The Stolen Earth Punditry

This is for those who watched (and care about!) Dr Who episode 12 The Stolen Earth, so be warned – there are spoilers!

This email landed this morning:

“I’m surprised to not see a Dr Who post on your blog. Are we going to get one? Will David Tennant be staying? Did you feel a pang of sadness at the thought of losing our current doctor?”

Ah, go on then.

I don’t think this is when David Tennant leaves, and I base that solely on the fact that he’s been seen filming the Christmas Episode! However, some points against that though:

• It’s possible that the production team kept his leaving secret – after all they had planned that Rose would be coming back, and managed to keep it secret for a couple of years.
• Catherine Tate did put her foot in it by saying this was his last season, after which there was an air of ‘she let the cat out of the bag’
• The scenes for the Christmas episode may be flashbacks, or some other ‘Time-Crash’ style plot device. Or even a complete Red Herring.
• Ood Sigma telling him that his “song may soon end” (although I take this to refer to Professor River Song – too literal?)

Still, my feeling is that next year’s special episodes will be his last. 3-4 years is the usual reign for a Doctor, and I’m sure that he would want to move on soon. He’s a great actor after all, and wouldn’t want to be typecast no matter how much of a fan he is. I hope he doesn’t go though – he makes even a bad script magic to watch.

So if this isn’t his last story, as I’m reckoning, then that leaves some issues. Will they back out and do some cringey plot device about how he regenerated but ‘came back the same’? Hopefully not, but here’s my theory: There was a brief mention to Donna that she ‘had something on her back’ – referencing the previous episode (Apparently Dextrus says this to Donna in ‘Fires of Pompeii’, but I missed that reference). There is still a Time Beetle™ on her back, and once some other choice is reversed, it will undo all these events. Anyway, we’ll see come Saturday!

Tags: drwho, punditry

Geek in the Park 08

On Saturday 9th August, I’m going home! Leamington Spa is where I was born and spent 22 (in total) years of my life, and I’m going back to talk at this years Geek in the Park organised by the Multipack. There’ll be a picnic in the picturesque Jephson Gardens, followed by an evening at KoKos.

I’ll be talking on “Pixel Pushing: An introduction to Icon Design”, which will go over the theory and practice of creating icons for desktop applications and websites.

Drew will be tapping in to the nostalgia vein again, with ‘What Brian Cant Never Taught You About Metadata’. I hereby give him the challenge of working Jamie and the Magic Torch into his next talk.

I’m praying for good weather, and looking forward to meeting other geeky picnicers!

Tags: events, talks

Expression Engine vs Textpattern

Once people got wind that I’d been trying out Expression Engine, I’ve been badgered with the question “Which one should I use: Textpattern or Expression Engine?”. This post is to try and answer that, but be warned it’s going to be a long one!

When choosing a CMS for a site, I would say that there are 2 main factors in the choice:

• What you want to use it for
• Personal feel

The latter can’t be argued. It’s a tool, and what feels right to me, won’t necessarily feel right for someone else, and this a very important point. The former is a bit more tangible however.

Just as I like to try out every browser to make sure I’m not missing anything, I feel the need to dabble in as many CMS’s as I can. I’ve flirted with Wordpress (loved the theme system, hated the template tags use of raw PHP), Pivot, MovableType (used on the first version of Hicksdesign), Sympony (burnt my fingers on the paid pre 1.0 beta), Tumblr and EE. I feel I should mention Chyrp here too, as I recently tried and loved it – logical layout, nimble and simple without being too simple.

However, each time, I come back to Textpattern.

My last date with EE was 2 years ago. I spent a few days getting used to it, and got into the idea of template groups and found it a really flexible CMS. However it didn’t offer me enough over Textpattern to make it feel worth the effort of converting my site over. Without a real life project to use it on, that EE knowledge faded away. In the meantime, every other designer on the planet has raved about EE. So much so that it was a bit of a turn off ;o)

Recently, I decided I needed to try EE again, so instead of replicating my site, where I couldn’t see any advantages, I picked on my wife Leigh’s site Hicksmade. So, after a week of re-acquainting myself with it, I can now see why EE is raved about so much, and where it would be useful. I was helped along by Ryan Irelan’s excellent EE Screencasts (very highly recommended!) and EE buddies Simon Clayson and Brian Warren.

