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myMacBUZZ

Please excuse the silence as I geek out over my new blog myMacBUZZ.

Mac and iPod fans rejoice! myMacBUZZ brings you weekly, made-in-Malaysia Apple news to satisfy your Mac news buzz.

Check it out: http://mymacbuzz.com

Test Internet Explorer 7 without installing it

I’ve heard lots about Internet Explorer 7 but never really bothered to check it out. So what if Microsoft makes another browser right? Plus, installing the IE7 beta would override my old IE6, which I still needed for browser testing.

But recently I had to test a site I’ve been developing in IE7, just to make sure that the site design doesn’t get messed up when IE7 eventually gets released. Plus, yesterday’s In-Tech article got me a little more curious. Luckily I found a way to run both IE7 and IE6 at the same time.

This article on the Google OS blog shows you how to do that. It explains a hack of how to copy the necessary IE7 beta files to the hard drive and create some files to patch IE7 so that it can run together with IE6. The results works as advertised and I’m able to open both versions of the browser at the same time.

First looks

IE7 looks shinier than its predecessor. It’s also been updated a lot in the CSS department. It’s also got tabs, support for RSS, built-in search, improved security (Thank God) and improved printing (wow).

It’s got one nice feature that I like called Quicktabs. Quicktabs allows you to see a thumbnail of all the tabs you have open at a go. (Firefox users can use Foxpose to get the same functionality.) Here’s a screenshot:

Quicktabs in Internet Explorer 7

Unfortunately it looks like the RSS features don’t work in this hacked install. Either that or they still don’t work in the beta at all.

So boys and girls, have fun playing around with IE7! Web developers, go test your sites out in IE7 because it’s not going to support lots of the hacks we’re used to applying. What I’d like to see is an Internet Explorer Web Developer toolbar to help in making sure websites work with it. 

Meme: Must read magazines and websites

Ping! I’ve been meme-d. Danny Foo tagged me so here’s my list of must read magazines and websites.

(Btw, here’s a definition if you’re not sure what a meme is)

Must read monthly magazines

None, I don’t subscribe to any magazines (I’m stingy!). I read stuff mostly off the web, and occassionaly I pick up a magazine from the list of optional magazines below.

Optional monthly magazines

• Personal Money
• PC.com
• Men’s Health
• New Man
• FHM

Must read daily websites

• Lifehacker (My ultimate favourite)
• 43folders
• News.com
• Wired.com
• Macworld.com
• TUAW.com
• A List Apart
• Publish.com
• CSSbeauty
• Mezzoblue
• Hicksdesign
• Veerle’s blog

In continuing the meme, I’m tagging..

• Sashi
• LiewCF
• SaDdNesZ.jc
• Leona

First look: Google Calendar

The rumoured Google Calendar went live today, and boy does it look slick. Simple to use yet powerful, this product looks like a winner from Google.

Google did a real good job with the interface by making it easy to switch views in your calendar and add events easily. Click and drag, drag and drop, or just click and type to add new events. It understands phrases and sentences like “Lunch with client tomorrow at 1pm” and automatically turns them into events on your calendar.

One feature I really like is the ability to have multiple calendars. This means I can set up a private calendar, one for work and one for the football matches I want to watch. The previously mentioned 30 Boxes online calendar manages this by assigning events with tags which is cool in concept, but not as easily implemented I think. Google Calendar’s multiple calendar feature reminds me of Apple’s iCal and feels almost like a desktop application.

You can also share your own calendars, or subscribe to your friends’ or public calendars. It’s really open and you can share and subscribe to calendars via iCal or XML formats. According to Product Manager Carl Sjogreen, Google Calendar will even be able to sync with Outlook and mobile devices in the coming months. This kind of openness is rather uncommon, and really deserves a hat’s off to Google.

And of course, there’s the Gmail integration. Gmail can supposed recognise events mentioned in your email and allow you to add it to Google Calendar with a click, but I haven’t seen it in my Gmail yet.

