What do you think of this homepage? - Off-topic

I made this little something to refine my webdev skills and I would like to get some opinions and suggestions. It's mostly for myself, hence the missing IE features, but who here still uses it?
It's basic, it's got rounded corners, and it works great!
I also added important website shortcuts. If you type gmail, gcal, digg, or facebook (among others) and then press ctrl+enter, you will be taken there. Shift+enter launches a wikipedia search, too, and I'm going to add Wolfram and Yahoo support if people like it.
Shortcuts only work with Firefox because I don't really care about IE support, but I might fix that in the future.
So?

oops! I didn't actually want to draw any attention to my blog (old sig) and I wouldn't have any interest to it. On top of that, I didn't even design it! I was genuinely looking for input for this little project of mine. As for IE... I just don't like how it plays with what works fine on other browsers. Slight alignment issues aside, however, it's working alright with only the ctrl+enter shortcut not working, but that's no big deal for now.

Actually I got to work and fixed it. IE is now 100% supported (I changed the shortcuts). The only thing I'm stuck on is the design... 2/2 people said it gave them headaches while I loved it, so I made up a lil' something in the meantime. Since the background can't weight over 50kb, it's kind of a problem.

I personally really like the design of your blog!
What you might look into if you want to change it up for people, is a javascript/css style switcher. It's just a tiny javascript that users can click to use a different stylesheet. They're really simple to install and you can find them almost anywhere.

Related

PPC to iPhone

Friends,
Been messing around with the apps out there to convert the ppc to iPhone for fun.
I noticed in the settings, it brings up the six icons – weather, music, mail etc. How do I expand that section to include more icons? I know how to add but the background needs to be lengthened.
Is it possible to have more than one view? Example I have 30 applications on my ppc and like to create short-cuts to them. Can I have more then two or more screens for them?
Lastly, the effects of the applications closing, opening. I saw the one program and it didn’t seem to snazzy. Can you recommend any other effects programs?
Tvos
My dear friend, get ready for some " use the damn search button"
What apps out there ? different apps have different function and customization.
The best iphone emulator , I think, is ifonz.
If you just want the today screen of icons, UL do a better job. Integrate with some other apps from PCM's . A_C's ... you will have a upper than iphone interface.
You seem like to open thread for almost everything you want to know. This is not every welcome by hostile peeps here
Again , with the "Search" button , a functional "read" ability and time, you dont have to use " creat a new thread" .
Alberz,
Actually, I already have iFonz and the cool apps already installed. I should have phrased myself different.
Besides the common apps found in the ifonz setup, what else is out there that might have been missed? I did a lot of searching, customizing the phone to look like it and so far it's pretty slick..
Probably won't last a week and I'll revert back, but some of the apps like Pisel Browser and the toughflo is sweet.
Tvos
there is a thread in dev and hacking about the newest version of ifonz. You should go there and ask since peep over there is more interested in iphone UI and apps.
I just downloaded iFonz and it is a very cool app. I like it better then the other one I was working with, no disrespect to the author, did a great job but iFonz seems easier to setup. Still never a less, a lot of work just getting the phone to look like a iPhone..
thank you,
tvos

PointUi home2 is out (vga)

http://www.pointui.com/products/home-2
Installed it on my Fuze, and Im not too impressed with it yet. Still looks like it needs alot of work.
OK, I managed to download this real quick and get it installed. So far I have suffered from 2 random freezes!
After playing around with it and knowing that this is the free version, I find it to be very limited.
It is perhaps overly simple, but to be honest it seems to work pretty well on my device, after a restart of course.
Its simple, but I dont really need a world map to show me where I am, taking half of my home screen up Weathers only 2 days and gives useless info like the temp only. Its not finger friendly and requires a stylus to get around. The UI button brings you to a useless screen that just has all links that fire up the web browser and point back to point ui web pages. Google news scrolling across the screen is annoying not to mention if you hit it by mistake you have to close opera then. After 20 minutes of playing around its time to uninstall and go back to touchflo. Maybe after its matured I will give it a second chance try.
I like it very much! VERY SNAPPY, no freezes. I wish it had more customization capabilities, but I will take it. Weather is limited to some strange cities, you would think atleast all US capitals would be available.
Overal, I like it better than SPB, and TF3D atm.
---------------------
EDIT
BTW, don't miss out on some cool features, below weather and google thingy, there are a few buttons that let you choose to play a slideshow, view sms and other things. They really need to make them more obvious, or maybe its just my wallpaper.
yzf750 said:
Its simple, but I dont really need a world map to show me where I am, taking half of my home screen up Weathers only 2 days and gives useless info like the temp only. Its not finger friendly and requires a stylus to get around. The UI button brings you to a useless screen that just has all links that fire up the web browser and point back to point ui web pages. Google news scrolling across the screen is annoying not to mention if you hit it by mistake you have to close opera then. After 20 minutes of playing around its time to uninstall and go back to touchflo. Maybe after its matured I will give it a second chance try.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well in the interest of fairness, the world tab is only open if you want it to be. Otherwise you can have weather, clock & calendar all available. Personally i barely noticed the google news scrolling, and last but not least, i found it VERY easy to navigate with my fingers. That being said, i'm not giving up on TF3D for it, but overall i was very impressed with how smooth it is.
cd85233 said:
I like it very much! VERY SNAPPY, no freezes. I wish it had more customization capabilities, but I will take it. Weather is limited to some strange cities, you would think atleast all US capitals would be available.
Overal, I like it better than SPB, and TF3D atm.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can add cities by editing the xml, check out the thread in the dev & hacking forum.
In fact, let's just move all discussion over to there:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=459706

