’s the same innovation that made Mozilla a player in the browser market that’s going to make Novell a contender for a slice of the desktop market and take it away from Vista. The truth of the matter is that I’ve not actually played around with this new OS (it’s currently in private beta). I’m just running on what I’ve been able to find out over at the Novell website which was enough to get me completely excited about the whole thing. You can also have a look at some preview videos showcasing the new operating system.

Environment

The first aspect that I seriously like is their ‘computer’ area. It’s simple and clear and very well thought out. Why is it a start menu or a little apple icon? It’s all to do with your computer and should be called as such. This I’m sure is all part of the Better Desktop initiative that is actually sponsored by Novell.

Usability

There are several enhancements to this desktop environment that are very exciting. Mainly the multiple desktop feature which has been a standard for many Linux distributions for a good long while now. It’s nice to have a great animated way to go through the multiple desktops. The ‘alt-tab’ function where you get a preview of the application is another fantastic addition to this environment as well. As well as the OS X tiled windows on the same screen feature also looks like a nice addition to it’s already impressive arsenal.

Of course the extra additions of being able to search through conversations emails, etc is another fantastic addition/feature.

Cost

Maybe I’m making far too much out of nothing. I’ve tried other linux distributions in the past that have been hailed as the second coming, and to be honest I’ve not be overtly impressed. However one thing I’m definitely sure about is that I’ve not been this excited to try and play around with an operating system in nearly 5 years, since XP was released.

The bad news

..to address final issues with our new package management, registration, and update system and also fix the remaining blocker defects.

I’m sure I’ll be able to grab a copy of the software before this date, but I think I’ll wait a little while and make sure a few of the bugs are ironed out before I make the leap. I might play around with the Live CD (for those in the dark about such things, Linux Live CD/DVDs enable you to check the operating system without actually installing it).

Join me for Part 2 when I talk about what this move means to the software I use as a designer and illustrator. Linux isn’t traditionally known as a platform that has the software that the creative community requires, namely Adobe and Macromedia (it will always be macromedia to me) products. The answers might surprise you.

I’ll probably do a more proper review of the latest version of Flock at some point when it’s slightly more mature, but v0.7 Beta is a good stage to look at it more seriously. Also mad props to my boy Veloso for a really nice implementation of the new Flock website, very cool.

Been meaning to write a proper review about this book for a good long while. Due to many commitments it’s not been possible to really get into the book until now. “Blog Design Solutions” is a book that was released earlier this year (from Friends Of Ed) and was written by 8 guys from around the world; you might recognise a couple of the wee rascles, Chris J Davis, Michael Heilemann, John Oxton, Andy Budd and several others (I appologise I’m not terribly familiar with their work/sites but I’m definitely going to check them out from now on). The common link between these gents is that they’re all bloggers. The difference is that they use different software to run their sites.

There are numerous sites around the place that highlight the differences between the major blogging software packages available to run your blog sites on. What this book does is give a taster, a morsel, a sampler of the major ones. The book is seperated into 7 Chapters. The first two chapters cover general information about blogging and the world of blogging. While the second chapter tackles how to set things up to test and run a blog on you machine locally. It’s a nice reference guide to have to be honest. I personnally use XAMMP, but it would be good at some point when I’ve got a bit more time to set things up in a less lazy manner :).

The next 5 chapters are where things get interesting. Each chapter addresses the ins and outs of a particular blogging engine. Movable Type, WordPress, Expression Engine, TextPattern are all covered. The final chapter is very interesting because it tackles the subject of building your own blogging engine from scratch and how you go about it.

Movable Type is covered (including the history that Mena probably tends to like to forget, ie when MT3.0 was released and there was this massive jump away from the MT solution to the WordPress solution). I was intrigued to read this chapter because honestly I think to myself what the hell is the point of using MT? It seems to me like it’s lagging behind most of the other internet blogging solutions? The answer to two fold I guess. Part of it is the fact that it’s pretty old (in internet terms) and has a loyal base of users; in addition to that it’s also the fact that there is a core base of developers that are accountable to you if in case you want something done, or sorted out. Some users want that level of support, especially if we’re talking about commercial corporate users of some description.

The WordPress chapter is special to me, because it’s the WordPress chapter (in case you didn’t realise the ‘Kode currently runs on WordPress) but more importantly it was written by my two buddies Michael and Chris, so obviously I’ll be paying more attention to this chapter than the rest of the book (hey at least I’m honest about these things). So how did the boys do? Not too bad. What’s great about this particular chapter is that their characters come throughout the entire chapter. Blogging is about interating and reading other people’s thoughts. It’s about communication and expression. They’re the only guys that spend a bit of time telling you about themselves and what their knowledge levels are. It’s a great way to ease the user into a comfort zone. Michael (at the time) was still struggling with php (no problems now I’m sure as he’s decided to take on JS as well), to prove that you didn’t need to know PHP coding in order to design and play around with WP, all you need is the drive, patience and some time.