Overall, I feel that Google Calendar is a really great product. It feels like a finished, ready product although it’s in beta, unlike Google Base, Google Video and even Google Reader where it takes a while to figure out what it is or how it works. (I still can’t figure out Google Base.) I really agree with Charlene Li in her post about Google Calendar creating a platform for time-based applications.

Unfortunately… it’s really slow at the moment because of all the heavy traffic to the site. If you can’t get in, here’s some news and reviews from others for you to judge:

• Google unveils web-based calendar app | CNET News.com
• Charlene Li’s Blog: Google Calendar creates a platform for ‘time’ applications
• Matt Cutts – Review: Google Calendar
• TechCrunch » Google Calendar is live

Hi, my name is David and I can’t pay attention

I’ve been noticing that my ability to pay attention has been deteriorating since university. This blog entry is a perfect example. I was reading this article half way before I started to blog. I’ve got ADT.

What is ADT?

It’s sort of like the normal version of attention deficit disorder. But it’s a condition induced by modern life, in which you’ve become so busy attending to so many inputs and outputs that you become increasingly distracted, irritable, impulsive, restless and, over the long term, underachieving. In other words, it costs you efficiency because you’re doing so much or trying to do so much, it’s as if you’re juggling one more ball than you possibly can.

Source: Why can’t you pay attention anymore | CNET News.com

Email, SMS, RSS, IM - the list of distractions is endless. In the office, you have bosses that want to see you at any minute, phone calls, and all that stupid silly tasks that get in the way of doing your job. And when you are able to sit down for 15 minutes to work, your mind just isn’t there.

That’s why I started practicing GTD, or Getting Things Done, a productivity practice by David Allen. It’s not been that great. I think I’ve since realised that it’s not about being more productive or being more organised. What’s more imporant is being mindful, being here in front the task that you have to do, and do it in 10 minute spurts.

If you’re like me (and I’m sure many of you are), read Merlin Mann’s 43folders. He’s got a great way of getting to the root of why this is distracting or why that is unproductive and putting everything into words.

Now excuse me, I’ve got a report to do. But before that I need to go back to finish reading my article.

How to run Windows XP on an Intel Mac

The hard way

Download the OnMac bootloader. Pore through step-by-step but long instructions. Partition your drive, creat a slipstream CD, look around for drivers. Scratch your head a few times if it doesn’t work. Waste another hour repeating the process. And tada! You can boot Windows on your Intel Mac.

The easy Apple way

Download Bootcamp from Apple.

Sure there are a few more steps, but now Apple has given everyone who wants to run Windows on their Macs a leg up with this cool little app.

It’s a public beta preview of a feature that will be available in the next version of Apple’s operating system, OS X 10.5 Leopard.

As elegant as it gets

Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows. Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don’t have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.

Coolies! I can’t wait to get my Mac Mini… but I think I’ll wait for OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Email hoaxes

I’ve been getting a lot of ‘Please forward this email to as many people as you know’ type of messages lately. I just want to set it straight that these email are a bunch of baloney. No one is getting any money no matter how many times you forward them. And if you DO forward them, you are contributing to the spam problem.

Let’s have a look at some of the many email hoaxes that we commonly find in our inboxes.

The hoaxes

You will receive money/reward

Claim:
You will receive a reward from Microsoft/Bill Gates/Dell/Nokia/My
grandmother if you forward this email to as many people as you know.

_It’s a fake!_

Rachel Arlington

Claim:
AOL and ZDNet are donating 32¢ to the care of Rachel Arlington, a child with brain cancer in need of an operation her parents can’t afford, for every e-mail forwarded (and all similar emails). They even include a cute little picture.

_It’s a fake!_

Why these claims are fake

There is simply no way to trace and track emails that are sent. You can tell who’s read an email before, but other than who was the sender and who was the recipient, there’s no way to track that. And for the supposed 15 cents whoever is supposed to donate wherever, it’s just not worth the effort to track all those emails manually.