[Q] Graphic applicatin similar to photoshop, illustrator or corel.

Does anybody know if there is any application which can allow to draw what i want? I work as a logo designer and sometimes i need to quickly draw things whats on my mind. I tried Pocket Artist 3.3 which is great but it is kinda buggy For example when i draw something with paintbrush it everytime generates straight lines to one randomly seleceted point which is bothering me So is here any other app which allows all the things like PocketArtist? Thanks for any help
I have found Pocket Artist to be the most complete program available. I found it only to be buggy with the stylus recognition. In the preferences there is a setting to reduce stylus jitters. After changing that it is very accurate. I don't know if this is what you meant by buggy, but it helps if you haven't tried it. Most of my other issues I would just consider to be limitations of a phone/small screen.
I have tried a lot of other programs but most of them were not impressive. Photogenics had some cool features, but was fairly limited. I think it was limited to like 240x320 or something small like that. Maybe if you don't need large images it would be worth checking out. At least it allows layers
If you find anything else worthwhile please post it here.
Hope this helps!
yeah ive also tried a lot of programs but found Conduits Pocket Artist the most flexible and easiest to use on the small screen.
JM33 said:
I have found Pocket Artist to be the most complete program available. I found it only to be buggy with the stylus recognition. In the preferences there is a setting to reduce stylus jitters. After changing that it is very accurate. I don't know if this is what you meant by buggy, but it helps if you haven't tried it. Most of my other issues I would just consider to be limitations of a phone/small screen.
I have tried a lot of other programs but most of them were not impressive. Photogenics had some cool features, but was fairly limited. I think it was limited to like 240x320 or something small like that. Maybe if you don't need large images it would be worth checking out. At least it allows layers
If you find anything else worthwhile please post it here.
Hope this helps!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey man it seems that adjusting jitter reduce to max value helped to solve my problem. Thanks for pointing me to that, because i would never think it could help i am wondering if there is any app which could work with curves? thanks a lot again!

