Because they are.
I have a black/grey Griffin Nu Form case for my iPhone 3G, bought some months ago, along with one for Stelios. Both cases are now broken, in exactly the same place: just below the top left corner.
I know I’ve never dropped the phone so far, I don’t put it in my pocket, and 90% of its idle time, the iPhone is lying around on my desk or being securely tucked in one of my bag’s pockets. I don’t treat it hard nor I remove the case often. Then why is it broken, all of a sudden?
I should add that the included screen protector is kinda thick and moves a lot around, creating little Newton rings below and making the screen very hard to read sometimes. But I digress. I could live with that if the damn case would not break so easily.
I’m not pleased with this purchase. I’d like to replace my case (I have now gone back to a simple silicone one) but I don’t know of any quality but not wallet-draining cases. Any ideas?
As every web worker I know, I already have a collection of screenshots scattered around my iMac HD. I never felt quite good about it, really; I needed a way to gather all inspiring bits from here and there to a single system, simple and trusty enough to make me use it all the time.
So far, I’ve tried stuff like Skitch (I hate the non-Apple interface, so ugly), a combination of Snapz Pro X and Flickr, a combination of some random Firefox add-on and a trusty folder in my Finder, Curio (which is a great alternative to Microsoft OneNote but kinda of an overkill for this job).
Nothing really felt right. What I really wanted was something like iPhoto, but for screenshots.
And then the fine folks at Realmac software went ahead and released the public beta of LittleSnapper. Let there be light!
Easy screenshots through shortcuts, websnaps (full web site archives actually), built-in browser, DOM targeting (this is COOL), organize photos through collections and smart folders, tagging, rating… What more could a poor designer ask?
Well, some simple stuff:
- Tags autocomplete. That’s a must.
- Some way to view untagged stuff. I tried creating a smart folder for this, but there was no option for “tag is empty”, so…
- An easy way to share through e-mail and upload to my service of choice. Like, one-click easy.
- The option to copy LittleSnapper tags to Spotlight comments. My PIM of choice, Together, already has that and it’s way convenient.
- Small but an annoyance: LittleSnapper icon, please stop jumping up and down when I’m saving a websnap, thank you very much.
Give me those and I’m sold, Realmac.
I really think that even in version 1.0, LittleSnapper is the absolute screenshot tool for every web designer who happens to work on a Mac. And it has a decent jingle to it that makes you use it again and again – always a factor of oomph for every Mac app.
Try it now, people!
You’ve seen this truc before: most sites avoid labels altogether in intuitive, small forms (login forms are a premier example), placing the label contents into the text fields itself, using a pale class to denote that it’s “help text”.
The text is then reset when user focuses on the field, without him doing anything apart from clicking on it. All is good. Sun is shining. Users are happy, we are happy. Or are we?
Oh come on, you know you always have something in the back of your head that keeps nagging you: what if the user – God forbid – actually forgets what the helpful pale text is about? What does he do? Focus on another field to reset the value and get a brief glimpse of it?
Pfffft! Lame.
So what does Apple do? Setting the standards*, again.
I’m referring to the spiffy login form of me.com.
The Apple design robots use two states to make sure the user never, ever forgets: one, is the well known and abused classic pale class (color: #808080).
However, when a user focuses on the field but does not proceed into writing, the label is still there, a bit paler (opacity: 0.42) but still there. So the user starts writing without ever losing the field from sight.
Clever! Will use this approach in future projects.
* Online MobileMe sucks though, Apple. Fix it plz, kthnxbai.