Excuse the bullet list, but here is where EE shines:

• The key thing about EE to me is more fine grain control over everything (with some exceptions!), right down to whether a page is cached or what fields are available when posting to certain weblogs. Everything can be tweaked to your personal preference. This level of control isn’t necessary all the time however, so that would be the first deciding factor in EE over TXP.
• Members and member management is other main feature that would make me decide to use EE over TXP. I can think of 2 sites I’d created in TXP that would’ve benefited from this.
• Custom Fields madness! Textpattern has a great plugin to provide similar functionality, but the level of control and ability to associate the fields with a certain section is great, and of course, built in.
• It’s the same with categories. The rss_unlimited_categories plugin for TXP provides a lot of what EE does by default but not all. Categories are a weak area in TXP, only allowing a maximum of 2, without clean URLs.
• The Multiple Site Manager is genius. Again, something that can kind of be replicated with a TXP plugin, but it feels like a hack in comparison.
• You can edit the templates in a text editor, rather than via control panel. Lovely! (You still have to create the template in EE first, but hey.)

All good so far! But wait! Here come the rants!

• My biggest beef with EE is the admin panel. I find it needlessly complicated, with options hidden behind many overly-wordy, illogical links and dropdowns. While a certain amount of this is inevitable with the level of control that it offers, it’s certainly more painful than it needs to be. The longer I have to look at it, the angrier I get!
• EE promotes itself as a CMS, rather than blogging tool, yet out of the box it insists on referring to ‘weblogs’. This can be changed through one of many preferences to something more logical like ‘section’, but the template tags will still refer to weblogs. Harumph.
• /index.php/ shouldn’t be in URLs by default, and it’s right pain to get rid of (but you can do it). Likewise, getting simple /section/title/ urls requires a lot of work. For something so flexible, getting the URLs I want is painful. With a new site this isn’t so bad, you can put up with the extra URL segment, but when converting a site from TXP, and not wanting to write large .htaccess redirections, it’s vital.
• EE seems obsessed with statistics, time taken to render page etc. It’s all superflous fluff. Generally, I’m left with the feeling of “I wish I could just get rid of this bit here…”
• A smaller rant, I’m none too keen on the tags: some require exp: at the start, some don’t.
• File management is behind Textpattern, which has more control over uploaded images and files. This really surprised me! There is a good file manager plugin for EE, but this review is looking at built-in functionality.

The upshot is, that for a lot of client sites, EE is wonderful (if you can put up with the admin side) – especially sites that need members, forums and all that jazz. The thing is, if a site doesn’t need those things, it’s less pain and more pleasure to use TXP.

I keep coming back to TXP because:

• I love the control panel. Clients love the control panel. When you first log in – it takes you to the write tab. It assumes the first thing you want to do is add content, not look at a dashboard with a load of statistics. It may not be the most aesthetically pleasing, but it’s clear and laid out logically – Content, Presentation and Admin. It’s clear where you need to go to add new content, change layout and edit preferences
• I love Textpattern’s XML style tag system. For someone like me who writes in HTML, it clicks instantly, and has a consistent structure that aids recollection.
• TXP’s file management and automagic thumbnail creation/relation with it’s parent image
• In general, I feel I can do a lot with Textpattern, and quickly.

So, in summary, I like both, and which one I use will depend on the job in hand. EE v2 will bring with it a redesigned admin panel, and seeing as that is my biggest complaint, I’m keen to see if it improves the situation. The wee preview that was given at SXSW looked a bit ‘created last minute’, but even that looked hopeful.

Tags: cms, expressionengine, textpattern

Earth not at Risk (apparently)

This BBC news article caught my attention today. Apparently, we’re not at risk from the Large Hadron Collider causing a Black Hole that will swallow the earth. It’s going to be fine. Go back to your knitting.

What? …Black hole? …Wha? …Are you sure? Really, Really sure? Have you looked everywhere? Sure? UNDER THE KITCHEN CUPBOARD?… Not even a little one that could swallow a Hamster?

It’s funny how those words “there are no risks” can induce panic.

Tags: blackhole, news, science

Opera 9.5 and Firefox 3

What a week it’s been for a browser whore – 2 major updates to trial! Opera brought out 9.5 last week (in a move that felt a bit “We must beat Firefox!”), and Mozilla delivered FF 3 this week after some false contractions. What follows isn’t meant to be a proper review, just a brain dump of impressions from living with each one for a few days. Neither have I ‘plumped’ for one browser – I continue to use them all!

