Mozilla Prism is one of the most recent projects sitting in Mozilla labs – and one that completely stumps me.

Not only do I think that Prism really defines the word ‘uselss’ I also think it is a dangerous step BACK in time for technology progression.

Hold that thought, I’ll make one exception to its usefulness: It’s great for Kiosk applications, but since I feel that Kiosk applications are a dying breed anyway, that means little.

So what does Prism do?

From Mozilla:

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.

What Prism does is create an installable application. After you install it, and click on the icon, it loads a slimmed-down version of Firefox showing a single website on your computer. It shows without the user-chrome (the toolbars and junk around your browser).

So… in a nutshell, Prism is a much more complicated way of doing something that is already extremely simple:

1. Dragging a link from your browser to your desktop. (Much simpler than installing)
2. Clicking a link when you want to go to a site.
3. Hitting F11 in Firefox to make the user-chrome hide.

Except, of course, that doing it the easy way means you can still use tabs. Doing it the Prism way means you can only have one web site at a time.

This is progress… how?

Desktop applications are dead. They have been for a while now. Internet applications are the future from now onward.

Having to install an application is something people don’t want to have to do. Having to download updates is also something we want gone.

I know that grates on some developers, particularly people who are very fond of writing desktop applications because that’s what they know how to do. I understand that it’s depressing to think that something you learned to do really well is no longer needed. But that’s what happens sometimes when progress comes about. Trust me, you can get over it. 10 years ago I was writing desktop applications. Today, I would never waste my time with it.

What I don’t understand is why Mozilla would have a project that does something which is very anti-progress.

So here are some of my questions:

1. Currently to visit Gmail (for example) I can click a link and open it up. Why would I want to download and install something to achieve the same thing?

2. Firefox has tabs – why would I want to lose them?

3. Why would I want to install something, when installing something inherently means it is only available on that one computer?

4. If I really want to install something, why not install one of the many Firefox extensions that will allow me to have even ‘full screen’ stuff hidden or work in Kiosk mode?

In a nutshell, I’m confused by Prism.

I don’t see a usefulness for it aside from the random person building a Kiosk application.

~Nicole

Photographer.

The next generation is alive and well. They are blogging, emailing, carrying mobile phones, text messaging, listening on iPods, networking and chatting with friends through social apps and messenger programs, and playing complex massive multi-player games online.

They are about 5 years old.

They are your target customer if you are in new technology development.

While there are some out there who still balk at the idea of focusing advertising and development toward kids – they need a refresher class in basic business. Solidifying brand recognition is a lengthy process, and if kids grow up using something, they will continue to use it as adults.

More than that obvious statement of focusing on the next generation now… the question on the minds of people who prospect ideas in new development is more tricky. What will these kids expect as adults? Or more specifically… what will we do NOW to affect what their expectation becomes later?

Observation of the new generation client starts now. As the people who create new technology, we need to know what functionality appeals from the start.

Here are a few of my observations, developed from watching my own kids as well as their friends:

Computers are for gaming and internet access.

As long as the computer has a browser installed, and whatever computer games they play accessible – that’s all they need. Kids expect to be able to do everything, aside from gaming, through their browser. The sheer idea of having to install a program to do something else is, literally, enough to make them giggle. Developers, that means that if you aren’t building web applications, or working on the types of software that make these things possible… start now.

Massive multi-player gaming will continue to grow by leaps and bounds.

My 8 year old has been playing WoW for the last year, and I recently posed the idea of buying her a game that doesn’t have other people connected. That got a blank confused stare from her. Her hesitant response was something akin to ‘Are they fixing it soon?’ Make a mental note of that… if you can’t currently connect to people, they assume it’s broken and needs fixing. Kids are fine with family/friend gaming on with Wii or Playstation etc… but the idea of having no ability to play with someone else? Get real. Developers: Listen in on that one – kids expect to be socially connected through technology. Period.

Operating system doesn’t matter.

Again, the use of a computer has changed. As long as it can play their games and connect them using a browser – that’s all they need. My 5 year old son has been using a Ubuntu Linux laptop since he was 3 and can use both that and a Windows computer very proficiently. My 8 year old daughter can use both of those, plus a Mac. Developers: All operating systems have an equal chance in the market with this generation.

Browsers matter alot.

