New web editing suite Espresso from MacRabbit who also brought you the fantastic CSSEDIT looks pretty good so far. I’d love to get a beta go on this.

I’ve tweaked my tumblog’s design slightly - with heavy use of pngs and a flock style wallpaper I found somewhere - it’s based off one of the built in designs.

This time its some kind of Twitter site called Strawpollnow. Flickr.

“For web designers” - intriguing. And nice ape. | # | #

Flickr

So, I made these fonts years ago, literally years ago in some early form of Fontographer, I forget which but it may even have been a beta version.

I wanted a grungey Courier/American Typewriter font but unfortunately such things weren’t as common then as they are now so I DIYed it by printing out one of those quite large and photocopying and screwing up the paper to hell, scanned it in, autotraced in Freehand I think and dropped it into Fontographer.

Next came the sans-serif version, same deal different font (maybe Helvetica, maybe Helvetica Neue, maybe Swiss, I forget).

I have a few other fonts which I’m reluctant to make available as they aren’t really fonts ‘I designed’, they are; Exotica which is two fonts, some flourishy font for caps and maybe Garamond for lowercase but the kicker is that the lowercase vowels are raise with a line under; and WipeOut which is err the font (kind of as I couldn’t see all the characters) from the Sony PS1 game WipeOut.

You can download Mass Exodus here, PS fonts for Mac.

Yes, keep away Microsoft! #

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

- Your usual Windows user doesn’t seem to get this - in my experience Daring Fireball

The Email Standards Project works with email client developers and the design community to improve web standards support and accessibility in email.

- Email Standards Project

I’ve yet to try it myself, but ies4osx is supposed to run Internet Explorer for Windows very capably - If you have an Intel Mac.

Ive not had a chance to read up much on it yet, but of course I want an iPod touch. I also like the new look Nano despite there being some debate around about it looking ‘chubby’.

So, iPod Touch or iPhone? It’s certainly a tough decision: I’d like an iPhone but it’s currently only 8gig and will of course come tethered with a phone contract; The iPod Touch is a nice proposition but it still means carrying a phone around and whilst 16gb isn’t bad, it’s not the 30gb I currently have. I’ll have to wait a bit I guess.

And the “my rendering’s better than your rendering” argument continues ..

The issue is reminiscent of the “I hate black bars on wide-screen films” brigade who believe that the film should be chopped, panned, scaled and otherwise distorted from the artists original intention simply so that it fits better on their display. #

The “Apple way” still makes far more sense to me, especially when you see the two side-by-side showing the odd relative scaling caused by the Microsoft philosophy. The Apple rendering enlarges the width proportionately to the height as you’d expect; whereas the Microsoft rendering seems to go up in blocks of 3, suddenly jumping to the next width whilst the height increases.

Legibility-wise, surely no-one claim say that the smaller sizes are more readable with MS’s rendering than Apple’s? People don’t read letters, they read the whole shape of the word and for this Apple’s smoother, somewhat softer rendering is far superior.

Even more detail and views. (via)

… the big blaring difference between the two is the missing buttons over on the right hand side. Primarily there’s no delete and there’s no number pad; supposedly for the sake of mobility.#

I never miss a numeric keypad on my MacBook Pro, it’s a different kind of use to desktop ‘work’ and I can see the wireless keyboard being hooked up to a Mac Mini on a TV for leisurely use across the room or maybe even on an Apple TV for easier YouTube browsing, maybe Apple have a living room use planned for it.

Ive started making preparations for the successor to my previous Wordpress theme, Mallow - cunningly named Mallow 2.

Apple’s freshly designed site uses a form of Livesearch. Im not so sure about the new navigation bar on Apple’s site myself.

There’s an interesting discussion doing the rounds at the moment about the various pros and cons of Apple versus Microsoft font rendering caused by Apple’s recent Safari for Windows beta release. I’ve posted grabs in Flickr how I have mine set up in OS X and Adobe Photoshop’s foibles in font rendering, but with regards Apple versus Microsoft I definitely prefer Apple’s way. It’s certainly a personal preference; Apple’s softer, more close to the original font designer’s look; or Microsoft’s harsher, sharper, arguably more legible (I dont think so) system. There’s a good comment on TAUW’s post about this. Apple certainly shouldn’t in my opinion have swayed from the Microsoft system for their Windows version of Safari, imagine if Microsoft had done the same - leave it to what the user is familiar with.

People do seem to be divided by which OS they use the most, and that makes perfect sense but I do cringe ever so slightly when I glance at a Windows screenshot, or over the shoulder of a Windows user. The Microsoft anti-aliasing is for me just too sharp and clumsy looking. Small text looks barely smoothed at all and larger type is unsubtle, rough looking. Whereas Apple’s smoothing is soft and rounded, so the text is easier to read and less straining on the eye due to the comparatively lower overall screen contrast.

Take part in the A List Apart - Web Design Survey 2007, it’s quick, easy and painless

I found this mp3 via my del.icio.us parody mp3 feed - I was amused and intrigued enough to do some Google delving whereby I found the Burn Back Myspace page and the official Burn Back site. This intriguingly has prominent links to here and here, Portfolio Night apparently kicks off May 3. So, amusing Spinal Tap meets The Darkness style advertising and design related songs. What’s going on? Smacks to me of a viral campaign to promote advertising. I for one think it’s quite funny.