Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, probably the best web designer I know of, has been working with Google for 6 months now, and has just taken a position there full time. This might not seem like such a big deal, but I’m certain that his influence will show up throughout their product line, and this is a very good thing. I appreciate clarity and simplicity just as much as the next guy, but I think that Google design comes across as overly sparse a lot of the time. The middle-ground between lush graphics found in a lot of Stopdesign work and the “classic” Google look and feel sounds just about right to me. Side note: I think Daniel Burka of silverorange might be the number one independent designer, now that Google has locked Mr. Bowman up. Read Going to Google:
…After a bit of negotiation and a lot of internal debate, I recently accepted an offer to join Google as Visual Design Lead, a position that did not previously exist there. I’m charged with helping the company establish a common visual language across all their collaborative and communication products. This includes products I’ve already had some hand in like Blogger and Calendar. But it will also include other highly used products like Gmail, Writely, Page Creator, and other projects in the pipeline.
Although I’m reluctant to gobble up everything coming out of 37signals, I find it hard to resist their charm. Just this evening, I was riding the Brown Line home from work, checking out the latest drivel pouring out of Business 2.0, a magazine I subscribe to (shame!) in large part because I enjoy reveling in nonsensical marketing hype. An article called How to build a bulletproof startup caught my eye – not because it was on the cover, but (true story) because I couldn’t wait for 37signals to hate on it. Well, I’m not disappointed:
They’ll tell you that you need to burn between $1.6 and $4.5 million to get to launch. They’re wrong. They’ll tell you that working on a prototype is about drawings and photoshop abstractions, that you need advisory boards, big staffs, and a huge lawyer tab before you get to building something real. They’re wrong…People often ask us “what should I do to build a company like 37signals?”. I think we finally have a succinct answer now: Do exactly the opposite of what Business 2.0 tells you to.
It’s easy to make a div into a link using a bit of javascript. You can use this technique to make any div “clickable”. For example, you might want your “header” div to link to your home page. Here’s how:
<div onclick="location.href='http://www.example.com';" style="cursor:pointer;"></div>
If you’re using a standard WordPress theme, you can make your header div clickable by doing this:
<div id="header" onclick="location.href='<?php bloginfo('url');?>';" style="cursor:pointer;"></div>
That’s it!
A long time ago, a group of designers began a somewhat officially endorsed endeavor to redesign the WordPress administration interface. I remember reading something around the time this started getting publicity that was rather harsh in regard to the drab grey look of WordPress at the time. So, the Shuttle project caught my attention. The progress of the project was brought to my attention today via Photomatt.net. From the Shuttle info page:
The Shuttle is a complete beautification of the WordPress Administration Panel. The project has been in development since early 2005. These are the images we did on Photoshop, so there is no plugin for you to download, as it’s not been incorporated into the final release yet.
I’m pretty impressed with the work so far, and I’m looking forward to this making it into the core. Estimated arrival… my guess… by the end of the year.
In one of my more misguided attempts to do away with digital clutter, I uninstalled a piece of software from my Mac that I’d long forgotten about. It was only then that I realized how much I relied on it:
SideTrack is a replacement driver for Apple PowerBook and iBook trackpads. With SideTrack installed your standard trackpad becomes a powerful multi-button scrolling mouse. [Features Include:]
- Vertical scrolling at left or right edge of pad.
- Horizontal scrolling at top or bottom edge of pad.
- Map trackpad corner taps to mouse buttons 1-6 or simulated keystrokes.
- Extensive control over accidental input filtering.
Actually, it’s that last feature that really takes the cake. I don’t know how many times I was typing something and accidentally hit the trackpad, which really messes things up when you’re trying to type a sentence. It took a couple of days before I realized the problem – Sidetrack had been taking care of all my accidental input in the background.
While you’re there, you should pick up MenuMeters, which is another piece of software I’ve come to rely on. It gives you a highly-customizable set of monitoring tools, so you can see things like network, RAM, hard drive, and processor activity. Coming from a PC, I found it kind of strange to not have those flashing lights on my computer case, which indicated that the computer was still chugging away when it seemed like nothing was going on. With MenuMeters, you get a much more useful view of your computer’s internal goings-on sitting conveniently next to your clock. Plus, it’s free. Can’t beat that with a stick.
