Linked to, just because of the level of incoherent blabbering. Some people really have way too much time.

Perfect. (!)

What’s intriguing is the updates to the taskbar, which has now lost all text and is a bunch of icons sitting in the row. Sound familiar? I need to re-read the recently awarded patent to see how close Microsoft is toeing this line.

As have been many browsers in the past. Opera is the second best example I can think of (after Apple in the late-80s/early-90s) that shows innovation isn’t everything.

Now to let the people know that, so that they can get the correct drivers and software.

And IMG and EMBED tags thrown in for good measure.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Beautifully written piece by Tom Werner chronicling the pre-Automattic days of Gravatar.

It’s not surprising then that PDC attendees will hear whole lots about Windows 7 this week and very little about its predecessor. Windows 7 banners are plentiful enough, as are the sessions: Out of 194, 22 are dedicated to Seven and none to Windows Vista. It has leprosy, baby, and nobody wants to catch it. I Googled “PDC 2008,” and one of the pages—not now available—is “Unveiling Windows 7 to the World.”

Eric Meyer on bringing future CSS features to present day browsers using Javascript.

An anti-virus company tells us that our operating system is prone to virus attacks? They have to be correct.

This generation truly is creative to the boot.

The news story of Steve Jobs suffering a heart attack originated from a teen.

Steve Jobs on why Apple computers are devoid of the blue stickers we see on every other company’s machines.

Yahoo! buying Inquisitor was the writing on the wall. Looks good, even if it’s in Beta.

The entire transcript of Apple’s earnings conference call, by Seeking Alpha.

Tom Krazit analyses the numbers given out by Apple during the earnings conference call to establish how the iPhone — Apple’s third leg — is fast becoming its most important product (if it already hasn’t).

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple:

“There are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk. And our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there’s a lot of them. And we’ve seen great success by focusing on certain segments of the market, and not trying to be everything to everybody.

Seamus McCauley on Paul Boutin’s “blogs are dead” piece.

People have said this in the past, and people will continue saying so. While I agree that the initial craze has significantly reduced over time and along with the new design which aimed to cut the “noise” down — the platform itself remains a good resource to exploit. But only if you have a compelling product/idea. No more sheep throwing, as the phrase goes.

It gives an accurate portrayal of what some people wrongly expect from the design industry.

Like Motorola has been so good in the past to adapt to the market.

The new “Get A Mac” ad from Apple. It makes a pretty good point — Simple, classy. Not like sending your Marketing VP to come out and trash your competitor in non-relevant statements.

Dan Lyon’s on the “Apple Tax”:

If anything it only points out how much people aren’t liking Vista — they’re willing to pay a “tax” to get away from it.

Agreed.

Forgetting the question of some serious anti-trust issues, since when did Microsoft started caring about being liked?

Perfect. (!)

The “I’m a PC” campaign, on the other hand, is as familiar as the tangy smell of a dentist’s surgery. It captures the imagination about as well as Britney Spears captures a B-flat at 8 in the morning.

Microsoft has an uncanny affinity to kick all the good ideas and innovation in the kahunas, and throw them out of the window.

Julio Capote gives us points to use MooTools over jQuery.

While I’ve never really delved into MooTools, I have worked with jQuery for a while and think it’s definitely better than what Julio is selling it as. I’m not comparing MooTools and jQuery just for the heck of putting one framework over another. jQuery isn’t even a framework - it is a library. To be clear, I always preach that one should use a framework/library one is comfortable with, because your productivity depends on how much you know about your tools.

That said, I’ll take a few points:

• Class support: And Javascript’s prototyping doesn’t cut it? JS frameworks just give structure to what already exists, making them conform to established standards. I’ve been prototyping and jQuery-ing without any hitches at all. In fact, jQuery lets me not worry about dangerous this pointer context hurdles.

• Creating new DOM elements is a snap: I’m sorry, but if you see something simpler than typing out the actual HTML code of what you want to create, I really cannot argue much. jQuery let’s you say $("<div id='upper' class='red blue'>This is content</div>"); and it will create your DOM for you. Simple.

• Modular: Again, jQuery is a library and not a framework. That said, jQuery is extremely light (about 15kb light), so I don’t see the reason to want to reduce it further. This is a matter of opinion, but that’s why this started, so…

• Better Documented: One answer - Visual jQuery. The main documentation isn’t bad at all though.

• Prototype Approach: I think namespacing is better than prototyping because it keeps the originals vanilla while keeping the add-on separate. If that’s too much of a hassle, one can always prototype the required functions on their own, it isn’t that hard.

There is no reason to compare these two really. jQuery is a library to make getting the nitty-gritties done quickly. Simple animations and DOM manipulations is jQuery’s forté. If one “just wants to write Javascript”, they shouldn’t be using wrapper frameworks anyway.

I understand giving an opinion on design based on one’s personal experience, but this is just ridiculous.

I feel a resonant disdain for Microsoft in every comment about a particular icon (while I see where that comes from, I don’t agree with it), and design shouldn’t be looked at with prejudice of any sort. Take for example the nitpicking about messenger icons. What Louie Mantia says about the Windows version is:

… but in no way is it shown the characters are talking, or even interacting …

And why is that necessary? Showing people is more than enough to convey collaboration and group work. Messenger is way more than just talking, and I think the icon does well on its own. At least as well as iChat’s icon if you want to give a fair comparison.

On the contrary, Dashboard’s icon is a little stupid considering what it signifies. Using a speedometer metaphor just because the application is called ‘dashboard’ is misleading, since Dashboard in itself is way more than a container of status indicators. I’m not saying the Windows version is any better, but you get the idea.

We couldn’t hear much of what he was saying, because there was one of those actual CRAZY Apple people in line behind us, yelling in the direction of PC. Crazy guy had NO IDEA that PC was an actor, and he was apparently completely unfamiliar with the “I’m a Mac” ads.