Clazh » Design

Why Apple Is Good at User Experience And Design

Arpit Jacob — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:05:07 +0000

The first two point from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, Presentation at SXSW caught my attention.

Pixel Perfect Mockups

Most companies or designers are pretty ok with creating wireframes or paper prototypes. Apple on the other hand spends a huge amount of time and effort on making pixel perfect mockups. This gives a clear focus to what the application does and looks like.

10 to 3 to 1

Apple designer have come up with 10 completly different designs. A huge amount of creative energy is spent in coming up with the designs. Heck I have trouble coming with more than 2-3 designs and tend to get brain dead if I try too hard. Out of the ten designs, only three are selected. Then more time is spent on those three mockups. At the final stage they nail down the best design out of the three.

Read More about Apples Design process at Businessweek.

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Catergories: Apple, Design, Software Tags: Mac, Mac OSX, UX

My Web Design Got Ripped

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:32:57 +0000

I got a mail from someone named Charles that my Blog Design had been ripped. I wrote it off as hoax, but for a second I was scared that my site might have got hacked or hijacked like David Airey site recently. (Please help him by supporting him in his fight against the domain squatter).

hey just a heads up, your site got ripped. Its out in the world wide web now.

In the evening while catching up with my RSS feeds I noticed a bunch of strange links showing up in Technorati and I found a bunch of sites using my theme. Unfortunately for the ripper I am not upset, why you ask? I was going to release the theme this Christmas as a free download but was waiting for the WordPress.com guys to launch the Wordpress marketplace. Since my theme had been approved to be listed on it when it opens up, I was asked not to make it available for download till they launched. Its been almost a month and the Wordpress.com guys haven’t got back to me yet. The theme would have made a really good Christmas and New year gift since a huge number of people had requested and begged me to release it. If you guys can be a little more patient I’ll make it available right after the market place launches.

Currently since I haven’t released the theme it is copyrighted and using it without my permission is illegal. I will be releasing it under a GPL licence after which you are free to do whatever you wish with the theme.

As a side note can you help my friend Kanak his comments seem to be going into the spam queue any solutions?

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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Catergories: Design, Web-Design, Wordpress Tags: Templates, Web-Design, Web-Development

Why Are Most Open Source Application And Websites So FUgly?

Arpit Jacob — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 11:23:02 +0000

Lets Start with PHP.net apache.org and w3.org, a quick look at the WayBack machine tells me these sites haven’t changed a bit since 2000(the Apache site is stuck with the same design since 1996). I can understand if these were small fledging projects but projects like PHP and Apache are massive and widely used. What about the w3c site? Would we be making pretty cross browsers sites if they hadn’t set up the standards, yet their own site is stuck in the 80s.

One of the aspects of open source that has been touted is the contributions from the community and people involved in the projects. In the case of PHP and Apache I see a clear disconnect between the developers and users(developers and designers who use PHP). When it comes to huge projects the open source model some how tends to break down since its very hard to keep/manage the communities of massive sizes and take everybody’s views.

There are three projects that I would like to point out which have been massively successful in maintaining the open source model.

Mozilla FireFox
Joomla
Ubuntu

All three of these projects have beautiful sites, great marketing, huge communities.
My first experience with open source communities started with Mambo/Joomla CMS and it really fascinated me how a whole community and developers together left Mambo to create Joomla. As a projects becomes bigger other than development and maintenance it becomes important to handle other aspects of the project. Here take a look at some of the key people who are responsible for Joomla. If you notice out of the 17 key founding members only 9-10 of them are developers and project managers below is a list of other roles.

Sites & Infrastructure Coordinator : Forum Admin
Shop Team Lead
Fundraising Team Lead
Documentation Working Group Coordinator
Events Team Lead
Design & Accessibility Working Group Coordinator
Quality & Testing Working Group Coordinator
Translations Coordinator
Marketing & Media Team Lead

Hey even have a honour roll that shows the list of previous Key members and their roles. the same goes for Mozilla FireFox because the roles and responsibilities have been divided among a few key community members the whole project benefits since these key members can focus on their roles. Have you seen The FireFox Campus Edition website do you think a developer came up with this idea? very unlikely. I love the design and plus what a great way to attract students to use FireFox. All they had to do was create a funky looking WebPage and repackage FireFox with some cool/useful extensions. Shows how important marketing and media is for any projects.

Another thing I really liked about Joomla was their forum which is massive and well organised and structured with a ton of volunteers. All the developers, Volunteers have real pictures in their profiles.

The problem with most Open Source projects is they are started by developers who continue to follow the same process even when the’ve grown big without realizing the need to expand and evolve, they rather take refuge in a restricted mailing lists far from the noobs.

