Fluid

Fluid lets you turn your favourite web apps (and websites) into desktop apps. With fluid you can:

• Launch the web app straight from the dock.
• Hide it and unhide it just like an app. No more looking for that obscure tab.
• Web apps can be a bit heavy and slow down your browser, now web app has it’s own instance so it wont effect your regular browsing.
• If the app crashes then the app crashes! It wont take your whole browser with it.

Fluid is based on web-kit so it’s super-fast. However, if you prefer mozilla’s rendering engine then check out Prism.

Firefox 3 Beta

Yeah, everybody knows about Firefox. But, not all mac users are using Firefox 3 beta and they should be. Let me tell you why:

• Firefox now actually feels like it belongs on mac, it even has a new default theme specially designed for OS X.
• It doesn’t crash, Firefox 2 used to constantly crashed (for me anyway). I have been using FF3 beta as my primary web browser for two months now and it hasn’t crashed once.
• It’s fast, much faster than Firefox 2.

Since this is a beta version you should probably create a separate firefox profile for Firefox 3 beta.

iBackup 2008

iBackup is an app that lets you automatically back up your files to a local folder or even a webdav folder (look under ‘View -> Profile Settings’). I’ve had experience with data loss before, it definitely happens. The interface is a bit messy but it does the job, combine it with a free 1GB box.net and you’ve just sorted yourself out with some free off-site backup!

If you’re like me then you use time machine already, so you may wonder why there is a need for off-site storage? I usually carry my macbook and my external hard drive around with me in a bag, what happens if that bag gets stolen? I use iBackup for about 300MB of files that I absolutely can not lose. I Leave it running overnight every couple of weeks.

Name Mangler

Name Mangler is a wonderful batch file renaming utility. It somehow manages to combine complex features into an amazingly easy to use interface (something which is frustratingly rare with free apps). Some features…

• Droplets — Allows you to simply drop files onto an icon which does all the magic.
• Conditional statements & nested counters — Gives you the ability to undertake complicated tasks.
• Regular expressions — For those who want even more power.
• Beautiful interface.

Minuteur

Minuteur is a cute little app that does a very simple job but does it very well, it’s a countdown timer and stopwatch with a lovely interface. I use it for:

• Keeping track of how much time is left until that pizza is done.
• Staying Productive — I like to give myself goals like ‘get this done in 2 hours’. The remaining time bar helps you keep on schedule, it will even talk to you if you like… ’15 minutes remaining’.
• Billing clients — You can tell Minuteur your hourly rate and it will tell you how much you’re earning.

That’s it

That’s it, five free and useful applications! Feel free to suggest your own in the comments.

So, with that in mind I went about re-designing this site with a content-first approach. Typically, when I’m designing something I think about how it will look. I think in terms of colours, layout, shape, textures, sizes. I’m a lines, licks and looks sort of person. I try to see the whole picture before I’ve even started, I have a preconceived notion of where everything is heading and more often than not this is where it will go. Something had to give, something needed to change… my whole process needed to change.

Process

This site design started as a simple, random article without any styling. Start Writing in your e-mail client and you’ll know what I mean. Just words, spaces and line breaks. Then I took each individual element of that article and decided how best to present it. I was forced to prioritise the information, to think long and hard about the place of each element within an article.

“Art has to move you and design does not, unless it’s a good design for a bus.” - David Hockney

I’ve stopped trying to just make content pretty and instead focused on making content relevant. Why is this here? What is it trying to express? How can I best express it through design? This is basic stuff, this is discernment, analysis and evaluation, this is critical thinking! Nothing new to a good, classically trained designer but to be honest it was something that I had never really practiced before. I had always designed on intuition but I learned that intuition has limits.

Goals

To design critically you need to have clearly defined goals, These were mine:

• Try to ignore current trends, think timeless design.
• Clearly display and separate content elements in a way that is natural and relevant.
• Forget about colour.

Ignoring trends

Big glossy buttons, rounded corners, wet floors, extreme gradients, excessive drop shadows. The web 2.0 saturation point has well and truly hit us. I didn’t particularly like any of those design effects anyway. I wanted subtlety, minimalism, bauhaus style lines, these are design elements that look good and have always looked good, as it happens this fits perfectly with a content-first approach.

“The idea of trying to create things that last – forever knowledge – has guided my work for a long time now.” - Edward Tufte

Clearly separating content elements

The web seems a bit linear doesn’t it? Particularly, blog posts! I have read many a great blog post without so much as an italicised word. I hear you saying ‘but it’s all about content and the message’, well, yes you’re correct. The goal surely is to communicate a message, it stands to reason that a well defined structure and hierarchy will not only make the content easier to read but also make the message clearer. This was a hugely important goal for me.

Forget colour

I like colour :-) and it will make it’s way back into this site in time. Let me get the basics right first.

More to come

There is a portfolio and a whole lot more still to come, I’m not actively looking for any work at the moment so I’m going to hold off releasing them. I want to get the journal out the door, build up some decent content and then concentrate on the other elements of the site.

I’d love to make a declaration of regular and quality content over the next few months but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. At least I’ve got a place where I can clearly and proudly express any thoughts that I may have.

That’s enough rambling for now!

For those who don’t know, design patterns are “a general repeatable solution to a commonly occurring problem” (more on wikipedia). It’s always best to not re-invent the wheel and stick with convention when possible. Here are three bookmarks that I find myself visiting time and time again.

1. Welie.com Patterns – An absolutely amazing compilation of design patterns. Everything is well documented and the rationale behind the design decisions are spot on.
2. Yahoo Design Pattern Library – Not quite as many patterns as Welie.com but it does go into a lot of detail on the design patterns that are covered with animations and accessibility advice.
3. Chris Messina’s Design Patterns – A large collection of screenshots that highlight how different solutions to common design problems. An excellent compliment to the two sites above.