Manilla for Android - Update Dec. 22

Manilla for Android
This is a home replacement app I have been working on.
May. 13th: Apk
Dec. 22nd: Visual changes, under the hood stuff, open beta soon!
Nov. 22nd: Just added settings picture.
For everyone that complains about not being able to run anything or for me to hurry up. Here is the apk, pretty much nothing works. You will just be able to look at stuff and launch applications. Tabs are not in the right order and dont bother reporting problems to me at this point.
I am def curious to see what you got going on.
yea i would love to see that in action
added some pictures.
sure
Looks pretty cool, I would keep at it.
Nice! You should get together with some other devs for this..
Lol, I'm so curious about what you can do! Great idea.
dont give up this is definately worth finishing.
yeah definitely worth finishing my friend....
"who cares" if some dont like it, if any at all... its great to see a new look and feel
its "Open Source" so dont let someone shut the door
will there be widgets included... doesnt matter, but curious to see if every aspect will be changed, window by window, will there be usage of a new music app, custom this custom that?
wow im lost (intox)
I will finish it, i will maybe make a video soon.
I currently have these tabs planned:
Main screen, contacts, applications, messages, email, weather, music, and settings.
Idk about widgets yet but what would be cool would be to come up with some kind of system that instead of widgets maybe devs can create plugins that add new tabs.
With this can you actually slide accross the tabs? Or do you have to tap each one?
BTW this looks great
i do like this... keep the work up...
if it could be color customizable, that would be fantastic!!!
everything slides, including the main content area the tab content areas slide to show the next. The grid views are very slow, so i need to find a new alternative to them.
Would this be a home replacement application?
This would be very similar to a portion of SweeterHome (alternate Home Screen app). Can tell you that issues you will run into are memory and graphics management (the SH dev has been working a LONG time to work those out as well as a lot of bugs in Android that had to be worked around). Not trying to discourage you. If you can make this a stand alone app without being a Home Screen replacement... I would say go for it.
home replacement is a stand alone app you just add a filter to display in the menu. I dont think it makes a difference performance wise.
Manilla
jasonpeinko said:
Ive been working on an app like manilla 2d, is there any interest in something like this? I want to know if it is worth finishing or not.
As you can see there is still lots of bugs but its a rough idea of how it looks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I for one think it looks great- Chris
jasonpeinko said:
Ive been working on an app like manilla 2d, is there any interest in something like this? I want to know if it is worth finishing or not.
As you can see there is still lots of bugs but its a rough idea of how it looks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I like the way it looks and would def. use this!
great job
love to see it on my droid when i pick up next week. any 2.0 support?
So manilla is a home replacement???

what is the point of the live tiles?