Hey WordPress Devs you need to learn a few things here.

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Catergories: Design, Open Source Tags: Open Source, Web-Design

WordPress To Launch Theme Marketplace, All Themes To be GPL

Arpit Jacob — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 04:29:38 +0000

About 4 weeks back I was contacted by Toni Schneider CEO of Automattic. Automattic was thinking of launching a WordPress Theme marketplace for WordPress.com. At that time they wanted to keep to it under wraps. Now Matt himself has confirmed this.

I thought it was an excellent idea especially to give exposure to WordPress theme designers. But there was one confusion i.e. wanted all the themes to be GPL. Below is my response to this. I didn’t get any response to my feedback. Not sure if it has something to with the fact that I objected to a GPL for Premium themes.

We’re thinking of making it a requirement that the themes be original (never published before), GPL licensed (to help other designers and keep the copyright issues simple) and not have any credit links (since they are paid). Any thoughts on that?

How can a theme be premium and GPL at the same time? Once it is GPL everyone has access to it for free. If its free why buy it? I wouldn’t sell a Premium theme with a GPL licence. Also if I am correct you mentioned that the theme is CSS based i.e. using the SANDBOX Theme. Which means It is very easy to grab the CSS source code hence It just doesn’t make sense to GPL the theme.
Credit links need to be shown irrespective of whether the theme is free or premium. Not only is it the right thing to do this is the way most Freelance designers get more clients and spread the word about themselves, it also acts as a copyright.

A comment from malan and a post from Matt blog got me rethinking.

blah! this will KILL any and all free WP themes. great job WordPress.

From Matt’s blog.

Beyond the obvious guidelines of browser compatibility and general not-sucking, weâ€™ll require submissions be original, link-free, not published before, and GPL-licensed. (That also means that all themes in the marketplace will be available FREE to WordPress.org users. That may force some to switch from .com to .org, but thatâ€™s fine.)

I was in the process of releasing my current Theme “Azure Sky” as a free theme. But I had seconds thought of releasing it as a paid theme since I had put so much time and effort into it. I think if I release the theme on WordPress.com it solves both my problems i.e. I get paid for it and it also get to release it for free for WordPress.org i.e. people hosting WordPress themselves.

I am think I am willing to experiment and see how this marketplace works out. As long as the effort that I put into a theme is compensated for.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Design, Downloads, Wordpress Tags: Templates, Web-Design, Web-Development

American Apparel Made in India/Pakistan/Sri-Lanka

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:22:42 +0000

I brought a few cool T-shirts from Threadless.com and their competitor DesignByHumans.com. I am a sucker for Unique/Cool looking T-shirts I love designs that are abstract/artistic. I was a bit disappointed with the DesignByHumans.com T-shirt not by the fact that the T-shirt was made in Pakistan (which was a big surprise for me), the T-shirt wasn’t that great and definitely not worth the 20+10$ I spent. The Threadless.com T-shirts were better but nothing I couldn’t buy here except that they were limited edition designs.

What put me off about the Threadless T-shirts were that the labels inside had been snipped off with scissors. Unlike DesignByHumans.com they didn’t want their customers/buyers to know that the T-shirt were most probably manufactured in India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka.

But hey its so UnCool to wear a T-Shirt made in INDIA isnt it?

I remember when my dad brought me a few things when he went on a trip to the US. He got me a pair of Rebook shoes made in China and a windbreaker jacket made in Sri-Lanka all from the USA.

American Apparel buys spun yarns in U.S. but imports organic yarn from Turkey, Pakistan.

Cotton Ginny uses certified organic cotton grown in India; the T-shirts are made in India.

Gap grows and spins its organic cotton in India. Fabric is cut and sewn in Sri Lanka.

Joe Fresh T-shirts are manufactured in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and the cotton is sourced in China.

New Organic spins its U.S.-grown organic Pima cotton in Switzerland.

You can read more about it here More here.

Most of the T-shirt made in India come from Tirupur. Its a T-Shirt Fanatic’s heaven, but you’ll need to know the right place to go, also it would be helpful if you knew someone there, its easy to get lost there and its hard to determine the quality of stuff unless you are a fabric expert. There are endless shops piled with T-shirts/Garments of every kind. During my college days I made a trip there after a few of my friends from Tirupur told me how Big Companies like Nike, Reebok were ripping off customers here in India. Apparently the T-Shirts were all manufactured in Tirupur and exported to US/Europe etc, where the labels were snipped off or removed, then exported back to India with a 1000% extra price tag.

Tirupur is the center of Tamil Nadu’s cotton knitwear industry and successfully markets its products in India and overseas. It is called the Knits Capital of India as it caters to famous brands and retailers from all over the world. Nearly every buyer of knitting in the world comes to Tirupur.

