The best thing about Silverlight is its icon. For regular users it’s a web-browser plugin that allows you to view and use Silverlight content. What Silverlight content is there? Media and stuff. Have you ever seen a website done completely in Flash? Well, now you can do that but with Silverlight. From my perspective this […]
From Apple’s Hot News web page: Apple Statement iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is. However, iPhone contains the […]
I was just skimming through the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines and while in the Design Principles section I came upon this title, and I just had to laugh: There is a point where marketing ceases to be marketing and becomes information; relevant, valuable information. There’s also a point where something, truly informational becomes marketing. […]
John Gruber writing on Apple’s choice of AAC as the DRM-free format sold on iTunes, makes this interesting comparison: Apple’s use of AAC in lieu of MP3 is analogous to the Mac’s switch to USB in 1998. USB was an industry standard that wasn’t taking off because PCs didn’t ship with built-in USB ports, which […]
Note: The following essay applies to software developed for an upgrades-based business model. While it may apply to other software business models, I make no attempt to defend that assertion. Also, see my disclaimer if you think this is more than just my personal opinion of the world. The Problem In the beginning, you’re a […]
Now this is interesting. Jack Greenfield and Keith Short take on the future of software development: Total global demand for software will grow by an order of magnitude over the next decade, driven by new forces in the global economy like the growing role of software in social infrastructure, by new application types like business […]
In a kind of déjà vu moment, two of my favorite blogs posted about the same thing, on the same day! The topic: How writing code is similar to writing prose. Christina Wodtke of Boxes and Arrows takes E.B. White’s “List of Reminders,” from The Elements of Style and compares them to web design. Matt […]
Now WebKit includes a JavaScript debugger named Drosera. To use it you need to get the newest build of Safari and enter this in the Terminal: defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitScriptDebuggerEnabled -bool true The best quote is this one: One of the unique things about Drosera, like the Web Inspector, is that over 90% of it […]
Dave Thomas posts about how Perl and Ruby are like glue that connect things together on the internet. The problem with Perl, he conjectures, is that it “sets”. When you read Perl, especially if you didn’t write the code, it’s difficult to discover what is going on and therefore difficult to modify. Now, you can […]
This has got to be my all time favorite comment from the press: “The autonomy of this relatively small division allows Microsoft programmers to cut loose and design the best software they can imagine… Microsoft’s Mac offerings are routinely credited as being more innovative, elegant and robust than its mainline PC products” – Terril Yue […]
David Weiss 