What does the peoples live tiles do besides drain battery? I notice it only shows certain profile pictures
ariel123 said:
What does the peoples live tiles do besides drain battery? I notice it only shows certain profile pictures
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, if ur a kid or a face book addict, you set up your face book account and get updates on your friends, you know spy and stalk them
For the rest of us, nothing, messaging tile, phone tile, email tile, all do the same thing as every phone out there does of telling you on home page that you have a message or missed call or email, so in my eyes not much advancement here.
Tiles are bigger, take up more space and the color options were given again confirm that they are designed for teens. Nothing better then a nice pink tile right right
Once you go over to the side to view you apps, call me a moron, but hasn't the advancement of multi columns to see more on one page developed in the past 100 years when displaying data not known at MS? I dont get why they just line them up in one column? They advertise it as simple phone, yet by the time u tag all you need to home page, because the the size of these tiles, ( non adjustable size) i have to scroll down just as long to find what I need as I did tapping with other phones.
Just my two cents
Couldn't say it any better
rysky007 said:
Well, if ur a kid or a face book addict, you set up your face book account and get updates on your friends, you know spy and stalk them
For the rest of us, nothing, messaging tile, phone tile, email tile, all do the same thing as every phone out there does of telling you on home page that you have a message or missed call or email, so in my eyes not much advancement here.
Tiles are bigger, take up more space and the color options were given again confirm that they are designed for teens. Nothing better then a nice pink tile right right
Once you go over to the side to view you apps, call me a moron, but hasn't the advancement of multi columns to see more on one page developed in the past 100 years when displaying data not known at MS? I dont get why they just line them up in one column? They advertise it as simple phone, yet by the time u tag all you need to home page, because the the size of these tiles, ( non adjustable size) i have to scroll down just as long to find what I need as I did tapping with other phones.
Just my two cents
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought the Live Tiles were one of the selling points of the OS.
The grid layout will scream it is an iPhone clone, and the home screen customization will scream an Android clone, and you know MS is trying to be different.
The last thing that went through my head when I first saw the tile interface was this being an iPhone copy.. my first thought was iPhone finally got pwnd.
Steve Jobs MS has no style, they do have now
lqaddict said:
I thought the Live Tiles were one of the selling points of the OS.
The grid layout will scream it is an iPhone clone, and the home screen customization will scream an Android clone, and you know MS is trying to be different.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In theory yes, but its the same concept that I will wear a bucket on my head to look different, but it doesnt make it efficient or practical.
No matter what they do they will all look similar, just like windows and mac and linux, they all have the same style, look diff but same format to follow, and that is because that format works.
Like cars, they all have an engine, and wheels and seats, they just dress them up differently to stand out.
What WM did here is take away what is needed and gave us a shell of a car, and said hold on, we might get u teh wheels and doors later.
yly3 said:
The last thing that went through my head when I first saw the tile interface was this being an iPhone copy.. my first thought was iPhone finally got pwnd.
Steve Jobs MS has no style, they do have now
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
HD 2 was different then anthy thing out there, and I liked the home screen, it showed me all i need on once screen with no scrolling needed. Then droid adapted it from HTC so now WM wants to look diff and I think they went the wrong way personally. It not efficient at all, have to do more scrolling now then before.
rysky007 said:
In theory yes, but its the same concept that I will wear a bucket on my head to look different, but it doesnt make it efficient or practical.
No matter what they do they will all look similar, just like windows and mac and linux, they all have the same style, look diff but same format to follow, and that is because that format works.
Like cars, they all have an engine, and wheels and seats, they just dress them up differently to stand out.
What WM did here is take away what is needed and gave us a shell of a car, and said hold on, we might get u teh wheels and doors later.
HD 2 was different then anthy thing out there, and I liked the home screen, it showed me all i need on once screen with no scrolling needed. Then droid adapted it from HTC so now WM wants to look diff and I think they went the wrong way personally. It not efficient at all, have to do more scrolling now then before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually find the live tiles helpful and with one flick of the finger I get the info I want. The problem with the HTC Sense UI (although they have pioneered the ideology of glancable information on the mobile phone), is that it also required add-ons to make it workable (Cookie home tab or maxsense) because navigating wasn't always that straightforward.
The Live Tiles are supposed to be big to display info (look at how Weather Channel App is using the live tile) and to be glancable. Another problem I found with the HD2 was that everyone was trying to shove way to much info on one screen, there are limited.
Going back to the original question, the live tile is really just the Contact Tile, it provides no real information (from what I can see) other than it is easy to spot on the phone amongst the other tiles. Since this is one of my main ways of contacting people, the visual changes (it animates more than any other tile) helps me get to people without hunting for it.
I reallt don't see why this should be deemed a "Teen" feature?
Anyway my final point is, some will like and some won't.
rysky007 said:
In theory yes, but its the same concept that I will wear a bucket on my head to look different, but it doesnt make it efficient or practical.
No matter what they do they will all look similar, just like windows and mac and linux, they all have the same style, look diff but same format to follow, and that is because that format works.
Like cars, they all have an engine, and wheels and seats, they just dress them up differently to stand out.
What WM did here is take away what is needed and gave us a shell of a car, and said hold on, we might get u teh wheels and doors later.
HD 2 was different then anthy thing out there, and I liked the home screen, it showed me all i need on once screen with no scrolling needed. Then droid adapted it from HTC so now WM wants to look diff and I think they went the wrong way personally. It not efficient at all, have to do more scrolling now then before.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If the hd2 fit your needs so well, why did you jump at launch to a brand new OS that all of us knew was going to be missing a couple of features???
As for the live tiles, the point is to give you info at a glance. Yes currently, only weather apps, and contacts tiles are really taking advantage of it, but that is going to change. Beezz twitter app today will use live tiles to give you mentions and direct messages. Other programs hopefully will follow suit.
The live tile is a tool. As with all tools it can make things that are useful and useless.