Some of the world’s largest retailers including Walmart, Switcher, Diesel, ARMY, Tommy Hilfiger, M&S, FILA, H&M, Pink Lemonade, HTHP, Whale, Reebok, VALUE, PitStop, RESPECT import many textiles items and clothing from Tirupur.

You can read more about Tirupur from the Wikipedia.

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Catergories: Design, Internet Tags: Marketplace, TShirt

Microsoft I Want A Zune Phone

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 12:53:48 +0000

Well I never thought I would be a making a blog post praising the ZUNE. A year ago when the Zune 1 was launched it was bashed left and right by everyone. With the release of Zune 2 Microsoft has received nothing but praise. And as usual TechCrunch had the only ZUNE bashing post, talk about bias. There are a number of things Microsoft did right. Firstly they have been keenly listening to customer feedback they remodeled and redesigned the hardware and the software from scratch and the best part is, the old Zune 1 will have support for most of the new features introduced in the Zune 2 unlike Apple which has a notorious habit of dropping support for older hardware and encouraging its users to buy it newer offerings. Also they are offering DRM free music on their online store. I have given up on Nokia to come up with a iPhone Killer. Microsoft could easily come up with a Touch Screen phone to beat the iPhone.

They have the technology and resources.
They can learn from all the mistakes that Apple Seems to be making with the iPhone.
The Windows Mobile Marketplace is already well established.
Developers will find making native application far easier for a windows mobile.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Design, Hardware, Microsoft Tags: Microsoft, Music

WordPress 2008 = Blog 2.0 Cool Future Features

Arpit Jacob — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:02:53 +0000

Here’s a list of Future Features that you can expect in WordPress in the next year, Or maybe 2009.

WordPress is evolving into a content management system.
WordPress Plugins updates will be shown in your WordPress Administration Panels and will be linked to the database in the WordPress Plugin Directory.
BackPress a library which will create an API that will expose core functions of WordPress (user system, login system, formatting, sanitization, script building).
WordPress Caching Proxy (WPCP) something similar to the Wp-Cache2 Plugin.
A new WordPress Administration Panel will be coming in the WordPress 2.4
A built in API for using S3, Flickr, or other storage sites.
Better localization of languages.
Improvement of Akismet, particularly how it deals with comments when the Akismet server is unavailable.
Improvements to the Visual Editor.
Improved support for images, sounds (i.e., podcasts) and videos.
Sandbox will likely to be included in the installed themes, unlikely as the default.
Some sort of Tumblr functionality.
“Asides” in the core.
Handling storage be improved, especially for storing images, videos, and other multi-media on-site and off-site.
Improvements in documentation on the WordPress Codex in the next year with videos, screencasts, podcasts, and more.

Too Bad the Shuttle Project won’t make it in the core. I’ve been waiting more than a year for it to be implemented in the core. Liz Danzico of Happy Cog seems to be in charge of designing the new Admin Interface. Thanks to adam for the scoop.
What the New Administrative Panel will have.

A modular dashboard like widgets.
You’ll be able to use custom feeds in your dashboard.
Comment Panel will be made like the Gmail interface, replying from within the admin interface.
Photo management with a cleaner interface, and will be allowed you to select different sizes, and adjust settings.
Ability to customize the menus of the Admin.
Cleaning things up so that scheduling posts is cleaner and more intuitive.
Widgets screen will be cleaned up.
When you make a post, you’ll be returned to the manage posts page, rather than write a new post page.
Consistency over all.

Source: Most of this stuff was stolen from lorelle wordcamp.info bloggingpro

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Catergories: Design, Wordpress Tags: Wordpress

SandBox Themes Sneak Preview, Which are Your Favorites?

Arpit Jacob — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:04:28 +0000

Update: The SandBox WordPress Designs went live click here to see all the designs live, you can switch themes with just a click.

Scott announced on the SandBox blog that the Live Previews and Downloads of the SandBox WordPress themes will be made available tomorrow. Meanwhile you can get a sneak preview of all the designs that have been submitted. I saw a lot of great themes, its hard to decide which one of these are the best by just looking at the Screenshots and its unfair to judge them just by looking at them. I have rounded up 10 potential winners (Note: These are just my personal choices). Drop me a comment and let me know which one you liked the best and why excluding mine. (by the way I sent them a really ugly screenshot I was in such a hurry I didn’t realise it, also I forgot to clean up and format my CSS code, I guess I could lose points for that).

BlackBox

by HillaryLouise Johnson

BlueBerry

by Dean Robinson

Promised Land

by Adam Freetly

Milika

by Christian Betancourt

Moo Point

By Will Wilkins

Chocolate Vanilla

by Stephen James Broughton

Tiffany Blue

by Ia Lucero

Takimata

By Robert Ellis

Oranges

by Chris V.

