Times move fast on the web. RSS has been mainstream for quite a while. So long, in fact, that RSS readers are now built into the two major windows browsers, Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. It’s been inbuilt for longer on the Mac, I hear.
So, in our busy little ‘Web 2.0′ designs, why does the staple ingredient of Blogs and Community websites need to be emblazoned in the design? I mean, what’s the point?
Archive | May, 2007
RSS. Bling or no Bling?
Flash Video – the Solution?
Working with a lot of Flash video (.flv) I’m acutely aware of the lack in decent, standalone FLV Players. Sure, there’s a few out there, but not many that are decent. I have used FLV Player 1.3.3, but it’s not up to much when you’re trying to preview or edit files. Adobe’s own Flash Video Encoder is worse than id’ve thought it would be. You can only encode once, and you can’t decode, edit or view the files afterwards. We have been promised the arrival of the Adobe Media Player, but that’s no comfort until it actually materializes.
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Kuler Desktop released!
I noticed today that Kuler Desktop has arrived. Kuler, as I’ve mentioned before, is an awesome tool, and one which I first found out about through my research into Apollo. Kuler was always designed to be one of the first Apollo aps, a community colour-scheme orientated plugin for CS3. It was released early in Flex, probably to build up a following, with the promised that the Apollo one was on its’ way. And now it’s here. You can download the .air file from Kuler’s subdomain.
Figuring out WordPress
WordPress is very flexible, as I’m sure you’d guess. But how exactly can you get the best of it, from a coding point-of-view?
The danger with WordPress, of course, is that’d you’d just create yet-another WordPress Blog. Default settings, popular plugins, familiar layout. Undoubtably they all have their merits, but you’d be nievé to think there wasn’t room for improvement. So, here’s me, trying to improve on the WordPress standards. A little more thought into the information given on a per-page basis, for example. Or different layouts, that sort of thing.
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Adobe CS3 Icons
It’s so hard to find useful resources for Icons on the web. Especially product icons. If you’ve ever tried putting together a design, one that requires product attribution, you’ll know what I mean. Far as I’m concerned, companies should start including things like hi-res pngs of their icons with the product. C’mon, don’t make me Google ‘Adobe CS3 Product Icons’ just to get a decent (i.e. full transparency & larger than 32x32pixels) logo.
Regardless, I found a cool set of these Icons the other day, thanks to koregraphik. The icons aren’t exact rips of the ‘real’ icons, but they’re very close. (Scaled down to 32×32 the rounded corners are neglible, and actually make the icon look smoother) They look sweet at full scale, and that’s good enough for me.
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