I have been conducting a mini experiment on my 5 year old sons use of browsers over the last year or so. On the Windows computer I installed Opera, Firefox, Safari (for Win), and IE. The same for the Linux one (without Safari and using multiple-IE’s to have IE on there). On each browser I set up the same bookmark quick links to get to his favorite sites. He eventually tried them all, and I would occasionally watch how he interacted with them. Occasionally a site would pop up saying it needed a particular plugin – this response ticked him off. His typical response was to either change the page immediately to something ‘not broken’ or close the browser and open a different one. If I watch him now – I can tell you this: On Windows, he uses Firefox. On Linux, he uses Opera (likely because a few Firefox plugins don’t have a version for Linux). However – he can, and has, used them all. The defining criteria in how he uses them is simple: If stuff breaks or errors often when he uses it, he stops using it. Common sense I think. Developers: If you make plugins, make them for all operating systems. If you make websites or web apps – use common cross-os supporting plugins to ensure they work.

Web apps for chat and email.

My daughter will sometimes chat with relatives and friends using various networks – but she never uses an installed chat program even though we have them. Again, it’s about using the browser for it. She uses Meebo.com because she logs into them all at once and can talk to everyone in the same screen WHILE she’s in another tab doing something else. For email, she has a Gmail account which she uses through the browser only – big surprise. Downloaded email is ridiculous to kids when they have gigs of space to keep their email online and get it anywhere. Developers: Keep improving online apps for communication – they’re gold.

Wireless everywhere.

We vacationed in a cabin at a state park – my daughter checked email via wireless and played WoW on a laptop, my son played his web games. We went to the coast and stayed in a condo with no wireless and no internet in the condo lobby, they complained like the biggest junkies in withdrawal and wanted to go home the entire week. For my sanity, we’re never going there again. Developers: More and better wireless devices and connectivity. Businesses: Please God have wireless.

Mobile is King.

I doubt I even have to explain this one – but anyone who has been living under a rock needs to get out and go walk around some kids so that you can see the rapid clicking on phones. Texting will probably become an Olympic speed sport. Taking video and pictures with a phone is the new artistry. Schools are giving in to having cell phones in class for emergencies as long as they are ‘off’ – but I doubt they stay that way. I’d take a guess that when my daughter was in kindergarten about 4 of the kids in a class of 20 or so had cell phones with them. That number has grown each year as she moves up in grades. Developers: Make everything you can do with your web applications in a browser doable via a cell phone or handheld browser. The world is mobile – develop for it.

Movies on the Computer.

If the TV’s in the house are being used, it’s pretty normal for either of my kids to grab a DVD, head to their respective computers, and pop it in. Bringing a way to play DVD’s on long trips is just as important as having a way for EACH of them to watch their own thing in the van on a drive. Someone got wise to that since I’ve seen more and more family vans with multiple independent DVD drop-down screens for watching 2 things at once. But where I REALLY think this is going to continue to grow is with being able to ‘rent and watch’ movies from the computer. Netflix.com is getting there with the ability to rent and watch on the computer – but it’s not a perfect system because it requires Windows. Beyond that… I don’t think it’s enough. I think the next generation of kids is going to grow up wanting to be able to watch a movie using any device that can connect – and that means it has to be device and OS independent… AKA: through a browser. Developers: This is the age of YouTube folks – work on perfecting being able to watch movies through the browser.

No Desktop Gadgets.

In fact, this goes for all things that auto-load on startup. This may surprise some of the folks who are hard at work creating all sorts of new gadgets for the desktop – but most kids I’ve watched use a computer shut them off. Why? I’ve asked and heard: ‘They make the computer slow.’ and ‘I don’t use them.’ and ‘I keep accidentally clicking on them.’ On Windows Vista, with the little default gadget bar – my daughter set it to not load at all. Why? They make the computer slow when she plays WoW – in fact, everything that loads on startup that’s not-essential is turned off. Again, as I pointed out before, kids use the computer to play games and use a browser. Why would kids want desktop widgets slowing the computer down when they have a Google homepage that has them, or Netvibes or Pageflakes? Developers: Work on improving portals that provide gadgets/widgets instead of something that is a glorified link on the desktop that takes up processing speed.

Kids Are Speed Demons.