I’ve got to admit though that the most interesting chapter for me was the final chapter by Richard Rutter. Which walks you through the process of making your own blogging engine. Why is that interesting to me when someone else has already done most (if not all the hard work for me). To be honest it would just be fun to have everything running on something I designed and coded. The thing of course is that I’m not a coder and therefore won’t realistically be able to do something like that. Also the first thing that comes to my mind is how I don’t think I’d be able to deal with Spammers. I can’t do without Akismet to be honest and I don’t understand how other people can manage without this plugin.

The book targets 2 groups of people, those that want to start off blogging and what they’ll need to know; the second group of people are those that have passed that stage and would like to learn how to customising their blogs, and what to look out for. I don’t think I’m really the core target audience, but even I found several nuggets that were really worthwhile. It’s definitely a book I’d recommend giving to the newbie who’s interested but is also a bit overwhelmed by it all, because this book holds his hand in style. For the hardened blogger the book is interesting as an overview of other technologies so as to keep abreast of what’s going on, with a couple of areas that are definitely of interest, but then again that’s not who the book is targeted at, so it’s nice that the editor made sure there was something for that group of people as well.

I’m going to ramble on a bit more about Shuttle, simply because it’s been a pretty big part of my life the last year and loads of things I’ve wanted to talk about on this blog have been waiting for this moment in time. Everytime I would think about something cool to talk about relating this project I always had to keep on the mental shelf until after I got to this stage.

People expected the second coming for some reason. The simple thinking behind joining forces with the likes of Michael, Joen, Chris, Bryan and Joshuas was that by joining forces with these exceptionally talented people, at the top of their game, we would get something that would far exceed anything I could have come up with on my own. Make no mistake about it, without everyone’s contribution we wouldn’t have the mockups you see before you. They would be INFINITELY different and IMHO much weaker.

The problem however with this situation is that INSTANTLY people’s expectations were raised. Some people were expecting the second coming and didn’t get it. To be fair though we never promised you the second coming. We promised we’d do our best to make the WordPress admin beautiful and usable to people of all levels of experience with the programme. Some might forget that we’re not catering just to the power users; we’re catering to the every users. That’s a tough thing to do correctly, and that’s part of why it took as long as it did… but only a small part.

Of course then there are those that feel that the admin didn’t really need to change at all. I obviously disagree with this assessment COMPLETELY, otherwise I wouldn’t have gone down this road in the first place. However this is a VERY important comment to take note of. You see change is feared by a great deal of people. In fact that’s probably (amongst many other reasons) by Matt will be implementing the design incrementally. WordPress got to it’s current popularity based on the fact that the software does what it does, well. Add to that list the community behind it; and finally the simplicity of the UI design.

The Shuttle team obviously saw room for improvement as we belive it’s not the prettiest to look at. Some might then argue and say:

Well hang on, it does the job right?

That there is a programmer’s mentality, not a designer’s. So right from the very start (I remember clearly) Joen tried to push the idea that the overall structure that the interface currently has is not incorrect fundamentally and therefore we shouldn’t be looking to change that just for the sake of it. Michael then kept hammering the ideas (through his comps) that if it’s not needed STRIP IT OUT, keep it simple, keep it clean, keep it clear. On the flip side we had Matt telling us some seriously weird things you guys do when using WordPress so we had to factor a bit of that weirdness in there as well. However don’t try and deviate from what has been established as a core unless there’s a serious reason. Those reasons would then get hammered back and forth, between Denmark, England and the US on a regular basis.

For those that are thinking that this is just a design exercise and won’t get included fast enough, I think you’ll find that if you’re running WordPress 2.0 the integration of Shuttle has already begun! What you think Matt woke up one morning and decided to add the colour blue from the previous grey? Or that those drop-down-draggable menus in the write section appeared on their own? All things that came about from the Shuttle project. Admittedly they’re not as we mocked them up at the time, however we hadn’t progressed to the level we are now at the time those areas were being implemented in the code. I now officially feel like Morpheus in the Matrix after Neo gets his ass whupped in Kung Fu.

Many lessons were learnt during this design process however we’ll keep it at this for now.

To avoid any confusion and answer some questions that have been raised I’ve created this small FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) to dispell any rumours and set the record as straight as I possibly can. If you’ve got any questions put them underneath and I’ll update the post accordingly.

Why isn't there a plugin to download?

However after much back and forth it was decided that this design would be better implemented as part of the core WP install. In many ways it was also impossible to implement this design in any way apart from altering the core code, so a plugin was not an option.

If Matt needs any help or wants some clarity on how certain parts of the design should work the Shuttle team is ready and waiting.

What if I can make this into a plugin?

So you've created the code and Matt's going to drop it into the main code right?

So do you expect the final thing to look like the mockups?

So what exactly did you launch?

Before you read this I suggest you go and have a look at the 20 mockups showing the future of WordPress.

