Refined by Fire

Another little surprise popped up in NetNewsWire today while trying to fix a problem. Something borked my layout and setting it back was not very intuitive. As I’ve mentioned before in a previous post, NetNewsWire could be more user-friendly with its features. Feature-rich it is, but some engineering foresight could make it sing a little prettier.

This time it’s for those fortunate enough to have a widescreen. Always looking for ways to declutterize my life, I try to find solutions to make best use of the space around me. This includes my frequented physical space such as desk and office area, but as a UI designer, maximizing my computer’s screen real estate is part and parcel to the job. Unfortunately for me, I’m much better at the latter, but for you, someone looking to squeak a little more user-friendliness out of your feed-reading experience, I can impart this tip to help you make better use of that additional lateral screen space.

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Photo by RadialMonster

Found an article⁽¹⁾ over at Read/Write Web that really hits spot-on to the persistent state of my overwhelmedness of late. There are so many great sites that crop up everyday and it is long gone become unruly to try them all. Under the heading “Drowning in Awesomeness,” Sarah Perez makes the best point for all of us webbish early adopters:

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I’m currently using Things from Cultered Code as my to-do list organizer in Mac OS X. Things is great. There are several many reasons as to why, but perhaps one of the most useful is the to-do quick entry function.
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There’s been much contemplation as to what to call these… whatevers who follow 1000s of people on twitter, but with few followers. In a previous post, calling them a “spwitter” was an idea, but I agree, that was a little too cute and there’s very little cuteness about these… whatevers. “Spit” (spam + twit) is a good name for it. It’s nasty; it should have a nasty name.
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So, after getting an email from Sitepoint this past week, I decided to drink some of the Webkit CSS kool-aide. If you’re in a Webkit browser, go ahead, rollover the links and navigation.

To give a very quick background, Webkit is the foundation for the Safari Web browser. Additionally, many OS X apps use Webkit to display Web content. NetNewsWire, Mail.app, the Dashboard, are just a few. Site-Specific Browsers (SSBs) like those built on Fluid are also using Webkit.

Basically, if an OS X app’s Web integration has a tight feel to it, you can bet that it’s using Webkit.

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