Brian Sweeting

I recently discovered Handbrake, free DVD Ripping/Encoding software for the Mac. There are plenty of apps for Windows that will rip DVD and turn it into an .avi or .mpg file, but it has been an arduous process on the Mac until now. Handbrake will rip DVDs into .avi files, mp4, or H.264 format all in one simple step.

“Conspicuous Consumption” is a term coined by the American economist Thorstein Veblen in 1899 to describe the consumption of expensive goods, commodities and services for the sake of displaying social status and wealth.  Basically it’s doing something extravagant only because you can.  How does this relate to interface design?  I’ve been test driving WordPress 2.0 beta, and I see some of this going on in the interface.

In the Presentation section of the administration control panel, there is a section called “Current Theme Options” (see screenshot) where the sole purpose is to change the colors in the header image. Now a person with little knowledge of HTML should be able to customize the colors of their site, but a whole section that is devoted to changing the colors of a single image and a couple lines of text? That my friends is “conspicuous consumption” in interface design.

Another example from the WordPress 2.0 beta, is in the writing interface. The WordPress team has tried to clean up the writing interface in a pretty big way. The problem is, that the current writing interface (see screenshot) is not that bad to begin with. One reason people choose WordPress over other blogging software, is because it gives you a lot of power. Therefore, there are quite a few options when writing a post. The clever thing about the current interface is that extraneous options are either hidden or “below the fold”. When I write a new post, the fields I see most prominently at the top of the page are title, excerpt, body, category, and finally I have the buttons: “Save as Draft”, “Save as Private”, “Publish”, and “Advanced Editing >>” (which exposes a bunch of extra things I can change about this post). Contrast that with the new WordPress 2.0 beta (see screenshot), they have put all the extraneous options for a post in the interface, but hide them until you click on them. Okay, so that’s okay, but the “we did it because we can” part is that I can re-organize the options by dragging and dropping them via javascript and AJAX. So now they are just giving me more work to do. The average person simply does not need that level of customization of their interface. Another case of “conspicuous consumption” in interface design.

So how do you know if you’re guilty of “conspicuous consumption” in your interface? Ask yourself this set of questions: “Will more than 20% of the people using this product even use this feature?”. “And if so, does that 20% need this feature in order to be productive with this product?” If the answer to the first is “No” or if the answer to the first is “Yes” and the answer to the second is “No”, then you are adding a feature just because you can.

Okay, so at the risk of being forever branded a “Mac Nerd” I was about the 50th or so in line for the grand opening of the Apple Store at the Gateway. I arrived at about 7:30am, but the first person in line was there at 9:00pm the night before. I felt like 2 and half hours of waiting was “nerdy” enough. So the store looks great, the employees were really getting into all the excitement, and overall it was pretty fun. They started letting 70 people at a time in at 10:00am. I left there about 45 minutes later, and the line was about 2-3 people wide and about two blocks long! I took some photos, you can see them on this site or on Flickr.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that a new Apple Store will be opening in The Gateway sometime in November.  News and spy photos can be found in the forums of ifoapplestore.com.

I was looking through some archived files tonight and ran across the first website I ever created. It was 1998, I was in college, and I was working for the college bookstore. Keep in mind that I had only been learning HTML for a few weeks, the design is cheesy, and the navigation isn’t very usable, so don’t be too harsh.

I give you, in all its tabled, and sliced image glory the Dixie College Bookstore website circa 1998.

I’m going to pass the baton to a few friends and maybe this could prove to be an interesting meme. If you are a web designer or developer, feel free to post screenshots (or even the whole site, if you have it) of your very first website, and leave a comment about it here.

I’ve been penning a couple of posts recently, that I just don’t think are well thought out enough. So until I get them in shape, I wanted to catch up so here’s a hodge-podge of notable things that I’ve ran across lately.

Microsoft Gets Agile

The WSJ has a great about Microsoft realizing the mess Windows was in and how they made the call to drop the legacy code and start fresh with their flagship product.

Windows was broken and Microsoft has admitted it. In an unprecedented attempt to explain its Longhorn problems and how it abandoned its traditional way of working, the normally secretive software giant has given unparalleled access to The Wall Street Journal, even revealing how Vice President Jim Allchin, personally broke the bad news to Bill Gates.

Allchin is co-head of the Platform Products and Services Division. “It’s not going to work,” he told Gates in the chairman’s office mid-2004, the paper reports. “[Longhorn] is so complex its writers will never be able to make it run properly. “The reason: Microsoft engineers were building it just as they had always built software. Thousands of programmers each produced their own piece of computer code, to be stitched together into one sprawling program.But Longhorn/Vista was too complex: Microsoft needed to begin again, Allchin told Gates.Allchin’s warning recognised a growing threat from Google, Apple Computer, makers of Linux and corporate buyers - the latter horrified about security problems. Allchin and a small team demanded a revolution in how Microsoft works.

Read the full article.

Have a strategy for your website

A great article by Greg Storey in issue 205 of A List Apart. Something I wish all my clients would read. Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia (or Build a Website for No Reason)

AJAX Dialog Windows

Not a “how-to” but a “what for” for designing AJAX dialog windows by Luke Wroblewski. Quoting Edward Tufte…

“The border of an active window should be light in value (to avoid clutter with other windows), yet deeply saturated (to provide a conspicuous signal). Yellow is the only color jointly satisfying those conditions, and therefore proves valuable for bordering windows.” -Window Research: Color Guidelines

Looks like there’s as more importance to the “yellow” than the “fade” in the “yellow fade technique” .