The idea of redesigning the WordPress administration panel began believe it or not in December 2004. For over a year and a half myself, Michael Heilemann, Joen Asmussen, Chris J Davis, Joshua Sigar (later joined by Bryan Veloso) exchanged countless emails and mockups and links and ideas regarding what we thought the WordPress administration panel should be. The project was called the Shuttle Project. I now have the pleasure of presenting what we came up with and explaining the future of the project.

The Shuttle project was without a doubt the single hardest thing I’ve ever been involved with. The only thing that made it easy for me was the fine and exceptional gentlemen on the Shuttle team itself. What made it so difficult is the fact that we were thinking of the thousands of WordPress users all over the world. We were thinking of usability, we were thinking of asthetics, we were thinking of the power user and the novice user. How do you get three headstrong (and passionate) designers to play nice with each other? I swear I have no idea but somehow it all actually worked out in the end. I owe Michael and Joen a great deal of thanks for helping me improve how I think about design.

However the greatest thing that I could have gotten from this project is the sense of collaboration that I felt throughout the project. We were all working towards making something we use on a daily basis that much better, it makes Open Source that much more enjoyable. Although it was tough going through this design process, I think we’ll all instantly forget everything once it’s part of the official install.

When's it coming out?

I can’t wait for the Shuttle designs to be incorporated into the WordPress install, as I do believe that once it’s done there will be only one choice in which platform you should be using.

WordPress Identity | The Colour Blue

So the first major change we made was give WordPress a colour and it’s own distinct identity. We had to make sure that it didn’t mimic any of the other blogging tools out there, so we did a bit of research first. Textpattern has orange, Symphony is green, Moveable Type is grey/green, Expresion Engine is purple. We decided to go for blue. What does blue signify you ask? An easy link (and direct from Wikipedia) is that the colour blue:

...is considered a calming, soothing colour, perhaps related to its association with water and to the sky.

That was what I was hoping we’d get. The colour palette provides an atmosphere that is familiar and not harsh on the eyes. Seeing as a lot of people spend a great deal of time looking at the actual backend of WordPress a great deal throughout the day, it was very important to keep the visual impact of the administration panel to a minimum.

After a great deal of back and forth and loads of mockups and discussion the number of hues of blue was kept to a total of 3. These same blues would be used to distinguish links within the panel itself, as consistency is a major factor in keeping the user comfortable.

System Messages | The Importance of Colour

Join me next time as I talk a bit about usability (or at least try and talk about the subject).

The real reason why I decided to reboot to something more simple this time round hopefully is becoming more obvious with the latest change in the background on the front page. As the section implies the background (which occupies the most real estate on the site) will be used to throw the spotlight on specific projects and completed artwork. Version 4 isn’t all that different (at least in structure) to what I have now, however it’s been adapted in such a way to allow me to play around more freely.

This week I’m throwing the spotlight on a little open source project I got involved with a couple of months ago. It’s an online feed aggregator and it’s allowed me to actually get up to speed and READ all the various sites that I’ve subscribed to. Traditionally most of my feeds were read from the Sage extension for Firefox, however I needed something a little bit more powerful FOFRedux provided me with what I was looking for.

The FOFR dev team is a great bunch of people. It’s a tight nit community of devs and users as the programme itself isn’t as widely used as it really deserves to be, however we’re hoping to change that with a number of great additions to the software. The major element being a complete overhaul of the UI admin section as you can see from the project page.

Anywho if you’re looking for an online open source aggregator that sits on your server, then you don’t have to look further. It’s still early days (version 0.3 was released a couple of weeks ago) but I have very high hopes for the software. Final word, I’m planning on spending a lot more time cleaning up my projects area over the coming weeks as I’ve got a great number of announcements to be making. Sometime over the weekend I should have some pretty exciting news about Shuttle to share with everyone and a page that mimics the FOFRedux page (it’s a lot bigger because I’ve got to upload over 29 images).

Thought it was important to point out to everyone that the latest version of Zenphoto is out. It’s been a long time coming but I for one am glad that Tristan has found someone to help him out with this little application. So hat’s off to Tristan and Todd (you greek buddy?), they’ve done well. I’ve still got to get a theme going and actually upload some photos but I’ve had other things on my mind at the moment. A review of this little program will come soon enough.

Perfect start to 2006, the super talented Michael Pham ofMPSoftware releases the new version of PHP Designer 2006. This is my preferred editor of choice, even though 2005 had loads of little bugs it was still great. A full review of this is forthcoming.

When I first heard about Flock I asked the obvious question of what was going to make it better or bigger compared to Firefox. There were a couple of features that made me smile, however the one tool that I was seriously very excited about was the fact that blogging could now be integrated directly into my browser. That would definitely make things that much more fun for me. However the news we got back from the original launch however regarding this particular feature weren’t as favourable as I’d have liked. And so Flock sits on my desktop waiting.