They have even less patience for using websites and web apps than the average adult – which means it’s practically non-existent. If you make a website for kids – it had better be fast loading and processing. They will tolerate a slow loading site for their very favorite characters only, because the reward is significant. But if you aren’t Disney.com – you can’t afford to have a site as slow as they do. Keep in mind, this is what kids want now. These kids will grow up and still want it on an adult oriented site – learn how to speed up everything. Developers: Minify all your code. Don’t use tables for layout – they load slower. Optimize images to death. Reuse images. Don’t have music or movies play on startup – kids know how to push the play button and they will.

Kids Love Bright Centered Minimalism.

Adults tend to prefer monochromatic minimalism – kids like bright color. No big surprise there. But if you watch kids use a computer, you’ll notice that alot of times they tend to have tunnel vision and just look at the center of the page (though plenty of adults too also, I see it much more in kids whereas many adults start at the top left corner). Develop with that in mind. Take a look at PBSKids.com and you’ll see someone who has successfully done that. The design is minimal in content, yet colorful and very much center screen. Another element of that is that kids work extremely well with image representations. You ever seen a kid use a iPhone? It’s enough to make you dizzy! They combined the already amazing finger dexterity of kids (we’ve seen this for years with game controllers) and added picture representations and a minimalistic design. Developers: Take out the junk on your sites and apps on devices. Minimize. Use picture representations (but don’t forget to make it accessible!). Add TONS of bright color.

Free is No Longer an Option.

Kids nowadays are growing up with a million free to use web apps, games, research sites, etc.. Something being FREE is no longer a surprise – it’s expected. If something isn’t free, they find something that is. If you don’t think they can – just ask a kid to find you a website on a topic, and most often they’ll have Google loaded up faster than you can blink sorting through search results (btw – Google is centered, minimal, and often has a changing logo kids like). Business Developers: Find ways to use the ‘free’ business model (often supplemented with advertising or a premium service) or you will find yourself out in the cold with this generation.

Tech Savvy Input.

If people thought my generation was tech oriented – this one is VERY technologically savvy and can sniff out bugs and errors with their eyes shut. More than that – they EXPECT to be able to report bugs so they can be immediately fixed. My daughter knows how to report broken websites in Firefox, to report errors in the browser, and (even though I don’t) she knows how to file bug reports with the companies that run the games she plays. The flip side of that user input is that she also EXPECTS that those bug reports are easy to do, will be immediately appreciated and resolved. Developers: Prepare yourself for a whole generation that’s growing up on open-source, user driven technology. Plan ahead and get yourself ready with a bug reporting system, and a plan to implement fixes regularly.

In Total: Instant Gratification.

The current breed of technology developers mostly come from my generation – in which we were/are considered spoiled and selfish in our desire for things faster/better … the ‘I want it NOW’ generation. Because our generation went out and made technology to solve our need for speed – the new generation is even more focused on immediately being able to access what they want. That’s the technology they are growing up on.

Plan for it.

~Nicole

Photographer.

If a dice and paper cluttered table is familiar…
If you still remember what ‘feats’ are…
If half your bookshelf used to be gaming manuals…

Then maybe you should vote for the new Wired logo (or design one yourself!).

Recently, Wired published an truly excellent ode to the recently deceased Gary Gygax – the ultimate dungeon master of DnD.

If you were, or are, one of the many old school DnD gamers in the world… the article just might bring a tear to your eye. To that end, his passing has made such an impact on the guys over at Wired, that they have opened up a contest to re-design the Wired logo ‘Gygax-style’ with DnD flavor.

You can take a look at the current list of submitted logos and cast your vote right on the page.

My personal favorite is the one titled ‘Sorry I’m rolling that one again, it fell off the table’. Not only do I like the design alot, but I laughed reading that title because I can’t remember how many times those words came out of my mouth during my heavy DnD gaming days.

So, here’s a call to action for all you Wired readers out there, or DnD fans – go cast a vote.

~Nicole

Photographer.

Today is a new day in design for Beyond Caffeine. I am finally moving on from the old ‘Cleaker’ theme that has run this site for a good while now. I need something fresh and clean, and I found what I was looking for in a new theme called ‘Amazing Grace’ by Vladimir Prelovac. Amazing Grace is now the default theme for the blog.

