published over 5 years ago
(25.05.2006 12:45)
i just visited the tazo site, originally to find out if i could buy their tasty (if somewhat americanized) chai directly and loose, instead of from outrageously expensive starbucks, by the bag.
when there however, i had to think of an article i read on a list apart recently – Calling All Designers: Learn to Write. i agree with the article (and a friend that came to the same conclusions on his own), and will pay more attention on future projects.
i’ll collect a couple of examples of well written sites. i already have tazo, skype and photojojo (the site mentioned in the ala article). of course flickr qualifies as well. i’d add apple, too.
i have some concerns though:
the copy has to be really well written to stand out, and consistent. otherwise most people just won’t notice the difference.
it requires closer collaboration of the client, copywriter, designer, site producer, etc. something that in todays loosely coupled, freelancer-based way of creating websites rarely is a reality, at least in most larger projects i have been on so far.
just as in design and user interface, the purists would argue that the best copy is the one that doesn’t draw attention to itself but “just” lets people use the site perfectly. so how to write depends a lot on the kind of site being built.
good writing will probably only happen on sites with a somewhat larger budget. hiring a copywriter (or putting more effort into the copy oneself) adds extra costs. for multilingual sites, you’ll need one writer (or a native language translator) for each language.
so taking care of good writing is on one of the higher layers in the “hierarchy of website needs” (see here ;-). from bottom to top you’d have (not limited to the following):
that the site actually is “there” and can be navigated
that the information it provides is useful
good usability
a beautiful design somewhere at the middle …
… and good copywriting would be just next to design, one layer below or above it
the building layers would be different depending on the kind of site created, as well as the layers’ order.
i think the pyramid is a good way to visualize the blocks that go into building a great site. although in some places there won’t be a strict order, but a cloud. to some extent great writing can make up for a plain design. in the article mentioned above, Derek merges these two traditionally separate layers into one.
i think the fact that we’re paying (more) attention to copy now shows the web development discipline maturing. a couple of years ago, we were still concerned with the lower layers, today we got more routine with that, and the worst browsers have finally left the building anyways. so we can concentrate on the higher layers.
on a side note, i think that’s one of the benefits of the ruby on rails framework. it allows us to concentrate on higher layers. using it, the lower layers don’t require as much brain power, time and dedication, so we can pay more attention to the higher ones. that’s something you notice with many rails sites – they don’t just work, they are nice to use and look at as well.
Posted in the rest | no trackbacks
published over 5 years ago
(21.05.2006 10:49)
rails_conf << phillip
i’ll be in london for a good week in september, mainly to attend the first european conference held on ruby on rails.
i’m excited about meeting the people behind ruby/rails in person, and to experience the rails community! from what i’ve learnt by reading blogs, books, documentation, emailing, viewing videos and listening to podcasts, and visiting sites created in rails i believe they are the most “human” and broad-minded of all programming communities i know. so i believe it will be a pleasant and fun experience, too. beside the obvious – getting a much deeper insight into the tech side of things and learning about rails’ future.
another reason i’m going is to commit myself more to the technology. having been a php guy all my developer life, today my brain says “use rails, it’s superior”, but habit and some lazy parts of my brain sometimes still respond “hey why bother – you already know one very powerful web development environment really well, and have invested a lot in it”. i believe the experience of attending a rails conference will provide a breakthrough and convince all of me, and only a warm and fuzzy feeling will be left.
since i’ve been to london only once, i’ll stay there more than a week. the conference is on the 14th/15th, but i’ll be in town from the weekend before the conference to the weekend after it (9th-17th). i’m looking forward to being in london again, too. i’m really curious – the last time i went was in the early 90s.
Posted in ruby, travel, coding | Tags community, development, london, php, rails, ruby, thoughts, travel, web
published over 5 years ago
(03.04.2006 23:23)
just found a nice blog post talking about luis buñuel, the surrealist of film. one of the most, erm …, impressive ones is Un Chien Andalou (1929), which he did together with Salvador Dalí. check out the article for more info and a couple of stills …
Warning: you will see something quite hefty there. if after seeing the first still image you don’t want to see what followed, do not scroll down. they – and she – do show it.
Posted in movies | Tags art, surreal
published over 5 years ago
(02.04.2006 19:56)
for those on windows, there’s the great ruby one-click installer which will set up a nice ruby environment on your box. asking it to take care of all possible localization issues would be asking for too much though, so if you’re on a non-english windows, chances are that irb will be severely broken – no brackets, no ruby joy. and no script/console in ruby on rails.
the reliable way
here’s how i was able to fix the issue:
- download the file linked to in why’s poignant guide to ruby in the “windows hickups” sidebar. place the files from the zip file in ruby directories as described at why’s.
