sugarenia.com

Today’s post is not exactly fresh news. Plus, it founds a new category of my blog posts, called “Critiques”.

So, first things first. Some months ago, Cosmote, one of the most popular mobile companies in Greece, a branch of our national telephone carrier OTE (yeah, the one that rips us off with Internet fees) changed its logo. And that’s always a stop-and-ponder benchmark for all designers.

I don’t fancy myself a designer, but I will critique this logo as a somewhat artsy, somewhat design-y (there is no such word, I know) tech savvy user. (too many words ending in -y in this sentence, sorry)

The short story : I don’t like it.

The long story :

• First things first; about the colour. It’s so 2003 it hurts. Light green used to be the new blue back then, but right now, this exact lemony-juicy tone is screaming “I’m already off fashion”. They could use a slightly darker tone, go for a grassier effect which is more “in”, dunno. I don’t like this colour for a mobile company, anyway.They proved me right, and changed the tone to something greener. Check it out below.
• Lack of visual balance. Somehow, with all the ripple around the first letter (I guess that’s supposed to resemble to an antenna? Just speculating) all the balance of the logo is shifted to the right. Not exactly my idea of equilibrium.
• Nothing says “Serious mobile company” in this logo. It only says “Gone aloof mobile company that thinks a green logo will make alternative teenagers love me and my fees more”. OK, I’m being completely subjective, both to alternative teenagers and COSMOTE, but you get my point.

A side by side comparison of old and new logos:

Not saying that the old one is better (too 2000) but the new one isn’t definitely the best they could go with.

I can’t think of something else that bugs me. But when I do, rest assured, I’ll edit the post. Feel free to share your designer insight with me.

cosmote, logo, logotype

Eventhough I’m not as much a news junkie as a weather one, I can’t help but love Newsvine (a lovely name for such a site, don’t you think?).

What struck me first was its lovely, clean, CSS-based design. I had already approved its nice and minimal logo, which I love. And of course, the lovely shades of green. Green is a tricky colour, one would have thought that a site using so much of dark greens and grays would be boring to stare at. Wrong! It’s refreshing, and it gives you the feeling that you’re reading newspaper excerpts in an old library, with those old green lamps over your head.

Then it’s the functionalities : name one news application functionality that Newsvine does not support. Tags, blogs, real-time news contribution, everything. I already liked NowPublic.com (which recently had a redesign - still using tables, though) but Newsvine is another league all on its own.

Call me nitpicking, but there was a tiny thing I didn’t like : the hover effect on menu options. Don’t ask me why! It just makes me think that all of a sudden, the lovely gradient gray background disappeared, and a flat green one took its place. Boy, my fantasy is on its highs today.

All in all, after its recent public launch, Newsvine managed to fit in my already bloated daily surfing schedule. And that’s an achievement on its own!

newsvine, news, nowpublic

I recently decided to take part in the Web Standards Group, or WSG. What is WSG?

The Web Standards Group is for web designers & developers who are interested in web standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT etc.) and best practices (accessible sites using valid and semantically correct code).

Seems good for me, no? First of all, I was delighted to see that there already are other 10 members from Greece. So far so good, maybe someday we will grow enough in the CSS world.

Experienced something while using the login form though…

A nice form, eh?

A nice and simple form. More than enough text to warn you against multiple things. All good. Scrolling down… Hmm..All seems right, no fields left blank, let’s press ‘Submit’… Error? All fields required? Where? What did I do?!

There’s the little bugger

OK, I exaggerate just a bit, but their agreement checkbox (that is required for the registration to proceed) is completely buried among the text. I guess they did it to urge users to actually read their conditions, but still…I found it odd for a position.

Check it out, and become a member too.

web standards, WSG

Just decided to share with you 5 + 1 Firefox Extensions I can’t do without :

1. View Formatted Source by Felix Ritter

   Displays formatted and color-coded source and optional CSS information for each element.

   An invaluable extension. Featuring both on-demand loader and inline functionality, it can divide any page to logical “source” boxes, and with a click of your mouse, the preferred block of code is unfolded before your unbelieving eyes. Precious.

2. Colorzilla by Alex Sirota
   

   Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.

   Can any web designer live without this? Colour sample any page to get this precious colour you’re so fond of, while outlining the element below your cursor and displaying CSS info on your status bar. Used several times per day. Convenient.

3. IEtab by PCMan (Hong Jen Yee), yuoo2k
   

   IE Tab - an extension from Taiwan, features: Embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.

   Now that’s something useful IE can do. Because believe it or not, most people around the world still use IE (*gasp!*). IEtab is the reason why my IE launch icon is dustier than my french. Not without flaws, it provides you with an easy and fast way to check how your hardly-designed page will look in IE - like, literally.

4. Web Developer Toolbar by Chris Pederick
   

   Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

   The above is clearly an understatement. It goes without saying that this toolbar is an essential tool for every designer/developer. Disable cookies, clear cache, show form details (my favourite), outline all kind of different page elements, all with a click. Amazing.

5. MeasureIt by Kevin Freitas
   

   Draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

   One thing measures it all. Just click and drag : all size information on your fingetips. Really useful on some occasions. Dimensions shown in pixels, functionality to drag selected box around the page is included.

6. ForecastFox by Richard Klein, Jon Stritar
   

   Get international weather forecasts from AccuWeather.com, and display it in any toolbar or statusbar with this highly customizable and unobtrusive extension.

   Because I’m a weather freak. No, really, I am. Despite the long hours in front of the screen, I always want to know what’s happening outside. Fully customizable and insanely accurate.

Feel free to share with me your favourite FF extensions. I’ll always be eager to give them a try!

firefox, extension, development, design

I’m doing a bit of CSS tweaking around the blog, to help integration to my under-construction homepage, sugarenia.com.

Please excuse the irregularities you see here and there. I’ll try to fix them as soon as possible.