Enter Performancing, a new Firefox plugin. Performancing made me actually stop and think about the need for the Flock browser. Right now Firefox is the single most important application I have on my computer. Oh sure I can’t live without Photoshop, but at the same time my link to the world, news, friends and entertainment is via this little engine that could. So changing it for Flock will be a tall order now that Firefox effectively has everything I could want from it. Oh sure it doesn’t look as slick as Flock, however it’s the main code. It’s where it starts. Flock will follow.

Many people call Firefox just a browser, but it’s a lot more. The plugin architecture has expanded it into a lot more in ways Internet Explorer can only hope to one day match, but never will. Open Source applications are the future and the sooner people realise this the better we’ll all be. If I get an RSS Aggregator included as part of the core code then I’ll be a happy bunny,…hang on a minute, didn’t the Flockesters ask for what we’re looking for in an aggregator?

Yes, it seems like they did. The Flock bunch seem like a pretty savy bunch. So now the single most important thing that is missing in a browser, will hopefully be integrated as well. I honestly can’t wait for this to happen, not that I don’t like Sage, however this could be so much more and honestly I can’t use a stand-alone application for reading my feeds. It just doesn’t work. Now if only someone can also link up my rss links from an online source that sits on my server or an internet service or whatever and links up to any Firefox application (provided I put the password etc), I won’t need multiple copies of my OPML file.

So apart from the nicer look and potentially a feed aggregator (which will no doubt be ported over to FF, what can the Flock guys do for their final launch to make me choose their browser over Firefox? You ask, but why oh why would they want me? I guess for the money that the browser gets from people like Google etc for using that tiny little search function in the top right hand corner.

Firefox Hacks You Must Have. I’m always on the look out for new and interesting firefox add-ons. The newest one for me (which I’m sure has been around for a while) is DownThemAll.

Firefox 1.5 has been released and they’ve realigned (nooch!) the website as well. It’s not the biggest change by any stretch of the imagination, but still an upgrade is and upgrade, especially to my favourite application.

It’s only natural for people to be getting sick of the term that’s plastered on the interent EVERY SINGLE DAY. Yes, this post in part will be about the crazy little buzz word, Web 2.0. I hate that term:"(So we’ll not use it again, in the future that word will be replaced with ***** [5 stars])":

It’s being thrown around the blogosphere like crazy. I guess I’m one of those crazy fools out there that believes in the future, that we won’t be paying for software. There will be an operating system that compliments everything we do, there will be software that will be far more advanced than anything you can buy, and the development will be ongoing, constant and open to everyone. I’m a firm believer in Open Source software.

At this particular moment in time we’ve been caught off guard. The Web applications are fresh and new now, so obviously they’re going to be gaining some momentum and money. In 5 years time (hopefully much less) all of the 37 Signals applications will be available to the end user in the form of an open source project. If people want to have those programs on their systems without paying a monthly fee, they’re more than welcome to do so, and can get at the code and do whatever they want as well. It’s only a matter of time. People will be paying for the work, the service rather than the software.

The reason I mention the 37 Signals programs in particular is because I started using Backpack this weekend. I’ve got an account from when it was first released, however I never really got into it. I’ve added yet another project to the stuff I’m working on. This one is with Bryan Veloso and we’re both thinking what the hell took us so long.

5 years ago this collaboration would have been possible, but it wouldn’t have been as easy and clear to follow as it is now, thanks to Backpack. I’m even considering buying a basic account. That’s pretty big thing since I just haven’t gotten into that whole ***** thing. If you’re collaborating on the interent (and you really should it’s an amazing resource to waste on porn) this application will make things more fun for sure.

Now I’m just waiting for the time when we actually can host this on my server. Anyone working on a Backpack alternative (with Whiteboard of course).

I’m really excited about Flock. For those in the dark it’s a new browser that’s intended for bloggers. The program is based off the Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine, which is what Firefox is based on. In fact the guys and gals behind Flock were part of the development team behing Firefox. Since Firefox is an Open Source program, in the open source world this fork is not an uncommon thing. In fact in most cases it’s inevitable.

There are many examples. The simplest being the hundreds of Linux distros (ubuntu after Debian etc) showing how different people have different thoughts about doing something, and so they fork. Other examples include:

1. GimpShop from The Gimp
2. Inkscape after Sodipodi
3. Joomla! from Mambo

Honestly I could go on. From the above examples what’s clear is that sometimes forks do provide a better product in the end. That’s the beauty of Open Source. I do find it crazy that this would happen so soon, however I can’t wait to see what this application can offer above Firefox. The ‘fox is easily my most used application. In fact when coming onto ANY new PC, the first thing that’s downloaded is Firefox, so it’s going to have to be something special for me to part ways and use the alternative. Any which way you cut it, this will be better for the end user, as the teams will no doubt be feeding off what each other are up to. Is the market oversaturated? Screw that, it’s all about freedom of choice.

On a completely different note, I’ve got to say that I’m seriously loving the Flock logo. I didn’t think anything could top the excellently designed Hick’s Firefox logo, by the Bryan Bell Flock logo is a good contender for the title.

