ethereal thoughts

Last summer, while preparing for a week up north, I headed to the book store and stocked up on books. One of the books was DON’T MAKE ME THINK. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Through the use of real world examples, the author, Steve Krug points out how many well known websites could have or should have been improved to make the user-interaction better. His advice is always simple and clear as is his advice on web-usability testing.

As a designer and a developer, it is often surprising to me how little thought most developers put in to the user-interface design. How many programs have you seen that opted to violate well-documented user standards? and for no apparent reason? Or worse programs that violate an implicit contract of simplicity with users… programs where you need to click “Start” to shutdown or use 6 clicks to exit an application.

Some of the best interface work I have ever seen was done not by a software engineer, but by a colleague who had a Masters in Psychology and was a self-trained developer. He had the amazing ability to create simple, elegant looking interfaces that were intuitive and easy to learn. I suspect they were not easy to code - but professional developers are often guilty of taking the short cut of easy-to-code instead of creating something beautiful.

Clearly, those designers (or often purely the developers) missed the UI-training classes or something - so, for them and for all developers, I highly recommend a quick read through this book. I guarantee, it will be time well spent.

Recently I was watching one of my favourite podcasts - Geek Brief by Cali Lewis, and she spoke about a new RSS News reader for the Mac - Times by Acrylic.

Now, I have never really used news readers before; I typically used Safari or Firefox to manage my RSS feeds but I wondered, especially after seeing the screenshots and finally digesting some of what Dave Winer (the originator of RSS) said while on the TWit podast, if they were worth a look. (And yes, I listen to too many podcasts).

Browsing the website I saw this quote (very reminiscent of what this blog is supposed to be about) :

Most people would describe software as boring, bland, dull tools that are only necessary to simply get a job done. Sadly enough, most modern software actually matches this description pretty well. Acrylic is different. We think of software as something much more - an amazing medium to express new ideas and experiences to the user. We strive to create innovative, beautiful, fun software that makes using a computer more enjoyable.

So I downloaded and installed the free trial. Installation was a breeze and though it took me a few minutes of twiddling to figure out how to add pages and manage the look of the interface - I did so fairly easily and without having to RTFM. The trial version is limited only in terms of time and not in terms of function - which I think is great. It does however pop up a reminder to purchase the product very frequently (every 15 minutes or so) which became quite annoying as I left it running in the background and “Alex” kept advising me that “Times needed my attention”.

I’d prefer it only said that when I opened the program - rather than every time it checked my feeds.

With that one bad note mentioned, I have to say that I love this program. It has become one of my key tools in my digital life and at only $30, I highly recommend it.

It is elegant, beautiful to look at and simple to work with. The stated goal was to

strive to create innovative, beautiful, fun software that makes using a computer more enjoyable.

and they suceeded.

Some software serves great purposes, some enhance productivity, some are fun and others simply exist to brighten up a dull world.

Although Candybar 3 from the good folks at Panic Inc. is mostly in the later category - It is the sort of software that makes me happy just to use it. Candybar 3 is the Leopard-compatible update of well, Candybar 2 (Tiger only).

It has three main features:

• Icon replacement
• Dock replacement
• Icon Management

Icon Replacement

Whether you are artistic and create your own icons or simply visit The Icon Factory and download completed sets of icons - Candybar 3 lets you selective replace system and application icons with newer ones that suit your sense of style, match your desktop background or perhaps offend your tastes less than the Apple default icons.

Once you drag the icons or sets of icons into Candybar, you can select, preview and finally apply your icon choices. Applying the changes requires restarting the dock or logging out and then back in again.

Dock Replacement
For those of you who dislike the default reflective dock of Leopard - you can also use Candybar to safely and simply replace the background image and control other settings (like the separator bar image) without scripts or other applications - and Candybar also lets you simply restore these icons - should you want to revert back to the defaults.

I generally run with the Dock on the left - but found the Application open indicator very hard to detect even after I started doing that. With Candybar 3 - I have a bright red marker and have no such issues.

Icon Management
A separate application (Pixadex) to manage your icon sets has been integrated into this version.
This lets you easily manage your icon sets and is quite powerful in it’s own right.

Final Thoughts

At a price of $29.99 - this is a bargain and is, as all of Panic’s other software applications are, software that captures the true essence of the workflow and strips away the unnecessary creating a minimalist application that does only what it was designed to do.

But in someways, it get’s better. There is upgrade pricing for previous users of both Pixadex and of Candybar (with a steeper discount if you owned both). They also offer free temporary licenses of Candybar 2 to people who buy version 3 but find they need to remain on Tiger (those poor souls).

The folks at Panic get good software design - and treat users fairly. Members of the Mac World should support them.

Over the last few months, I have spent more and more time listening to podcasts of various types. One my my favourites is MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte and sometimes Merlin Mann of 43Folders.com which is often sponsored by Audible.com.
(hopefully, this will all make sense in a few lines).

You may well ask what this is leading up to - it is all about Getting Things Done. Getting Thing Done (or GTD) is a personal organization book - similar to many I have read before - but different. Merlin Mann and the whole crew of MacBreak Weekly highly recommended this book and named it a weekly pick from Audible.com.

I, consumer that I am, purchased a copy of the book from Audible and listened to it during my daily commute. I could see how it was like others that I read before - yet I thought this was a system I could actually do - really do in day-to-day life. This lead me to Merlin’s site - which it essentially all about executing GTD - solutions, tips and training. ‘43Folders’ is a reference to the key technique suggested by David Allen to control and manage your projects and action items in a paper world.