I was really drawn to the colors of the theme, as well as the design. The colors are (for the most part) from a soothing palette and I am quite happy with it. It has a lovely spot in the top right corner that is used purely to showcase photos I have found. They serve no practical purpose, but are very lovely and reflect the tone of the site. The photo that is shown is chosen at random, so hit ‘reload’ a few times, or click on the photo credits link to see all the photos in the list.

If you are not seeing the new theme, you may have a cookie set for a different theme on this site. You can view the theme by navigating over to the sidebar where you will see a link to the available site themes. This theme switcher is active on ALL the themes I use on this site (and will continue to be there in the foreseeable future). You can easily switch between the new theme or go back to using Cleaker if you would like.

As a side note, in future, if you see any theme that is flagged ‘dev’ in the theme switcher – be warned. That means it is currently something I’m tinkering around with to make work for my site – expect it to be quirky.

I hope you enjoy the new theme as much as I am, and remember that you can always use the theme switcher if you don’t like it.

~Nicole

In any event, my main site should look like this (as it renders in modern browsers and IE7):

But in IE8 Beta ‘Standards mode’ it looks like this:

As I said, I completely didn’t expect this. My site was written with my obsessive attention to standards detail, and I figured on having an easy ride through the new version.

It took me a bit to figure out exactly what had caused the problem, but I finally figured it out and once I did… I was shocked.

Apparently the ability to declare backgrounds (or anything else) using rgb color isn’t there in IE8 beta.

As soon as I started changing the rgb values to hex values, the site backgrounds started showing up. It is fixable without much hassle, and without technically hacking anything (simply converting my RGB background values into hex) … but why? This functionality was there in IE7, and it’s really ridiculous to have to expect to lose functionality in a new version.

Hopefully it’s just a bug to be fixed before it goes out in full version.

After I figured out what the problem was, I did a google search on the correct search string (having had no luck searching for ‘IE8 background problems’ and much better luck with ‘IE8 rgb’) and came up with a good article that shows live examples of several things missing from IE8 that were there in IE7.

Take a look at the article from HowToCreate, and there are some live examples as well that you can view in the IE8 beta.

~Nicole

For those web developers who have been too busy to check their feed readers lately – here’s the short version of what’s been going on:

Microsoft let us know that they were planning to implement a ‘new’ method of … well, let’s just say they wanted to give the browser an identity crisis. The decision they came to was that IE8, although it would be much more standards compliant than IE7, wouldn’t act like IE8 by default. It was decided that IE8 would act like IE7 unless you specifically told it to act like IE8. This decision was backwards, illogical, potentially a huge issue for developers, and really just a waste of all those new ‘bells and whistles’ the IE8 is supposed to have in terms of how well it renders website code.

The way they had planned to make this work was to have developers add a meta tag to all pages that they wanted IE8 to actually read using IE8, instead of IE7. Aka: Modern browser sniffing comes into IE8.

These aren’t the only issues, but I think that Robert O’Callahan has already summed them up quite nicely for you to read, so I’ll point you his direction for a good summary. If you’d like more information, and responses to how we reacted to this first bit of news, please check out the links compiled over at Digital Web.

Anyway, that was a little over a month ago. Yesterday, we got a pleasant surprise.

Microsoft released notices on their press site and the IEBlog saying that they have reversed their decision.

To quote the IEBlog:

Now, IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8′s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8′s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly (using the http header/meta tag approach described here).

I think that Eric Meyer sums it up nicely in his post where he indicates that not all issues with the meta tag are gone (which will still exist but not be required to make IE8 work as the new browser), but that this is a huge difference for the better.

There is also some curiosity about whether or not this change was made due to current legal issues affecting Microsoft, as in their press release the following is found:

“While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default for a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel.

In any event, the new IE8 will now act like IE8 by default (what a concept!). It is a sound, logical decision. I do have some concern as to how they will respond if the beta comes out and there are many complaints (as there have been with past browser versions) from web developers who didn’t prepare themselves and their sites for the change. I hope that MS won’t be easily swayed later toward reversing this decision again going back to the previous one just to appease developers who were lazy in their preparation, because this change will help developers who work with modern technologies – and those developers are the ones making the real innovation these days.