The standard tiles maybe unnecessarily big but tiles like Weatherbug that display information without having to run the app are great.
They can also be fun. It's nice to see album art from the last Zune artist you played or your Xbox avatar or pictures of friends.
They also allow you to do things you can’t do on other phones. You can pin a specific FM radio station to the start screen, or a web page, or a map with directions or a favourite album. With one tap you’re exactly where you need to be. It doesn’t get more efficient than that.
Personally I'd like to see an option of grouping four tiles into one. I don't need massive tiles for things like IE, messaging, hotmail and Marketplace. That would free up space for more useful tiles.
digime said:
The live tile is a tool. As with all tools it can make things that are useful and useless.
The standard tiles maybe unnecessarily big but tiles like Weatherbug that display information without having to run the app are great.
They can also be fun. It's nice to see album art from the last Zune artist you played or your Xbox avatar or pictures of friends.
They also allow you to do things you can’t do on other phones. You can pin a specific FM radio station to the start screen, or a web page, or a map with directions or a favorite album. With one tap you’re exactly where you need to be. It doesn’t get more efficient than that.
Personally I'd like to see an option of grouping four tiles into one. I don't need massive tiles for things like IE, messaging, hotmail and Marketplace. That would free up space for more useful tiles.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice point which I agree with, I have 4 emal addresses, so after the phone tile, people tile, messages tile and then 4 diff email address tiles, i have to do a lot of scrolling to see other things, so having a small icon for sms alert, and email alert and missed call alert would free up an entire page for me.
If i was developer of this OS, id give an option to either have it tile mode, or smaller active tiles as app launchers like we had on HD2 along with time and small notifiers bottom of screen, give ppl options to customize.
digime said:
They also allow you to do things you can’t do on other phones. You can pin a specific FM radio station to the start screen, or a web page, or a map with directions or a favourite album. With one tap you’re exactly where you need to be. It doesn’t get more efficient than that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
how's that different from shortcuts on Android?
lqaddict said:
how's that different from shortcuts on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
amen every one that has been praising this phone i dont get, i dont see what is so special, hardware might be nice but OS is nothing different
rysky007 said:
amen every one that has been praising this phone i dont get, i dont see what is so special, hardware might be nice but OS is nothing different
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1, last time I asked about the usability of the OS, and without getting a clear answer the thread went into a flame war.
just something else i thought about.
Many saying that MS wanted to develop something different.
How does putting the lock and unlock button up top JUST LIKE IPHONE has had for a while now, make this phone diff?
They sereously went the wrong way. . . This BS OS can not be compared to Android. The Android OS is 99% customizable. . . This. . . I can't even describe. It's like the Apple OS, just uglier. . . Good work Microsoft. . . They should have called it VistaMobile instead of WMO7. . . Now the question is, will they just give up and bail on this OS or actually make it better.
Too bad, the hardware is so nice.
samson_420 said:
They sereously went the wrong way. . . This BS OS can not be compared to Android. The Android OS is 99% customizable. . . This. . . I can't even describe. It's like the Apple OS, just uglier. . . Good work Microsoft. . . They should have called it VistaMobile instead of WMO7. . . Now the question is, will they just give up and bail on this OS or actually make it better.
Too bad, the hardware is so nice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the past week everywhere I went and pulled my phone to use it everybody was like "wow such a nice phone" so I am pretty sure there will be success sooner or later. And Microsoft didn't put so much money in this to just give up after a few months because some people with much better phones and so infinitely more freedom than any WP7 who need to play Linux Brotherhood on their device 24/7 would say different.
Live tiles are similar to widgets in android, they offer information at a glance without having to go into the app. For example, weather bug shows the temperature and current weather of your location from the homescreen. ITN News displays a picture of the latest news article.
Some tiles also have animations making the home screen look better.
The difference between Widgets and Tiles is that Tiles get information using Push rather than Pull. When you receive a new message it will be pushed to the tile so that it displays a 1, when new news hits ITN the image is pushed to the tile.
This, rather than the traditional way of polling a source ever x amount of minutes ensures that connection is only made when need to thus saving battery.
Other advantages tiles have over competitors is the fact that all tiles are uniform, in the same format and style meaning nothing looks out of place on the homescreen.
rysky007 said:
just something else i thought about.
Many saying that MS wanted to develop something different.
How does putting the lock and unlock button up top JUST LIKE IPHONE has had for a while now, make this phone diff?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously, what are you on about? If you are referring to the physical unlock button on the device then this quite clearly has nothing to do with phone manufacturers and not Microsoft. Also, on/off buttons have been at the top of most devices since God knows when.
lqaddict said:
how's that different from shortcuts on Android?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It isn't, it's just a different approach. All OS's have copied from each other in some way or another. Whilst the same, the Microsoft way does have some advantages which I've highlighted in my post above.
My friend just ditched sprint and the evo for the hd7. I think ms did a great job with this os. Yes we are currently missing a few features but I think ms is trying to market to the noobs in the smart phone community. Making this a easy phone to use. Slowly within time they will make this os more customizable. I hear there already meeting with the guy who's been working on jailbreaking the os to make his apps official through market place. You guys have to remember that 90% of smartphone buyers don't even know the true features of a smartphone. Why do you think apples sells so much
ariel123 said:
My friend just ditched sprint and the evo for the hd7. I think ms did a great job with this os. Yes we are currently missing a few features but I think ms is trying to market to the noobs in the smart phone community. Making this a easy phone to use. Slowly within time they will make this os more customizable. I hear there already meeting with the guy who's been working on jailbreaking the os to make his apps official through market place. You guys have to remember that 90% of smartphone buyers don't even know the true features of a smartphone. Why do you think apples sells so much
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm one of them, I ditched my evo for the HD7, so far so good, the interface is a refresh and looks "new" compare to the rest.
I have use all major platforms and they all have something over the others, to be the more the merrier
Sam

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