TypeTester

TypeTester allows you to compare fonts for the web, tweak them to your heart’s content, and then export the CSS. This is a must for designers working with developers.

My Kingdom for a good Web-based RSS Reader

I have been a bloglines user since it’s inception. The problem I ran across lately, is that they do not support RSS feeds that require authentication. So I’ve been hunting around for something else. I tried NewsGator’s online aggregator since it seems they are becoming an RSS Reader empire. They do support authenticated feeds, and the interface is pretty, but there isn’t enough separation between the blogs I read when viewing entries as groups of feeds. I also wish the category/feed navigation was either in frames, or it floated along as I scroll down the page.

I’ve also tried Rojo. Didn’t like how it only allows a flat listing of feeds (gotta have my folders). Google’s Reader, but I could only get it to import about half of my RSS feeds and it doesn’t seem to support authenticated RSS either.

I just registered for SXSW 2006. The Interactive conference will be held March 10-14, 2006. I hope to see you there. Shaun Inman says that September 30th is the deadline for the 35% discount on registration, so register quick.

This will be my first time attending, so if you have any tips on what to see, where to stay, etc…please leave a comment.

Ever heard of the saying, “One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch”? Well, that’s what’s happening to me.

I use 20″ iMac G5 at work. My employer, though a windows guy, graciously allows me to use the OS of my choice. The iMac is a great computer—it is sexy, compact, and quite powerful. But I would never buy one again. Why? Because the logic board just went out for the second time in 4 months.

The first time this happened was back in May, at the ripe old age of 3 months. I came in one morning, and the machine wouldn’t even turn on. In turned out that the logic board and the power supply were dead. We took the machine into a local Mac repair shop and didn’t end up getting it back for 5 weeks because the logic boards were out of stock for Apple.

So here I’ve been running smoothly again, until just a few days ago. I came in, and never got past the grey Apple screen. Turns out the logic board is dead once again. I asked the guy at the CompUSA service center if they dealt with many logic board problems with the iMacs. He answered, “Lots”. So now I’m looking at about 2 weeks with no iMac.

The problems this causes are two-fold. First, I have to use a laptop as my primary computer for a couple of weeks. I like my PowerBook, but it gets hard to hunch over a laptop looking at a 15″ screen all day, especially when you are used to a beautiful, bright 20″ screen that actually sits at eye-level. Secondly, Apple is losing all sorts of credibility with my Windows user boss who recently purchased a Mac Mini for his family’s home computer. How can I say anything at all about how great Apple and their computers are, with this looming over my head. This is how “One bad Apple, can spoil the whole bunch”, at least in the minds of people who might be thinking of switching to the Mac. Another thing that is even worse, is that this seems to be a common problem with the G5 iMac. So common, in fact, that the standard warranty has been extended to two years vs one. So if it is so common, why wouldn’t Apple be vigilant about keeping these parts in stock, and even overnighting them to the repair centers? You’d think if Apple really cared about it’s customers (a.k.a. fans) that they would do this, instead of letting them sit for 2-5 weeks without a computer.

Update 1:
I called 1-800-SOS-APPLE and explained my situation. I was escalated to a “Product Specialist” who said that he needed to give CompUSA their 5-7 days to fix it (which the seventh day is Monday). He said if they are unable to fix it by then, to e-mail him back with my case # and “they’ll see what other options are available”, which I hope means, we’ll give you a Rev B model.

Update 2:
Well fortunately/unfortunately CompUSA had my computer fixed within the 7 days, so now I guess I’ll just have to wait for the logic board to go out the next time. Frustrating.

I’m now on iProvo. I really like it. The TV interface is nice, and the internet is fast, although it is not as fast as advertised. iProvo claims that you can get 10Mb up and downstream. I’m getting 5Mb at best. I know, I know, that is still pretty nice. I had 3Mb service with Qwest and I don’t think I ever got faster than 2Mb downstream, so I can’t complain too much.

The installation was quite painful, for the installers that is. They were here for 3 hours. I guess I was the first install in this newly built-out section of the city, and they said they always have trouble with the first. I guess that’s what I get for the being on the bleeding edge of technology.

So far, I’m loving the service. I especially like less reliance on Qwest. I hope to replace my phone service in the next 60 days when the iProvo phone service comes online.

There will be two general categories of Windows Vista editions, which map closely to the two that exist today for XP (”Home,” which comprises Starter, Home, and Media Center Editions, Pro, which includes Professional, Professional x64, and Tablet PC Editions). In Windows Vista, the two categories are Home and Business. In the Home category, Microsoft will create four product editions: Windows Vista Starter Edition, Windows Vista Home Basic Edition, Windows Vista Home Premium Edition, and Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (previously known as “Uber” Edition). In the Business category, there will are three editions: Windows Vista Small Business Edition, Windows Vista Professional Edition, and Windows Vista Enterprise Edition. In all, there are 7 product editions planned for Windows Vista.

Read the full article.