David Herrold

Firefox 3 “find” UI blunder?

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Software, Usability

I was searching for words within a page today using the new Firefox 3 on a Mac when I ran into what looks like a bizarre user interface blunder.  The “Next” and “Previous” buttons to find your search term on the page appear to be switched from the standard left=back and right=forward configuration.

I think it would be OK in the Japanese version of the browser (because Japanese is read right to left).  However, on all English versions of the browser the buttons should be swapped.

(Now that I think about it, the same goes for Spanish, French, German, etc…)

Am I crazy or is this really odd?

Tags: browser, Design, firefox3, mozilla, Software, UI, user interface

Adobe launches web-based Photoshop Express

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Photography, Software, Web design

Adobe launched the web-based Photoshop Express recently and I’m trying to figure out if it’s any better or worse than Flickr’s  (picnik.com) web-based image editing tool.  Adobe offers 2GB of storage, which is better storage than the free Flickr account, however, Express isn’t meant to be a photo sharing site like Flickr.

The functionality isn’t terribly interesting yet, but image editing is Adobe’s bread and butter, so I would expect the functionality to grow in the coming months.

The one immediate limitation I noticed is the requirement of Flash Player 9 to run the Express.  I tried visiting the site with my current version of FireFox  and got a blank screen.  I suspected it was a problem with my version of Flash player.  When I upgraded my Flash Player to the current version (9), it worked fine.

I hope Adobe continues to build on this platform.  It’s an interesting idea and this space could use some decent competition.

Photoshop Express (via Bittbox)

Tags: adobe, express, image editing, photoshop, Software, web-based

Startup weekend 2008

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Development, Marketing, Software, Technology, Web design

What is Startup weekend you might ask? Well according to the website Startup weekend is:

“an intense 54 hour event bringing together brilliant tech minds (developers, designers, marketers, ect.) together to create a company from concept to launch!”

We Houstonians have the opportunity to bring Startup Weekend to Texas by voting on the Startup weekend website. Austin and Dallas are both listed as potential cities for the next event (I voted for Austin because I think it might be a little more fun than Dallas).

Vote here | Read more about Startup Weekend | Subscribe to Startup weekend RSS

Tags: Design, Software, start up weekend, startup weekend, technology conferences, Web design, web development

Getting Flocked

Posted by Dave | Filed under Blogging, Browsers, Software

I downloaded Flock over the weekend and plan on kicking the tires for a few weeks to see if I like it. Flock is a browser based on the Mozilla FireFox browser (that you all should be using by now because it contains vitamins and minerals and buttery goodness and it works on lots of operating systems out there).

Flock does something FireFox doesn’t. It connects people to their social networks out of the box. When you open Flock for the first time, you need to configure it to connect to Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Delicious, etc. It then logs you into all of your accounts at once and opens up a sidebar that allows you to see all of your social networks in one nice package.

I’ve just started playing with the blogging functionality of the browser as well. It lets you post entries to any number of popular blog sites without ever leaving the webpage you are currently reading.

I hope Flock gets some more market share in the browser wars. At the very least, FireFox can get some great ideas from them for a more socially connected browser experience.

The one thing I wish Flock had…extensions. FireFox is a development dynamo with loads of extensions to help web developers. So far, Flock is very limited in that arena. My hope is that Flock will eventually allow a smooth integration with all FireFox extension.

If that happened, it wold probably make the switch much easier for the development community.

Flock covers all their bases and is currently offering versions in Windows, Mac and Linux.

I’ll let you know what I think in the coming weeks. My goal is to use it several times a week until the end of the year.

Tags: Browsers, FireFox, Flock, social networks, Software

Top 10 Quicksilver plugins

Posted by Dave | Filed under Apple, Productivity, Software

I’ve been using Quicksilver for a few months now.  It was one of the first applications I loaded onto my laptop when I first bought it.  I use Quicksilver as an application launcher mostly because I can’t remember all the key commands to execute the other amazing things it can do.

Lifehacker put together a list of the Top 10 plugins for Quicksilver.

I’ve started using QS to launch specific bookmarks with FireFox. This basically opens up FireFox and launches a bookmark at the same time.  Not staggeringly productive, but it probably shaves a few keystrokes from the whole mess.

I tried opening music with iTunes this way, but I think I like the process of browsing my playlists for whatever suits my mood.

Tags: Apple, mac, OSX, quicksilver, Software