Windows Phone 7

It won’t take long for the first Windows Phone 7 to come out. On windowsphone7.com you can view demo’s of the main features. And I have to say, it looks pretty damn good. Design wise there are still some things I would have done different but I have that with almost everything.

I’ve nagged before about my Diamond (I’m actually not using it anymore, now got temporarily a Nokia 6300, which just works..), and I do hate all the old versions of Windows Mobile. But it really seems like they have thrown away all old junk and started over again.

I really think that if they can make app development easy like for Apple and Android, and really build out the marketplace, then use some great awesome hardware phones, it really can compete with Android, and even maybe even with iOS.

But still I’m skeptic, any demo can look smooth cool and awesome, but the reality can be very different. Also I’m curious how app development is gonna look like. In my opinion a mobile platform depends on it’s apps (just like an computer OS does..), so it’s greatness will be defined by the apps, and I don’t know how Microsoft will handle this.

I’m really curious how the Windows Phone 7 will work, it can be great, or nothing.. We will soon know..

Keep Frying!

1 year ago  /  0 notes

Tumblr’s wrong handling of in post images

It annoys me. One of the reasons why I started looking for another blogging platform: Images in posts.

In Tumblr you have the possibility to include images in posts, and also to align them. That seems like it’s doing the job. But it’s done totally the wrong way. Let’s first look at the problem.

Ok, when you make a post with images, like my previous posts. The images align the right way on your blog. But on you dashboard everything images is inline which means there is no text beside it, and they’re all on the left. Also As you might have noticed, on you blog there is no margin on the images, which mean there is no gap between the images and the text which make it look plain ugly, which I hate.

Then people might suggest, and here comes the problem, just define some CSS margins to the floated images.. Well I wish it was possible. The mistake that Tumblr makes is that they include the “align=”right”” property on the image tags. That works but for with CSS it’s not possible, well maybe with the css3 pseudo stuff but I didn’t look in to that yet, to give a margin to aligned img. 

But I also have a solution for this problem. Just give the aligned images a class like “.alignright” and let the theme handle the further styling, just like in Wordpress. Then we have total freedom to style and do all kinds of cool stuff with images in articles.

So please Tumblr, change this, it can’t be that difficult. And if you don’t feel like doing it, just send me the code and I will change it for you :) , no costs.

My nagging for today, Keep Frying!

1 year ago  /  1 note

Just a cheap phone..

For some months now I’m looking out for an replacement for my HTC Diamond, why? Because it resets itself automatically almost 3 times a day, which means at that moment, everything for contacts to text messages and calender events are gone. And why it does that.. I don’t know, maybe I’ve flashed it’s rom to many times.. or something in that line..

So I need a new phone. What I want: A cheap android phone with some decent features, and if possible a qwerty. You might say no problem, there are a lot of cheap android devices out there. But since I live in Europe many of the cheaper android phones aren’t available here.

So what are my options: The LG W620, the Samsung Spica i5700, and I think the best one the HTC Wildfire.

The LG

The LG seems like a nice cheap small qwerty device, and actually it is. Not the best specs but I don’t need, and also can’t afford a 1Ghz snapdragon processor and huge amounts of memory. But there is one thing that ruins the device: It has a resistive touchscreen.. That’s the reason I would never want this device. After multiple Windows Mobile crappy touchscreen devices I’m done with using a styles, and I want a capacitive touchscreen.

The Samsung

The Samsung is a phone. But it’s old, slow, and ugly.. So I don’t like it in general. Well actually I can’t be that negative about it. If you don’t care about the looks it’s actually a pretty good cheap Android device. But the matter is I do care about looks. So also this one get crossed of on my list.

The HTC

I like this one pretty much. It has all the features you would expect on a mor expensive device, all the sensors, a 5 MP camera, Sense UI, and so on. Also It’s HTC what a plus is for me, I’ve had three or four HTC devices, and the build quality has always been good. But there is a pretty big negative about it: again the screen. It’s a very responsive 3,2 inch capacitive screen, but only a resolution of 240 x 320 o.O …what? Yeeh you read it good 240 x 320.. That’s nothing, my Diamond has twice that on a 2,8 inch display.. You must almost see every pixel. Ok, that’s a bit less to make it cheap I get, but QVGA, I just don’t get it. My old (2005) Qtek G100 pda (also build by HTC), had a 240 x 320 display, I think that says enough.

So all of these phones are cheap, have Android, and have some big problems. I think I’m gonna wait for a better option to come to Europe, or till I have enough money to buy me a decent phone, like the Desire, or the iPhone (Yes, I say iPhone, no I don’t hate it.). But until that time my Diamond has to suck it up and hang on for another couple of months.