Why do these people do it then? I don’t know. Maybe the first person starts it as a joke. Then the rest who don’t know better continue to forward it to all their friends and the cycle continues. I have a feeling it’s those email addicts are the ones who forward these crap the most, just because they need to compulsively fiddle with their email every 2 minutes. Yep, you know who you are. I’m talking about you.

Many of these email messages will have a message that goes, “if you delete this, you don’t have a heart”. Some even quote Scripture. Bah. Please, please don’t be taken for a ride. If you’re in doubt, you can always look up Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference Page to check it out.

Tangent

Oh by the way, did you notice my new design? The minimalist look is so ‘in’ at the moment, don’t you think?

Err.. ok, it’s not a redesign. I’m taking part in the Annual CSS Naked Day, brainchild of Dustin Diaz. If you’re a web designer who’s confident enough to show off your website in the buff, go on and take part.

See ya.

Hey, I got linked from Lifehacker

My “Fix Firefox’s unresponsive script”:http://www.itchyhands.com/2006/01/07/fix-firefox-unresponsive-script-warnings article has been pretty popular. Last Friday it got linked from “Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com. Thank goodness the traffic wasn’t too heavy to kill my server. Here’s a shout out to all Lifehacker readers who have been visiting.

My online ambitions:
* -Get linked by “Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com-
* Get linked by “Boing Boing”:http://www.boingboing.net
* Get “Slashdotted”:http://slashdot.org
* Get “digged”:http://www.digg.com

The Star Online site critique

When The Star launched the redesign of their website last year, I drafted a blog entry about what I thought of the website, but never posted it. Recently, I decided to go dig up that old post and polished it up, and so now I present to you my vicious, spiteful critique of “The Star Online”:http://www.thestar.com.my website.

For this critique, I will assume that the website’s main objective is to communicate news because, well, it’s an online newspaper. I am also aware of the fact that newspapers earn their income mainly from advertising and I will be touching on adverts quite a bit. Last of all, I will be comparing The Star Online to some other online newspaper type sites, just because I can. Oh, and I was just kidding about being vicious and spiteful.

h3. Layout

Layout-wise, The Star Online is pretty conventional. It sports the tried and tested fixed-width, 2-column layout for most of its pages, and a little variation on section frontpages. While it is a layout that users can get used to easily, it doesn’t do a very good job of displaying news.

When the site first loads, the only news that users see are the cover story of the day and a column of World Updates. Err… why World Updates? I would think users are more interested in other local headlines or top stories. Surrounding these two columns of news are no less than four advertisements of various sizes.

You know, it’s funny because I don’t think The Star puts advertisements on the front page of its print version, but has loads of blinking ads and other banners on the online version’s homepage. Compare that to the homepages of some other online news sites that I think have great layouts.

Most of these sites are much more subtle with their advertisement placements, choosing to limit them or to place them away from the main content. BBC News doesn’t even have any adverts at all.

The Star Online has a width of 770 pixels. I think that they would be able to display more columns of news if they increased the width to something wider than 900 pixels. I don’t have any hard numbers for Malaysia, but I think that it’s safe to say that the majority of us have a 1024 by 768 pixel monitor resolution, so a wider layout should be no problem to at least 80% of The Star Online’s users.

h3. Design

Design-wise, The Star Online has got to be one of the blandest online newspapers that I’ve ever seen. I wonder if they really have a _designer_, because the site looks like something that someone from the IT department threw together overnight. Compare the design to the simple and subtle design of “The Times Online”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk, or the stylish “nymag.com”:http://www.nymag.com (I like the choice of fonts) or the bold, stand out colours of “News.com”:http://news.com.com. Heck, even the “New Straits Times”:http://www.nst.com.my site looks better. Another thing about the first three outstanding examples are how they present the top stories of the day at a glance to the user above the fold. Observe also that distraction from advertisements are minimised by thoughtful placement.