I do like the system but as a long time Palm fan, I am not so much into paper. This to me was a system seeking automation - and it turns out I was not alone in thinking that. The OmniGroup authors of such Mac gems as OmniWeb, OmniOutliner , OmniPlan and OmniGraffle were already on the case. The result, built with the input of Merlin Mann, is OmniFocus.

Now, this is still a beta product, but it had sales of well over $100,000 US in its first five days of pre-release. It is elegant, like all the OmniGroup’s products - doing everything it promises and doing it simply. After only a few hours of trying it out - and after watching the free screencast tutorial - I bought it. It has made my desire to get things done, doable.

If you have time, I suggest you take a look at the software and the other sites listed. I think it will be time well spent.

(Oh, and it is Leopard compatible!)

With the advent of Leopard (OS/X 10.5) which Apple shipped in late October - I have seen many failures.

Some are failures by Apple - they are not perfect apparently - but I do understand the daunting task of writing and shipping a new operating system into a user base that uses two completely different CPU architectures. They are to be applauded for the relatively small number of issues that are reported; even though one issue is one too many, they have done very well and have already released a solid patch resolving many of the most troublesome issues.

Some are failures by users - who are well documented as being quite imperfect. Many people did not read the documentation that came with their Leopard upgrades. Others chose to upgrade without backups. More still upgraded in the middle of key production cycles. Here there is room to commiserate, laugh (both with and at the users), and to try our best to help them resolve their issues - be it on the Apple Support forums or elsewhere.

The most tragic of failures is, to me at least, the failure of key third-party OS/X software companies to adequately prepare for the release of Leopard. Two examples of such firms are Parallels Inc. - winner of many awards and the other is MacSpeech. whose iListen was named Education Product of the Year 2007 by MacWorld.

Just before Leopard was released, Parallels Inc. boasted of their Leopard compatibility in a major press release. Hedging their bets, in case ‘any minor bugs should pop up (sic)’, they promised to:

release a free, automatic update to account for them very soon after Leopard’s launch.

Yet, their support forums tell a very different tale - warning in August that the production release of Parallels (build 5160) had at least 18 major known issues. Three months after the list was published and an additional month after the release of Leopard - those issues still remain. Likewise, the promised automatic update has not yet materialized.

Users who have upgraded based on the comments by Parallels are left with two equally unpalatable choices.

First, continue using the production build (5160) - turning of key features in Parallels ( windows file sharing for one ) and key new features in Leopard such as Spaces and Time Machine. Users are also warned of random hangs during startup, use and shutdown of Parallels. Clearly Parallels Inc. defines compatibility very, very differently than I do.

The second choice is a beta release - that is that is certified to work with Mac OS X “Leopard”.
Once again their Support forum tells a different tale - see their forum post including known issues.
Again, Leopard’s Spaces functionality is not supported and various serious issues are listed. However both forum posts also refer to issues in the production release that are working in the beta release.

While I do understand the complexity of Parallels - it is frustrating to see a software firm that has fixes to its flagship product - that hasn’t branched its code and released a promised patch. Their history has been to release new builds always including new features. It seems like they only maintain one branch of code. This may make some sense in early development - but makes no sense when you have a large installed user base.

I am extremely disillusioned by the current state of Parallels and their declining support. In my early days as a convert to the world of all-things-Apple - I depended on Parallels and my ability to escape into a familar world of Windows(tm) programs. I used to be a product evangelist for Parallels - waxing eloquently about its superb features and performance. Today, I can say I have used it 4 times in the last month - each time with plodding performance and crashing endings. I am glad I no longer rely on Parallels but wish that sometimes - when work required it - Parallels would function as well as it once did.

Software I once found elegant has become flawed and worthy of becoming shelfware.

co·da

1. Music The concluding passage of a movement or composition.

2. A conclusion or closing part of a statement.

[Italian, from Latin cauda, tail.]

Coda is a recently released and delightfully thought out piece of OS/X software to manage the design, development, and deployment of websites by Panic the publishers of one of my other favorite programs - Transmit (itself an uber-cool ftp program).

Although I somehow missed the release of Coda earlier this spring - I am happy to have found it now. It is fortunate happenstance that I chose the words software that sings in my first post - for this program is music to me.

It brings together many of the day-to-day (and minute to minute) tasks of website site management. You can edit, preview, edit your CSS, ftp and even ssh into your servers with ease. As they say on their site:

So, we code web sites by hand. And one day, it hit us: our web workflow was wonky. We’d have our text editor open, with Transmit open to save files to the server. We’d be previewing in Safari, running queries in Terminal, using a CSS editor, and reading references on the web. “This could be easier,” we realized. “And much cooler.”

Never have I seen a project scope and charter so simple - yet it is easier, and cooler. The folks at Panic are the sort of designers and developers, I think we should all hope to become.

Well, welcome to my WordPress blog.

I am going to use this blog as a forum to discuss my thoughts on what makes software sing. It is hard to define this, but much like pornography has been described as “I know when I see it”, so too can excellent software be known.

Rarely in this world, I see an application where I stop and say - “Wow!”. However, when those moments happen I generally see an application that has made the complex seem simple and has produced an elegant solution.

When I do see this I often think about what Antoine de Saint-Exupery said regarding design -

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Thus my design mantra “Simple is good. Elegant is good”.

I find that the two often go hand in hand, walking the same code path as it were.