Archive for the 'Critiques' Category

The reason why Google Chrome will never get mainstream

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 12:14 am

Google Chrome has just been announced, all bells and whistles. Fanboys and haters around the world are rejoicing at the prospect of something new to play with. Standardistas already love it, Javascript developers adore its lightning-fast Javascript, techies added just another app to their arsenals.

But it’ll never win the ‘nets bet, at least not anytime soon.

Why?

For a huge majority of people out there, Internet is synonym with that blue “e” icon with the swirl around it. Yes, that. That’s the ‘nets for them. That’s their gateway to the online world.

They don’t even know what a browser is. How will they switch to another?

For most of those people, Google is the synonym of search. Will they take it lightly that their favourite search tool suddenly wants to become their Internet? Sounds freudian, no?

So till these people die, or some kind relative educates them on browsers and alternatives, things won’t really change. Google Chrome will be just another thing made from us, for us.

Pessimistic? Maybe. Smash-in-the-head-realistic? Sure.

P.S. I see myself deleting this post due to inaccuracy in 3 years. A vivid mental image, to be precise.

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Posted in Critiques
by Sugar

Showcase: Pojeta.cz

Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

It’s not that the idea of the whole-page-scrolling is new, I just liked it immensely in the way that mr. Tomáš Pojeta implemented in his portfolio site (as far as I can understand).

It’s so cool and cute and cool. Try it out: (click on “Contact” button, for example)

Aww. Me loves.

EDIT: Mr. Ludek Cernocky just informed me that anyone can suggest ideas to Tomáš and he’ll incorporate them to the current design. That’s triple cool!

by Sugar

Showcase: Creative Characters newsletter

Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

I recently blogged about how I get most of my daily information from newsletters, hand-picked from great editors.

One of the newsletters I’ve subscribed to is Creative Characters from MyFonts.com. It’s a great typography newsletter that interviews professionals and fetches all kinds of typography goodness at your e-mail inbox. It sports a great design and - of course - great use of typography.

Check it out:

If you’re convinced, go ahead and register. Prove the marketists that newsletters aren’t dead.

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by Sugar

Tidbit: Summize.com “reply” avatars

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

Summize.com (Twitter search engine, recently acquired by the real thing) has an ingenious way of marking up tweets that are replies to other users.

The avatar of the user is shown just a bit smaller, while the avatar of the person she’s replying to is also shown in front of it, in a smaller thumbnail.

It’s a great way of visually representing information that would otherwise rely on your mind and memory patterns to be decoded.

It does not work all the time, but hey, I’m not here to comment on the functionality, just the design.

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by Sugar

Redesigning Inquisitr posts

Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

While I was browsing my feeds the other day, I stumbled upon an article on Inquisitr.com. I knew the site, I have visited before, but one thing struck me as odd: the design is much too crowded and cluttered and leaves absolutely no room for content to breathe. And it’s a shame, because the content is not that bad.

So I fired up the trusty CSSEdit and tweaked a bit the CSS. It’s not much, a 5 minutes work, but I think it’s much better, in terms of white space and overall air. Check out the before & after:

Very subtle changes, mainly revolving around margins, paddings and line-heights. Plus, that typo needs to go, Inquisitr.com, please.

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by Sugar