I’ve been waiting for this for a pretty long while. Tristan has finally released his long awaited (at least for likes of Joen, Micheal, Mathias and me) Zenphoto. If you’re interested in a simple program that seems like it’s got a bright future amongst those people not really interested in hosting their photos on a server far far away, then Zenphoto deserves your attention. I’ve only been playing with it for a day now and already I know what I’m going to love using this application.

Setting Up Zenphoto on Dreamhost Before I talk about the program, I’m going to talk a bit about the setting it up since I did have a bit of trouble with that. Not the program’s fault by ANY stretch of the imagination, just me being dim, and Dreamhost being a bit awkward. So this is a public service announcement for anyone on Dreamhost that wants to play around with this program but having a bit of trouble getting over the first hurdle.

To get the Zenphoto set up you only need to edit two files.

1. .htaccess file. The only thing you've got to change is the following:

   # !!! Change this to the absolute path !!! RewriteBase /zp

   Change it to whatever you want, in my case it was pictures so my file looks like this:

   # !!! Change this to the absolute path !!! RewriteBase /pictures

<li><strong>config.php</strong>

The config file is found in the zen folder. Everything is pretty bog standard, follow the instructions in here to a T and you shouldn’t have a problem. If your database isn’t working, make sure you’ve named it properly, that could be because you’ve named the database incorrectly.

Make sure that you actually put the database host name in front of your website url, as shown below.

$conf['mysql_host'] = "zenh.brokenkode.com"; // Probably won't need to change this.

However if you find that your database is working, (by having a look in phpmyadmin, or the fact that ZP actually tells you it’s all ok), but are having trouble actually logging in, that can be attributed to the server paths and how Dreamhost likes you to call up these bits and pieces. Crucially.

// The path to zenphoto on the server - e.g. /home/user/public_html/zenphoto. No trailing slash/ $conf['serverpath'] = "/home/username/brokenkode.com/pictures";

Make sure that you actually exchange your REAL username for username, and the full path to where you’ve put ZP on the server.

// The URL of zenphoto from the domain root. - e.g. 'http://www.yoursite.com/zenphoto' // (or '/zenphoto' in that case). No trailing slash/ $conf['webpath'] = '/pictures';

This one actually gave me the grief. Make sure you just put path, not the entire url.

Zenphoto ~ The Pros

I’ve not even been using it for 24 hours and yet I’m pretty impressed with the simplicity of everything. When you do something that’s not really prim and proper, like trying to create a folder without even a single image to upload you get these helpfully coloured system messages (we’re using these in Shuttle btw, Matt and co have been giving them some Ajax love as well).

Uploading images is a very simple process with several options available (JPEG, PNG, GIF and ZIP files, seriously what more do you need?). I like the fact that when you’re in the upload section you have 5 image slots where you can actually use, with the option to increase the number to as many as you want with the click of one button.

The colour scheme of the administration panel by Joen is very soft on the eyes and I’m really loving the thoughts behind the actual program coming through. Simple, yet functional.

Zenphoto ~ Improvements & Future Dev Tristan has got a battle plan. The roadmap can be found here. Things that I’d like to be able to do from the program itself (not sure if it’s possible really).

Delete files - Currently there is no really way to delete images from the admin panel. You need to go via ftp or something. Also I’ve noticed that the number tally of the pictures the admin panel indicates are still in the folder does not update if a file is deleted. We’re still in Beta, so I’m sure little quirks like this will be ironed out for future releases.

Sizing images - It seems that whatever size the file is ZP will stretch it out to fit in the maximum specified width. While that’s pretty ok for anything larger than the desired width (so nothing looks out of whack) the problem then comes into play when you’ve got images lightly smaller than the default, so it would be nice to keep the smaller files at their size in the images section. It could come as a little check box next to when uploading the image?

Support and Documentation - Tristan and co were great trying to solve my problem, however I think (from personal experience) you can do the support thing for a while, because it’s fresh and you want to help people understand what you’re doing, however your enthusiasm will wane. The creator ideally should concentrate on making the program better etc. There are other who can contribute to an open source project in different ways, that are just as crucial and important as coding and bug squashing and theme creating, and that’s offering users support. Tristan’s got a couple of things in the pipeline to help the user out, which in my mind is as essential as files to the program itself.

Final Thought Zenphoto is a joy to use, I know I’ll be using it for a good while to come. If you’re looking for something simple, functional and beautiful, go download it now.

Free Opera. As part of Opera’s 10 year Anniversary celebration it’s giving away it’s browser for free. That’s today only people. Read the footnotes. (via designateonline)

My previous windowz fart obviously as it would, started making me thinking about operating systems, and the like. I’ve had a couple of days to mull it over and this is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while now. Joen talked about why he wasn’t planning on switching in OSX anytime soon, and in fact was/is pretty happier with Microsoft. Whereas he approached things from a usability point of view, I’m going to talk about if from a completely different angle.