- get the text snippet “for europeans” as well. save it to the file c:\ruby\etc\.inputrc_german. (you will have to create the etc directory first).
when saving the file you might have to go through the windows shell, as the windows explorer doesn’t let you create filenames starting with a dot.
- tell readline where to find this file. the safest bet is to directly point at the file by setting the INPUTRC environment variable. so edit c:\ruby\bin\irb.bat and insert the following after the @echo off command (line 2):
set INPUTRC=c:\ruby\etc\.inputrc_german
the pretty way
if you don’t want to “hack around” your ruby directory and modify irb.bat, of course you can specify the environment variable
somewhere else and also put the .inputrc file in another directory. these are your options (start reading from the paragraph “Readline-4.0 will look for an …”).
i fiddled with this a lot, so i came up with the first option. if you want to put the file somewhere else, be aware of the following:
- the HOME env variable is most likely not set on windows, so readline will not search there.
- if the path to .inputrc contains spaces (as it will when pointing to a german windows home dir - “C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen...”) readline might choke. at least it didn’t work on my box.
- if you happen to have cygwin installed (as i do …) there’s some extra confusion, as the HOME env variable is set, but it points to some place that (at least on my system) does not exist.
Posted in ruby, coding
published over 5 years ago
(02.04.2006 17:52)
UPDATE: now with core 2 duo processors.
using the macworld’s benchmarks from their macbook pro 2,16 ghz test, i made a table to compare the performance of the new intel-based notebooks relative to the fastest powerbook.
for now, too lazy to make a thumbnail - right click and “view image” for full size
looking at those figures, the intel mac performance advance doesn’t look
as large as apple claims (“4 times faster”) - who would have thought ;-) ?
maybe there’s more to gain for more cad applications - the cinema 4d
gain is impressive, but the g5 is still on par.
not that i need a supercomputer, but the new machine not being slower than the current one would be nice.
Posted in mac, the rest | Tags apple, mac
published over 5 years ago
(13.03.2006 00:59)
Comparing objects in Ruby
UPDATE: the title is a bit misleading, it should better be “sorting ruby objects” or something like that. the point is to show that ruby’s collections have several methods to compare their contents - and that the comparison rule can be given in a block.
you have a couple of objects in a collection. you want to find out which of the objects has the highest position.
class SomeFoo
attr_reader :age
def initialize(age)
@age = age
end
end
list = [
SomeFoo.new(45),
SomeFoo.new(18),
SomeFoo.new(29)
]
oldest_foo = list.max {|a,b| a.age <=> b.age}
puts oldest_foo.age
=> 45
of course this comparison works for anything you can write a block for.
Posted in ruby, coding
published over 5 years ago
(01.03.2006 12:58)
using regular expressions for criteria
SELECT style_number, LENGTH(style_number)
FROM articles
WHERE style_number REGEXP '^(89|98)[0-9]+$'
you can also use RLIKE.
and it runs much faster than expected, too!
Posted in coding | Tags sql
published over 5 years ago
(28.02.2006 20:31)
EDIT (11.11.2007): Dir#glob (aliased as: Dir[]) could also be used.
find all files in a directory matching some pattern
list = Dir.new('.').entries.select { |f| f =~ /_\d{2}.(jpg|gif)$/ }
=> ["11-029_42.jpg", "1209-180_32.jpg", "1210-180_32.jpg", "1218-180_32.jpg"]
list.size
=> 4
Posted in ruby, coding | Tags ruby
published over 5 years ago
(28.02.2006 17:03)
grep --color Gecko access_log
in der .profile oder .bashrc datei im home-verzeichnis folgendes hinterlegen, dann kann man sich die angabe von –color sparen:
alias grep='grep --color'
Posted in coding | Tags bash, unix
published over 5 years ago
(12.02.2006 15:44)
untertitelt: “nach den verletztenden dänischen zeichnungen jetzt die längst fällige VERSÖHNUNGSKARRIKATUR für unsere moslemischen freunde. sie zeigt, wie wir europäer wirklich sind.”
(subtitled: after the offending danish drawings, here is the overdue RECONCILIATION CARICATURE for our muslim friends. it shows how us europeans really are.)
manfred deix für die zeit vom 9. feb. 2006.
Posted in the rest