Mac Native Themes

Both of these browsers are in the same difficult position – trying to keep a ‘family’ style across platforms while also being a good desktop citizen. My position on that is that looking and acting like a native app is far more important than keeping it in the family, but I guess if you use the same browser on dual platforms, it helps consistency.

Both of these new browsers have much improved Mac themes, that still don’t quite hit the mark. Firefox has managed to get a unified toolbar at last, but still needs an Arronax theme to finish it off. I’ve not found anyone yet who thinks the bloated back button is a good idea (yes I do know you can turn it off with ‘use small icons’) – it also looks more like a slider rather than a button:

That’s the default, and here it is with GrApple Graphite applied:

See how it adds nice little mac touches like the header for the sidebar, at the same height as the tabs? Lovely! However, beyond the browser theme, Josh Aas has done incredible work in connecting to Cocoa API’s, resulting in elements like proper, rounded semi-transparent menus and progress thermometers. FF no longer feels like the homely Java app that it once felt like on OS X!

Opera’s new mac theme is a vast improvement too, although to be honest, any change to the previous theme would be an improvement. I’d refused to use Opera for anything other than testing sites because of it. When the alpha for 9.5 was released, it didn’t look much better, but a week before the final release, it finally started shaping up.

However, it still falls short. For example all the toolbar buttons are grey except for the stop/reload and home:

It doesn’t feel as good as the ‘native’ Opera skin, which is lighter and crisper, and to me, feels more mac-like. The dark tabs have caused some controversy, but I quite like it in this configuration:

This is something I like about Opera – being able to have the toolbar underneath the tab – don’t ask me why though. Form widgets and scrollbars aside, I prefer to use the native theme in Opera.

Neither browser has an updated icon (a new FF icon is awaiting approval!), but Opera in particular really needs to. The shadow is the first thing that strikes you as being wrong, not just the lack of transparency, but the fact that it has highlights in it! I really fancy having a go at updating the Opera icon.

Rendering

First of all, Opera really wins on speed, hands down. It renders fast, and the interface is nimble. Speed is a very subjective thing, and is governed by all sorts of different factors, so this is just my experience. Firefox on the other hand still has some of the sluggish interface feel from v1 & 2- when switching tabs or resizing the window. Opera joins Camino and Omniweb as being the fastest browsers I have, but overall, I reckon Opera has the edge. It also has lots of new CSS goodness, including text-shadow (yay! can has etched text!) and @media queries.

Firefox has still to implement selectors like text-shadow, but rendering is much improved nonetheless. The move to Cairo has brought with it decent crisp type at last, with support for kerning and ligatures (even if they don’t always happen where they should).

Other Features

• FF now has growl support! Something Opera would benefit from, as their ‘toast’ style notifications are decidedly un-mac.
• The new FF location bar menu is great, and I think the new of quickly adding a bookmark (click the star to add, and deal with filing it away later)
• I don’t think it’s new to 9.5, but I like Opera’s content blocking system. When turned on you can click the areas you want to block (which feels like a shooting game!).
• Opera does thumbnail previews of tabs when you hover over them. I’d love them to provide this as a sidebar option like Omniweb.

Cons

Downsides to Opera? I miss being able to correct spelling on a single word. I keep looking for a history menu at the top that isn’t there. I miss a preference to open new tabs in the background when cmd-clicking (you can hold down shift to do this, but I want a preference!). I’d also feel more inclined to make use of the mail client and RSS reader if they weren’t just basic unstyled views. It still feels like you still have to put in some work to get the chrome layout looking as you want it, but to be honest these are fairly small nitpicks. Opera is now a browser that I would want to use everyday.

Downsides to Firefox? Well, first of all, I really hate the way it adds ‘- Mozilla Firefox’ to the window title (can that be turned off?), I just want it to butt out! Update – this seems to be a inconsistent bug rather than an intended feature!

I would’ve liked a little more movement on the CSS side and Acid 3. Again, these are small complaints rather than major ones, and like Opera, it’s become a browser I would want to use!

Summary

Out of the two – Firefox has most mac native look and feel (once Arronax has polished things up a bit) while Opera has better performance. Both are great, and the world is better off with them both of them around. Not sure that I’m better off though – for me the choice of browser is harder than ever.