I was faced with this decision last year, when I was shopping around for my newest PC. Do I stay with Windows, do I jump ship and go for Macs, or do I go the hard-geek road and opt for Linux. After much thought and deliberation I decided to stay with Windows. I’m not going to state why I stayed, I’m instead going to talk about why I didn’t go for the other two, and hopefully from there lead to where I think operating systems will go, and in certain cases, should go.

Why not Mac? Do I like the design of the hardware? I absolutely love the metal box, very cool, very hardcore. What about the overall design aesthetics of the company? Damn straight. This is a company that has got the best product designers in the world. I can’t imagine how all these other companies just can’t even compare when it comes to the design aesthetics.

The operating system is said to be extremely stable as it’s been written on a Unix system, compared with the crap Windows is based on. So with all these good things going for it, what’s the problem?

It’s simple, I hate Apple’s marketing strategy. In my humble opinion the company has taken the fact that it has devout followers and decided to rape them for every single penny they’re worth. It’s this incredible cycle where the second they’ve got you in, that’s it you’re stuck. You might be happy there, but I certainly would not be. I’ll try and make some sense. OSX can only be run on an Apple box. That limits you to using only stuff by them. That keeps the price of the box and repairs and whatever under their control. That doesn’t have to be a problem, except I’m not truly keen on putting all my eggs in one basket.

My first and essentially only true Apple experience is my Ipodmini. I do like it but soo many things about it pisses me off like you wouldn’t believe. The main thing that really annoys me is how the accessories are milked to the brim. I also really hate the fact that you pay for the thing and they don’t even have the decency to supply a remote, or docking bay or whatever, and those things are then priced extortionately, or packages with something you really don’t need/want (earphones with the remote for example).

I know they’re a company and that’s what they’re meant to do, milk it for everything it’s worth, however I don’t need to play their game.

If I could buy OSX as a standalone program that operates on another manufacturer’s box, I would probably be one of the first in line to buy it. As it stands, I’m honestly not interested. This might change in the future, but not the immediate one.

Linux I love open source. I really do. I think in many respects it’s the future. However Linux comes across as a complete chore rather than an operating system. It’s only been pretty recently that the guys have copped onto the fact that interface and usability is as important as all the geeky optimization of the system, but it’s just not there for me.

Add to the fact that in order to run many programs I’d have to get a windows emulator, and well, it kind of defeats the object really doesn’t it. I do keep an eye out for new distro releases, and I’m hoping for the ultimate one to come along, but again I’ll have to wait for that one.

Ultimate OS Which kind of leads me to my final point, what is the ultimate OS in my opinion? One that combines the class of OSX with the freedom of Linux. One that provides me with the software options available to windows, without the loss of performance.

I get the sneaking suspicion that Google will eventually provide us all with the first online operating system. 10 years from now we’ll log in and know that everything has been backed up and double backed up. We’ll each have a terrabit of storage available to us, and we’ll never have the need to argue about this…except that honestly I don’t really trust google, but then again I didn’t trust the internet when it first appeared…

WinDirStat Very cool Windows stats program (open source software, which I always have time for).

Haven’t written one of these in a while, but I guess one program I use every day practically and I’m sure other people use a similar program in one form or another is the excellent Xnview.

The website says it’s got the following features:

• Import about 400 graphic file formats
• Export about 50 graphic file formats
• Multipage TIFF, Animated GIF, Animated ICO support
• Resize
• Copy/Cut/Crop
• Adjust brigthness, contrast...
• Modify number of colors
• Apply filters (blur, average, emboss, ...)
• Apply effects (lens, wave, ...)
• Fullscreen mode
• Slide show
• Picture browser
• Batch convert
• Thumbnail create
• Screen capture
• Contact Sheet create
• Multi-page file create (TIFF, DCX, LDF)
• TWAIN support (Windows only)
• Print support (Windows only)
• Drag & Drop support (Windows only)
• 44 languages support (Windows only)

Advantages: What I love about it is that it’s light weight. I want a screen shot of something? Bang it’s done, resized, cropped and saved ready to go within minutes.

It’s my weapon of choice when I’m putting something on Broken Kode. I could do it in Photoshop, but this method is so much faster.

The thing I like the most about this program is the fact that it is solidly made. From the icon to the menu system, everything is laid out in a proper order and is very easy to understand.

It also integrates nicely with itself. So that you’ve got the thumbnail view and an explorer like menu, which when a thumb is clicked it takes you to the image. Close the image and you’re back in the explorer menu. This is in contrast to Ifranview for example which is seperated into two programs.

The icons are extension specific. So a png with have a little png note on it, while a gif will be a different colour, that sort of thing. There is a commercial version of the program

It’s nice that it’s skinnable, scores some major points with me as the default is a bit boring.

Disadvantages: It will view my psd files, although for some reason if they’re CMYK it’s completely kill the colours, but that’s a small price to pay to be honest.

When viewing AutoCAD files however It comes up with a stupid popup message that asks me if I want to buy a plugin. No f"£k off.