~Nicole

If you are game to try it out and want to head straight to the download and install instructions, go for it. Admittedly I think the install process (or at least the instructions) make the software seem terribly daunting to the non-server admin types. Of course, I could just have been spoiled by the famous 5 minute WordPress install.

On the other hand, if you prefer to test things out before trying to install them – there is a live test version of the new MT you can try out.

Over at MovableType4.org you’ll find lots of resources for using MT, but the highlight of my visit was the live MT installs they let you putter around in.

So… if you try out the new MT don’t forget to blog about it! Particularly curious to me is how it holds up to someone used to working in WordPress.

Have fun!

~Nicole

Amusingly enough, I got the same error as the admin.

It looks like a new version came out with a fix, but I’m going to give it a bit of time just in case, watching the comments on the page about the upgrade, just to make sure it’s working as it should first.

If you haven’t upgraded to Bad Behavior 2.0.11 – you might want to consider looking into doing that. I had no idea people were getting blocked trying to comment until a few of my wonderful visitors were nice enough to email me and let me know.

To those who have attempted to comment – please accept my apologies for the quirky ‘behavior’ lately. (Yes, it’s early, and I’m cracking corny jokes.)

~Nicole

It was not intended to take quite so long, but ah well. Not only was it done in my sparse free time between client work, I had a few other personal things come up that took me out of commission for a bit (a death in the family, a major case of the flu I’m still getting over, lots of school stuff with the kids, etc..). In the end, I think it came out good for a first version of a re-design.

Part of the problem of designing for yourself, as a designer, is that it’s never perfect enough, and I have the feeling that this will be a case of always feeling the need to tweak and adjust and modify ad infinitum.

The old main site looked like this for the last couple of years:

The new version is much more reflective of my likes in color and design:

I’d say it came out to be a pretty major overhaul of the design.

Granted, it wasn’t without issues, which is why I’m calling it Version 1.0 of the new design. A few things glitched at the last minute, like the jQuery effects suddenly not working (I haven’t tried yet to see exactly what caused this – whether it was a new version change or if I just added a typo somewhere.), and having some lovely issues with Google reading my sitemap/robots files (or not reading them for that matter) so that my the 5-6 Page rank is suddenly coming up ‘not available’.

On a design scale, it’s going to need an alternate color version and I realize that. Not everyone is a fan of dark colors like I am (even if all my testing tools say I used enough contrast to make it readable). It’s a priority on my to-do list for the next version. In fact, in an ideal world I’d like to offer several swappable design themes that are entirely different. That should be easy enough considering that the new site design is one I converted to a WordPress theme. Yes, that does mean that I’m using WordPress as a content management system on my main site now. I figured that since I’ve been suggesting WordPress as a CMS for my clients, I might as well ‘practice what I preach’ so to speak.

In the end, this is what it has consisted of, and been built with, on a technical level:

• Photoshop for the design.
• Plain text hand-coding to XHTML.
• Converting the XHTML to a custom WordPress theme.
• Custom coding for child pages on WordPress.
• FeedList plugin for secondary content links from this blog.
• SearchEverything plugin for full search – it uses lots of WP pages.
• Contact form plugin from Green Beast with custom CSS mods.
• WordPress.com stats plugin for .. well, stats.
• Google XML Sitemap Generator plugin.
• Slimbox with Mootools for WP – Deactivated as a plugin and just pulling files from the plugin directory – it’s a long story.
• sIFR for special font headings.
• jQuery for effects – still needs tweaking.

For now, that’s what’s been involved in the CMS’ification of WordPress for this design. There is quite alot still on the agenda, and I’ll document as I go how I continue to evolve the site – just in case anyone aside from me finds it as fun and interesting.

~Nicole

Along with getting a major visual overhaul in the coming days/weeks, one thing has been added and is working now – new domains!

New: WebsiteStyle.mobi

Instead of only being able to access the mobile version of websitestyle.com from mobi.websitestyle.com, you can now access from either mobi.websitestyle.com or websitestyle.mobi

New: WebsiteStyle.net

Just for fun and monopolizing of my domain name. http://WebsiteStyle.net points to WebsiteStyle.com

New: WebsiteStyle.org

For now the new WebsiteStyle.org domain name is simply going to point to WebsiteStyle.com, however, expect great things to be found at that domain in the coming year as a new project of mine comes about!

Have a great day!

~Nicole