Well thats it, Keep Frying!

1 year ago  /  1 note

Back in business

After being inacative for some time, I’m gonna continue this frying blog. Reason why I stopped writing was that I was frustrated with the Tumblr theme development. But after hours of searching for a better platform to post my nagging on, I concluded that Tumblr is the best platform out there for my blog. The functions to create your own themes, and the level and easyness of customizing, isn’t really availeble on the other big online free blog platforms like Blogger, and Wordpress.com.

So now I’m going to create a new theme, spend some more time to learn the more advanced techniques of Tumblr theme building. The new theme will be absolutely awesome. Also it’s time for a new/improved logo, this 3 minute illustrator/photoshop doodle isn’t good enough for me. It will take some time before everything is working and online, but till that time i’m using the great Kalalalani theme, links are in the right lower corner.

I will start posting my nagging, criticism and all the other shit again. Also I’m planning on creating some more tutorials, on Tumblr theme creating, PHP, Photoshop, and Wordpress. Well that’s it for now.

The Frying started again, keep Frying!

1 year ago  /  1 note

HTML5/CSS3 Heading the wrong way

As much as I like all the brand new shiny features of HTML5/CSS3, I think it’s going wrong. Maybe I don’t get it or something but now it looks like all the new features need to be defined 3 or 4 times. Once for Webkit, one for Mozilla, a normal non-browser specific one, and for the new Internet Explorer. Why?

Were are the standards, why can’t I just define it once and that it then just works. And the stupidest thing about that is that most of the reel css tags is the same.. Why doesn’t the W3C just make a standard and why don’t all browsers just support the same tags. How hard can it be. 

Why not work together for once and make the experience for the user and developer better. Actually if this continuous like this I will create my own standards, my own mark to give to good browsers that support my open standards. And I will exclude all browsers that suck like IE < 9.

Well that was my nagging for today..

Keep frying! 

1 year ago  /  1 note

Button design trend: Light grey simple (Tutorial)

A couple of years back everybody had these ugly shiny 2.0 style buttons, big and colorful. Like this one from this 2006 iris-design.com tutorial (first link on Google on 2.0 buttons).

Then there were and still are the soft gradient buttons, not to much color, no (or just a little) shiny stuff, and mostly rounded corners. Like this one form this sixrevisions.com tutorial.

But now, with the growing number of web applications and application like functions, there is a need for normal buttons. And so more and more websites use nice super clean lite grey buttons, with dark grey text, and most of the time square or with slightly rounded corners. The button our operating systems use since the beginning of time. There are a lot of examples of site and I will name a few.

Google: Since the  new design there not using the default operating system or browser buttons but their own.

Facebook, also uses this style, in grey and in the facebook blue.

With the new design of Youtube the also started using this style in for all the buttons.

Tutorial

I’ve made a short and easy Photoshop tutorial, on how to make a button in this style. This is a total beginners tutorial, if you have some experience you will be bored. 

First create a new document File > New, give it a width of 400 pixels and a height of 55 pixels. Set the background to transparent or white, just what you prefer. Create guides so there are three rectangles with a height of 45 pixels and a width of 120 pixels with margins of 10 pixels.

Use the Rectangle Tool (U) to create a rectangle in one of the areas. And give it a light grey color #f4f4f4 (Double click on color square in layer panel).

Give it a Gradient Overlay, select the shape layer, then press the Fx icon at the bottom of the layer panel, then select Gradient Overlay. Use the following settings:

Then add a stroke, check the check box next to Stroke, and use the following settings:

And finally add a drop shadow, with again the settings as below:

Drag a guide (click in ruler and drag to image) to the horizontal center of the button. Then use the Text tool (T) to add the text. I’ve used Arial, Bold, 12pt, sharp, color: #3c3c3c and centered.

Now we’re gonna make the other states of the button, hover and active (when pressed). Select the shape and text layer Ctrl + click on layers, the group them (Ctrl + G). And finally copy the group two times, by dragging it in the new layer icon.

Use the move tool (V) (while holding shift to don’t move them vertical) to drag the buttons to the other two areas.

From the hover group change the color of the shape layer to #DDDDDD.

Then from the active group open the Gradient Overlay by double clicking on it. Then select Reverse, and change the opacity to 10%.

Done.

Download file here.

Hope you liked it, let me know what you think of it true twitter (@FryingTech) or as a answer since I’m gonna end this post with a question mark..

Keep Frying!?