Although to be honest I’d have liked it more if it would actually have been open source like firefox. It could easily be one of the best tools on the market for this sort of thing. I’d really like to see an open source alternative that rivals how well built this little application is however I haven’t found one, so I’ll be content with this freeware software.

Overview

Easily my favourite and most used application. What’s Firefox? I’m always surprised when people still look at me with a blank stare when I mention Firefox, but I guess you’ve got to be a heavy internet user to know or even care about these things. Most people I know don’t even realise that there are alternatives to Internet Explorer. Microsoft have done their job well in making it all seem that they won the browser war and that there really is only one way to surf the web. Oh but that’s not true. Nothing could be further from the truth. Enter Firefox by the Mozilla Foundation.

There’s a fantastic article on that tells the story behind Firefox and it’s co-creator, Blake Ross. For me Firefox opened my eyes to the world of Open Source code, and what a wonderful thing a community building software can actually be. So let’s get down to why I think Firefox is what you should be using to browse and surf the world wide web.

Features No Pop-ups This has been updated for Windows Service Pack 2, however this wasn’t the case before, and Firefox hit that little annoying thing of multiple pop-ups and what not on the head. It’s a simple thing, but essential to browsing, even trusted sites such as www.comicbookresources.com will be prone to using these annoying things. Job done with Firefox, no more of these things.

Tabbed Web Browsing Ah, I can’t live without this feature. Simple idea, but one of the best things about the program. Check out the picture below. Rather than opening 15 IE windows, they’re all housed neatly in one window and I can click quickly to whatever page I want to, without any problems whatsoever.

Password Manager Everything is housed here. All my passwords tucked away safely. I can control which sites I don’t want it to have the passwords, while others I’ll let it have them in there. Full control, which is essential to my usage of something as sensitive as this.

Themes Soo many to choose from. I’ve currently got about 10 downloaded, although I’m using Plastikfox Crystal since it’s a very colourful theme. If you want it to look like an Apple application you’ve got that option as well, and a plethora of other really well put together themes as well.

Bookmarks Manager Such a nice way of moving things up and down, add separators, but them in folders, all from any view you want. Either while it’s as a sidebar, or from it’s own window manager area. I remember the days of IE where I would HAVE to go to the special bookmarks window and sorting them out was not very simple.

Extensions One of the things that makes Firefox so powerful is the fact that there is a massive community out there, make extensions to better the functionality of the core code. What this brings is an absolutely EMMENSE amount of extensions that cater to just about every single need you might have, to customise this browser to whatever you want it to do. These are just the extensions I use on a regular basis. Going to the extensions library shows you just how small a slither these one are, but just to get you started here’s a couple:

Web Development When designing and testing a website, this extension is something I can’t do without. It’s simple it’s effective and gives me a much better appreciation of the design of the website. It’s got everything from div highlights, size of the actual divs, CSS markup, names the images, and oh so much more. I’ve not even scratched the surface of all the features but it’s a very powerful addition to anyone playing around with web design in any capacity. Download Web Developer extension here.

AdBlock Simple idea, as with most things in Firefox. Go around to all your favourite websites. Chances are there are ads. Don’t like them? Fine, right click, BLOCK AD. Oh look at that the ad’s disappeared. Continue to a few more websites, by the end of the week, any website you visit won’t have any ads since they come from roughly the same place. Hell it even takes care of the Flash ads if you really want! Details can be found here.

Gmail Notifier Well for those in the dark, Gmail, is Google’s e-mail service. It’s got a massive 1G storage space capacity, so seriously you never need to bloody delete any e-mails, ever. It looks ugly as sin, but hey it makes sending e-mail more fun. This little extension sits at the top next to everything else and once you’ve clicked it and logged in, will basically act as your watchdog for any new mail you might receive. Download Gmail notifier here.

Sage RSS reader My most used extension. RSS is a system where this little application will check all your favourite websites and see if they’ve updated since the last time that you visited. Not all websites have and RSS feed, however it’s something that is slowly but surely getting picked up by the major websites more and more. Again it’s fully customisable as with all other managers in Firefox. Download the Sage extension here.

Scrapbook This is a fantastic extension. I stumbled on it via Scripty Goddess. What we have here is a truly useful little addition, where if you find a particular page with content you’d like to keep, like online receipts, embedded quicktime movies etc, all you have to do is right click ‘Capture page’ and it simply saves the entire page AS IT IS onto a designated area on your hard disc. It then catalogues it and you get to sort everything out as the bookmark manager. I can’t live without this addition now, as I’ve collected some serious internet gems because of this. Download the Scrapbook extension here.

ColorZilla Trust me I hate spelling it that way, but anyway. This little addition sits in the bottom left hand corner of your browser. If you see a colour on screen you’d like the details of click and point the crosshair on the colour and bam you’ve got the exact colour details. Download it here.

Rating: 6/5. That’s how highly I rate this application.