Sakena

By Shazia Mistry

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Catergories: Blogging, Design, Downloads, Wordpress Tags: Download, Free, Templates, Web-Development

SandPress Free Wordpress Theme

Arpit Jacob — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:11:26 +0000

Update: SandPress For Blogger Has been Released by zonacerebral You can see the demo here.
Update: the Theme has been update get the latest version here.

Updated: Corrected some typos and added a few more lines and link to the demo

I am sure most you are eagerly waiting for the SandBox theme that I was developing for the SandBox theme competition. I have labelled the theme as SandPress. I spent a total of 2*5+5+5=20 hours last week designing the mockup, the mockup went through 3 major iterations I had a lot of trouble coming up with the colour scheme in the end I decided to use the default WordPress colours and go for a minimalist design, I used Everaldo’s superb GPL Icons to add some punch, then I spent another 3*5+15=30 hours this week converting the design to XHTML and CSS. The last day i.e Saturday was the worst, I had finished only 80% and I had to make sure it was cross browser compatible. In fact I have around 15-20 things in my to-do list that I yet to do and implement. Also I forgot to clean up the CSS code before sending it. So expect a update for this theme pretty soon. It was really challenging to do this since this is the first time I have tried to design using just CSS. Learning the ins and outs of the SandPress and trying to come up with solutions and workaround using just CSS was extremely challenging. I managed to learn some new CSS tricks. Ok enough of the blabbering. Here is the theme and I am supposed to leave a pingback to the sandbox blog.

The SandPress Wordpress Theme

View the demo here

Download The Theme

[download#3#image]

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Catergories: Blogging, Design, Downloads, Wordpress Tags: Download, Templates

CS3: Best way to be creative?

Arpit Jacob — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:59:36 +0000

I’m Nathan Chapman, Guest Blogging on Clazh from Pixl Design.

Adobe’s Creative Suite is one of the best productivity products of, perhaps, all time. And yet, does it really serve to be the perfect product for everyone?

With Adobe’s not-too-recent acquisition of Macromedia, the next release of a Creative Suite would be sure to include Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. CS3 sure did, but at a cost: over AU$2,000 (US$1,500) and that’s just for Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Photoshop! For both Macromedia and Adobe’s Products, you would fork out AU$4,445 (US$1,399). There just has to be a better way!

Luckily, there is. There are several open-source and shareware/freeware options out there.

Photoshop

The Gimp is a open-source “photo manipulation program”. With excellent flexibility, loads of plugins and a interface that looks suspiciously similar to the real thing, The Gimp is an excellent alternative to Photoshop.
Paint.NET, which utilises the Microsoft .NET Framework to create a stable, lightweight app with nearly every major function the home user could want, from a Lasso tool to Gaussian blur. The interface is completely familiar, with the added benefit of translucent panels that make it easy to see what’s going on when the windows get cluttered. Paint.NET doesn’t yet support RAW format, however, which certainly limits its range.

Illustrator

The only major free competitor for this vector image editing program is Inkscape, again open-source, which is very responsive and extensible. Easily a very good, well written program. Sure, it looks a bit different, but when it comes down to it, Inkscape’s interface is still very easy to use.

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe’s Own free version of Acrobat. Mind you, it’s laggy and is for viewing pdf files only.
Foxit Reader is the pdf viewer that I personally use, and is very compatiable with different forms of pdf files. It also has basic editing tools, and may, in the future, come with a built-in OCR software.

Dreamweaver

Nvu is an excellent, intuitive program that I was using at one point. The interface is very clean, and Nvu can (like Dreamweaver) edit in WYSIWYG or code view. The produced code is very clean and user-firendly, validates and uses CSS.
RapidWeaver, (Mac only) is very similar to Apple’s own iWeb software in both its looks and designs. The code produced is valid, although not as nice-looking as Dreamweaver or Nvu.

Edit

Notepad ++ is an extraordinarily useful replacement for Note pad. However, its main feature (for me) is that it supports automatic code highlighting, enabling it to be a replacement for Dreamweaver’s Code View. Open-source, useable and light-weight, Notepad ++ is perfect for coders (it supports many languages, Python, HTML, CSS, C, C+ etc etc).

Summing Up

Here are the best alternative that I would use to replace the Creative Suite. However, with these programs, you don’t get the “combined” interface that CS3 has, and there are not (due to licensing restrictions) alternatives for every product.

Me? I use CS3 (a legal copy; remember, pirates are losers) and because I could afford it, I prefer it to these Alternatives.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Design, Open Source, Software Tags: Adobe, Free, Open Source, Photoshop, Software