I’m sure all of you Mac users know that during this week, a joint effort by independent Mac programmers and users called MacHeist offered 10 high class Mac applications at a ridiculously low price (49$), while the combined pack actually cost a lot more (356.74$). 25% of the money that would be raised from MacHeist was to be distributed to various charity foundations, as a symbolic move.
I really liked this approach and decided to watch how it goes before buying my 10-app pack. When I saw that during the first day more than 20,000$ were gathered, I was thrilled. But I was almost sure that it would die out, and no more han 50,000$ would be gathered.
The Mac community proved me wrong. Today, almost 12 hours before the end of Macheist, more than 150K are gathered, over 50K over the initial target. That is amazing, truly amazing. 10 high class apps for dirt cheap, half of the money to charity. Sounds nice, no?
I’ve eventually bought my pack yesterday, I got about 7-8 of my registration numbers till today. I have to say, it feels really nice to pay for some very good apps (namely DevonThink Personal, Disco, Delicious Library, Newsfire, Textmate) and to know that at the same time, you donated some of your money for a good cause.
On the other hand, I was watching MacAppADay.com since the start of this month, but I never got the chance to get a free license, because all the good apps were depleted after a few minutes.
But MacHeist gave this idea a new twist. I hope, nay, I beg for this to happen again. I’m sure I’ll find one or two apps that will make me buy the whole packet.
A huge bravo to all MacHeist founders and contributors. And a huge bravo to all of Mac community, programmers and users alike.
macheist, devonthink, disco, delicious library, newsfire, textmate, mac, apple, charity
Do you remember Firebug? That nice little extension that could be used in addition to the Web Developer Toolbar to add some essential web design functionality to our beloved Firefox? Well, you can as well forget all about it.
Firebug is dead – long live the Firebug! The new beta of the extension is out, full of web developer candy that you cannot find anywhere else (unless you’re willing to combine a kazillion of extensions and incorporate them all in your everyday workflow).
With features like crisply clear cascade view, image and colours preview, live CSS tweaking and on-the-fly disable rules, you can not go bad in debugging CSS with Firebug. If you’re always scratching your head about where does this damn layer starts, or why the padding in this box is twice as expected, you can use the Inspect feature to automatically highlight the box model of every element.
And it’s not just that. The new beta of Firebug has literally a ton of features to offer. I’ve installed it at work and it managed to take over my Web Developer Toolbar workflow.
If you’re into web design and development, you simply must download this beta. Trust me.
firebug, firefox, firefox extension, web design, web development
I’m a member of the Deviantart community for more than 4.5 years. During those, I saw about 3 or 4 different versions of the site. Some of them had some good features, others some great ones, and all of them were advertised to death from the Deviantart people, with sneak previews and surprises and whatnot.
However, now that I take a second look at this site, long lost in my monthly web routine, I realize something: most of Deviantart pages suffer from a severe case of unusability.
Take for example a “View Print Page“, where one can check out a photo print before buying it.
I see two fundamental errors:
- Most of the people that actually buy Deviantart Prints are already members of the site. The Deviantart mechanics include several counters for submissions, such as a comment counter, a view counter etc. Since this is the “View Print” page, these counters are omitted. So far so good. Nevertheless, most of the deviants browsing the print pages will have the curiosity to check the actual deviation out. I know there is a link to it, but where? Oh, here it is:
Down, down there. This may sound trivial to the ordinary, unsubscribed user, but I find it too annoying: I have to scroll down for about half a page, if for example the artist has many prints in her gallery. If I didn’t knew there would be this link somewhere, I wouldn’t have searched for it, but I would’ve assumed there is none.
Why wasn’t the “View Deviation” link put on the top right of “More from this artist” table? Or somewhere near the image? I wonder.
- Since I love the image, I decide to actually buy the print. I check the right side, where the print sizes are conveniently located. There are some “Add to Cart” links (actually, too many of them) but what should I choose to click on?
Do I want a Canvas print, a Lustre print or a Matte print? What is a Glossy print and what’s its difference from Canvas print? Do I need to know all this stuff? Do I need to make a final decision about the kind of the print I want to buy right now? Will I be able to change my decision later? Which print size am I adding to cart, eventually?
I admit I’ve put my naive user cap on. But even with my super-web-user-that-will-take-over-the-world cap on, I still don’t see any sense in their Information Architecture approach.
It wouldn’t take a master of usability testing to understand that some of the decisions taken there just don’t work.
This won’t be the last post about Deviantart usability problems. The site is full of them and it’s always causing confusion to new and old users alike.
P.S. All Deviantart names used here are copyrighted to Deviantart Inc., of course.
usability, deviantart, accessibility
