sugarenia.com

Here’s a post that’s actually a well-hidden designers’ poll.
You people, coding your beautiful CSS out there, what is your style?

Single-line or multi-line?

I tend to use multi-line all the time because of work, but never cease to consider it a huge waste of space and bytes. It’s easier to tell apart the different rule properties, but you pay for it with scroll, scroll, scroll.

Single-line on the other hand makes shorter and sweeter CSS, but it’s more difficult to tell apart the different properties. On a positive note though, it’s really easy to scan through the file and find the rule you want, always a plus.

So it’s a tie? Who’s winning? What do you use?

P.S. Do not forget! For those out there working on Textmate (or having access to it anyway), there’s this great script from Dan Rubin that converts your single-lines to multi-lines in a sec, using the powers of regexp!

css, multi-line, single-line

Ah, Fridays, Fridays. Home of all things pricey food, cheap quality. Everything a true glutton wants and more.

Why a company would go with a life-metaphor site is beyond me. Fridays.gr is an awesome red, cartoonish creation that tries to accomplish the drive-in look - the fact that drive-ins don’t even exist in Greece never crossed the advertiser’s mind.

In front of the Illustrator-made screen there are parked cars, on hovering them with the mouse you can see them moving, you think hey, they want to be clicked! You click, nothing happens.

You hover the screen, it flashes up, maybe it wants to be clicked? You click, nothing happens.

When you manage to find a proper clickable area, you have to wait again for the new page to load, the screen to come closer, the clouds gather again up there. *yawn*

Getting to a page with actual content, you find out that it can be scrolled up and down with a custom, Flash gem of a scroller. Classy.

Aaaaaaand that’s the “Your opinion matters” poll. Bonus points to everyone that actually manages to fill in the damn thing.

And it’s all made in Flash, of course. It took a little over two minutes to load. No, really.

Anyone want gyros? It’s on me.

fridays, fridays.gr, wgss

I’m a recent Mac switcher.

The trick was done with the iPod nano I got as a gift for my graduation back in 2006. Since then, I’ve bought my first laptop ever (a Macbook, 1st gen), replaced my ageing PC this year with a shiny new iMac and recently bought an iPhone 3G.

Am I an Apple fangirl? No.

I just happen to love Apple products. Really love them. Not all of them, but most.

When people ask me “Hey, why should I get a Mac?”, I shrug. I don’t know the answer. I just tell them that they improved my quality of life, and that’s proof enough for me.

How can an Apple product change a life, you ask? A step at a time.

Get simple with an iMac

You get a thin as stick iMac, no buzzing boxes with whirling blue LEDs, no cable mess, nothing. Just a keyboard, a mouse and a screen. The archetype of a computer - I happen to love this.

The iMac helped me discover I don’t need a mess of things to make my life better. God knows how much life clutter I threw away during my Mac switch. Simplicity even in features and so-called “specs”.

Get efficient with a Macbook

It’s insane how much work I’ve done (and keep doing) working on a Mac. For some weird reason I’m 10x efficient when working on a Macbook - not to mention more content and at ease.

At first people stare and you and wonder, how on earth can you do work on a Mac? They are all bells and whistles, right? Well, right. They just make your efficiency go turbo too at the same time.

Get greedy with an iPhone

Is greed a virtue? Yes it is, if you learn not to settle for anything else than a sexy cellphone that even by lacking features, it made all other “smartphones” pale in contrast.

You work hard, you strive to learn, you never settle down with what you already know - hey, you need to pamper yourself sometimes with a piece of sex, why not?

Get patient because hey, MobileMe is down again

MobileMe is by far the most buggy Apple thing I’ve ever used and I don’t recommend it to anyone not patient enough. The web interface doesn’t work almost half of the time but hey, at least syncing works most of the time.

Will I go on and rave and fill the internets with my endless rage? No. I’ll just wait till things settle down. I paid for it, yes, but it’s not that I’ll lose my temper because something does not yet work as expected - then I’d have to get anger management classes with what I see daily.

So the Apple way of life is not for everyone. I don’t go around preaching my way of working and having fun, I just like the way it goes. If you wanna try it too, just start small: an iPod, some iPhone, or even a Mac mini should suffice.

So why you should get a Mac? Still don’t know. But they made me happy alright.

apple, macbook, imac, iphone, ipod, mobileme

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.

google, chrome, browser

I don’t actually read Motley Fool, but I recognize it can be a good and sometimes fun resource for investors, plus it has a pleasant design that for the most part, shows real attention to details.

So I was browsing around this Sunday morning when I was hit in the face with this:

Notice what’s wrong? No bail out option. No close link, no no thanks button, escape key does not work, nada. All that in the form of a pesky overlay that hides the content. I tried the “Click Here” button to no avail, as you see. I had to reload to be able to read the article below.

I can understand the practice of this, I cannot accept it, though. This is not the way to go to convince people to subscribe in a content site - and to be frank, I don’t think that Motley Fool actually needs this kind of stuff.

Thumbs down.

motley fool, overlay, usability, content