Pros - So many. Apart from all the things I mentioned above, add that the development on this is constant and ongoing. It’s not like IE which hasn’t been updated in a few years. It’s completely compliant with Web Standards. The extensions keep coming from the community and are keep getting better and better. It’s got a great icon and it’s all COMPLETELY free. What’s not to like?

Cons - Trying hard to think of what I don’t like about Firefox. My only thought is the fact that it can’t search text fields. Having said that I can live with that. Honestly I really can.

Okay so it’s NOT open source, and you’ve got to download it from the Microsoft website, however you’ll love me forever for this little nugget of a software. I found out about it via DIGIT magazine. Of course something like Computer Arts should also be saying something, however they’re corporate whores that obviously get paid by companies to pimp their software and their rubbish culture (yeah sorry I’m on a bit of an attack on CA right now).

So back to Expression. As far as I can tell, it would seem Microsoft bought this software, didn’t know what to do with it, so they released it as a preview for everyone to do whatever they want. I can’t live without this program at work, as we don’t have enough Illustrator licenses, this freeware software is ideal.

What makes Expression unique is the fact that it blends raster manipulation tools with vector graphics. It was originally intended from the direction it took as an illustrator’s tool really, trying hard to bring the traditional artist to the digital realm.

Importing and Exporting You can import bitmaps, so the list includes, tiff, bmp, jpgs, gifs and even psd (photoshop files).

You can export directly as illustrator files, Flash files, pdfs and EPS files.

Main Features The main feature about expression are the fact that it actually brings in brushes into the vector realm. If you want vector graphics that look like they’re water colours you’ll find it hard to do that in Illustrator (although I’m not sure about plugins etc).

Another great feature is just how ‘lightweight’ it is. Loading this program up is soo simple with any power of computer. One of the reasons I don’t use Illustrator is because it’s soo heavy and doesn’t react to my commands as fast as I’d like, however the expression engine really does hammer through what I need without any grief.

No problems with fonts, CMYK and RGB colour schemes. This is in direct contrast to Adobe’s Photoshop Elements. It’s very verstaile to be used as a Desk Top Publishing (DTP) program, for SINGLE PAGES. So if you want to quickly deal with a pdf for someone that’s printable and you want to get the colours right you could do a lot worse than this awesome program.

Downfalls. The shortcuts aren’t customisable, so I’ve got to use the s-key to get the arrow rather than the common v-key in most programs.

This is not an open source program, and there doesn’t seem to be much development being happening into it, which is a terrible shame, as it really is worth it. I wish microsoft would just release the code as open source so that people could do something meaningful with it. I think if that were the case this could become a serious contender for Freehand etc. I mean they’re not doing anything with it, or at least not as far as I know of. If anyone’s got any other news then that would be pretty cool to hear about.

Rating: 4/5 only because it’s not open source code. However it’s such a joy to use I’ll let it slide.

Conclusion. Expression is a great light weight program, that although not open source is freeware right now. It’s greatly versatile and combines raster and vector techniques, that bring about a more ‘painters’ tool than anything else. One of my favourite finds of 2004, it was a godsend in many respects.

I’m going to start posting reviews on software you might not know about that you really should be using, or could greatly benefit from using. There’s like 10 I’ve got in mind right now, but I’m really hoping that the list will actually increase as time goes by, since I love to use and support open source projects. Every once in a while however I’ll stumble on some freeware (but doesn’t operate under a GPL license) that deserves a mention, so you can put that into this list as well. It’s crazy what you can find on the internet.

Overview So we’ll get the first one underway with Notepad2. I originally thought it wasn’t open source however after digging a little deeper, ie in the text file, you see the following magic words:

Source Code

Notepad2 is based on the Scintilla source code editing component: http://www.scintilla.org

The full Notepad2 source code is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and can be found at: http://www.flos-freeware.ch

I can’t stop using this little application. I use it at work as much as I use it at home and that’s really due to it’s extreme versatility.

Features: So how does Notepad2 differ from Notepad found on all Windows machines? There are a number of great features that make it different. Here’s a brief list of what I find the most useful:

<li>No matter what type of file you open (well there are exceptions of course), it's probably built in with a colour coding syntax, so it's easier to read through</li>
<li>A great feature is that if you've got Notepad2 open, you can just drag and drop the required file into the edit area and it will automatically load the file, without having to go through the hassle, <em>open file ></em> etc etc.</li>
<li>Simple functions like, line wraping, auto indent and zoom functions.</li>
<li>It remains lightweight, for quick access, and quick edits to any file. So it'll load up even if you're on a slow machine</li>
<li>Very customisable, adding a great deal of flexibility to file editing.</li></ul>

Rating:4/5

Pros - Lightweight, customisable, open source code. Cons - No spell check and no plans for tabbed browsing (great little feature to have). While this would be a great feature I understand what the thinking behind Notepad2 is:

Feature requests are always welcome, but please keep in mind that Notepad2 has been designed as a compact Notepad replacement.

Download Notepad2