Now we come to the thing that I hate the most about The Star Online – the navigation. The navigation is quite confusing because it is split into the six tabs on top and another bar below the banner advertisement. Clicking the navigation tabs opens the page in a new window _which is a really bad usability mistake_. Just look at usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s list of “Top Ten _New_ Mistakes of Web Design”:http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990530.html, points #1 and #2.

p(caption). The Star Online: navigation is split by advertisement banner

Opening pages in new windows catches users off guard and breaks the Back button, meaning that users can’t click the Back button to get them back to where they came from. My mom gets totally confused when new windows pops up, and the majority of users online are like my mom.

However, implementation of opening new windows is also inconsistent. For example, if you click the Property tab at the top of the page, a new window opens, but if you click the Property link at the bottom, the page loads in the same browser window. The site is peppered with these surprise links and you’ll never know which link will open in a new window.

Now, the navigation bar. It’s got the cool dropdown and flyout menus, but unfortunately the whole navigation bar disappears if Javascript is off. Another inconsistency I don’t like is how clicking on Archives and More doesn’t work, unlike the other links. For the two links, you need to click the sub-item on the dropdown menu for it to work.

h3. Branding

Another big issue with The Star Online for me is regarding their (lack of consistent) branding. First, they must have one of the smallest website logos that I’ve ever seen on any website. It’s not really attractive and fails to draw the eye to itself. Here are some actual size comparison between The Star Online and some other popular websites.

The Star Online logo is the worse of the lot above, and even the logo for mStar, The Star Online’s Malay language companion, looks much better. The Star Online logo has too many colours and frilly bits, and it’s not consistent with The Star’s corporate colours. As much as possible, the logo should look like The Star’s own logo for consistency. Logos should be clear, simple and recognisable. Here’s a “tutorial on creating a good logo”:http://www.fizbang.com/1-3-06.php that all designers should bookmark.

It’s bad enough that they’ve got that tiny logo, but immediately below it is a big flashing banner advert that totally distracts attention away from the logo. If I was scanning through a dozen web pages quickly and I see this screen (below), chances are, I would think that was a restaurant or recipe site.

p(caption). Is this a business site or cooking site?

h3. Beyond skin deep

A good, well-thought site design will make the user experience a much more pleasant one, and help in the goal of communicating news. To do this, the webmasters need to redesign the layout to present more news, more efficiently. They also need to address the inconsistencies in navigation across the site and employ a decent designer to make the site more readable and visually appealing.

Also, all modern websites should employ table-less, semantic, XHTML and CSS based designs. The benefits of employing XHTML and CSS are beyond the scope of this article, but if you are curious, Doug Bowman of “Stopdesign”:http://www.stopdesign.com has an excellent article on how “throwing tables out the window”:http://www.stopdesign.com/articles/throwing_tables/ can have a substantial benefit for large, high traffic sites, a category that “The Star Online”:http://www.thestar.com.my falls in.

Running a big website like The Star Online is no mean feat. By my count the site has around 10 major sections. It takes lots and lots of hard work to make sure that articles are published on time and I take my hat off to the webmasters who do that day in and out. However, that’s no excuse to do a shitty job on the site design. The Star is the leader for English newspapers in Malaysia, but it’s website still has some ways to go.

Updated 20 Feb to include recommendations on XHTML and CSS

CSS Basics

“‘CSS Basics – Making Cascading Style Sheets Easy To Understand’”:http://www.cssbasics.com/ is a really great website for people new to CSS.

CSS Basics starts of with what CSS is all about, the syntax format and goes through all the major CSS properties you need to know. While it’s written for beginners, even I learnt something new.

It’s a real easy-to-understand introduction to CSS that breaks everything down into 18 short chapters. I first balked when I saw there were 18 chapters, but really, they’re short and sweet. The website is written very well and makes CSS approachable for the total newbie.

I take my hats off to “Ben Partch”:http://blog.cssbasics.com/ the writer, who is also a ‘mentor’ at the excellent “Sitepoint forums”:http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/. I think he’s done a great job with the site, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s interested to learn about CSS.