1 year ago  /  1 note

Thoughts on Flash

Some time ago Steve Jobs (the Apple dude.. for people that lived under a rock for thirty years) posted his thoughts on Flash letter that features the Apple home page, were in he explains why the iPad and iPhone don’t support Flash.

And when I first read it I didn’t really take it serious because Apple (and Jobs) have nagged before about other stuff they didn’t make. But how more I thought about Flash I realized he does have a point, Flash has issues. So here are my thoughts on Flash.

The only use of Flash I think is for video and audio. The rest is doable with Javascript (or with the new CSS3 transitions), and the stuff that’s not possible with Javascript is not-needed-stupid-overdone-animation-fancy-stuff show-off-effects. But now with the new and awesome HTML5 we have the open video standard and is Flash not needed anymore. In fact I never liked and never used Flash, simply because I didn’t see the need.

And then I read this article on zdnet.com were they say Flash is the new Vista, and that makes sense. Flash has a lot of technical issues, security, performance, and reliability. Since I use Chrome Flash has crashed a lot of times, and when I use Linux (Ubuntu with Firefox) it doesn’t work properly most of the times. So no use and not working properly…

Flash isn’t great, but Apple should have supported it on iPhone and iPad. Why? Because a lot of people use it. It’s sort of discrimination. Also there is a solutionfor not actually running it on the device itself, run the flash on a server and only pass the result to the device. This technique is used for years by the Skyfire mobile browser, currently available for Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian.

There is no future for Flash, but it’s still used. So we just have to live with it. Maybe 10.1 will give us some improvement but I have not much hope. Let’s just wait some time till the majority of people browse with the new HTML5, and place Flash in the museum of the internet.

Keep frying!

1 year ago  /  0 notes

How HTML5 and CSS3 frustrates me

Since sometime there is the new web standard HTML5 and also CSS3. As an webdesigner/developer I get totally excited to play with these new tools. Immediately I get visions of animating navigation, rounded corners, gradients, and so on, without use of millions of images or Javascript. But then at the next website, the bomb drops. 

You can’t actually use these techniques on normal websites for years and years to come. Since the majority of people uses Internet Explorer or an outdated version of an other browser, they will not see all of your new cool features and instead will see a boring stupid page. As much as I want to use all the new cool features, I just can’t.

And then because I need to make it a nice website I go back to using tons of images or sprites, Javascript, and all other cumbersome techniques. It really annoys the hell out of me. It’s really just unfair.

So to all people who still use Internet Explorer or an stone age version of an other browser. Update to Chrome, Firefox or Safari, so I will be able to play with my new toys.

Keep frying!

1 year ago  /  0 notes

How the OS war strikes again

Since the beginning of the computer age, there are big wars over what operating system to use. There are three main players. The always hip and trendy Mac OS, the nerdy Windows, and the hippie style (not so much used) open source Linux. The never ending discussion about what u use and what’s the better one is really annoying. And if you thought it is all over with the new mobile age, your wrong.

On the mobile devices you see exactly the same group of three (and some other not really proprietary not-so-great ones, that will die soon). There is the iPhone OS from Apple, then there is Windows Mobile, and the Linux player of the mobile world Android. You can do more and more on your phone due to the shit load apps available for all platforms, and so the mobile OS’s are getting more and more important every day.

But the outcome of this war I think will be different than with the computer OS war. And that’s because the always happy open source Linux in the mobile world, has one of the biggest, and most innovative companies behind them with allot of cash. Also Android is the only OS that will really let you customize everything without any hacking. They really want you to make it your own, and adjust it to your needs.

I personally don’t have good word for Windows mobile, it’s slow, crashes allot, and is really hard to customize properly without bricking your phone. Also apps for Windows Mobile are far less nice then iPhone or Android apps. It’s like they’re all from 5 years ago, and for most that’s true. But Microsoft has announced Windows Mobile 7.0 which seems to have a whole new look and feel to it. Maybe they will lift it up to the standards of today.

The simple iPhone OS has changed the market. The simplicity is far bigger then the Android and Windows Mobile. And the media capabilities are unbeaten till today. But they never heard of customization. I miss features like multitasking a good notification system, home screen customization, and i can go on like that. The new OS 4.0 that will be released in June of this year, will have some great improvements (like multitasking), but still I don’t think you can customize it, and that’s were the Android beats it.

What’s best for you is really a matter of taste. Just like on your PC or Mac. If you are a Apple fan boy you for sure will go for the iPhone, but if I look just at the features and not at the logo/brand, the Android OS wins. BTW in my opinion it also wins if you look at the logo/brand. It’s and interesting development that I will certainly keep following.

Keep frying!

1 year ago  /  3 notes