QuickPost Beta 3 Preview from Alex Mills on Vimeo.
Check out the screenshot above. Now let me explain. To save space on my MacBook Pro hard drive I keep all my movies (I own the DVD versions, don't stress) on an external drive that iTunes links to. What annoys me is that this dialog suits a situation where the user has changed the location of a file, but not one when an external device is missing. iTunes should detect that the file is located on a external device and then prompt the user to connect it if it isn't already. No one wants to see this dialog when they haven't touched their library for months, and while the new dialog works the same as the old, it tells them why the file cannot be played and how to fix it. I have made a mockup below of an example dialog that I believe would be more suited. It does look the same but the user knows how to fix it and that something hasn't gone wrong with their library.
I finally got around to making a decent looking website for QuickPost. This version is basically a teaser/signup page for the beta that will be released around the end of May. You get to see the new app icon and a little bit of the new editor, with this beta now feature complete, the next couple weeks will be spent tying up loose ends and testing. Just pop your name and email into the register section and you will be notified of any updates and get early access to the beta. Hope you like it!
Since the release of my website and not long after the conception of the blog I have been using the Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta for tracking the page traffic. My choice for using this system over Google is that it actually works and pretty neatly at that. Unfortunately about a week ago I was notified that as of the last day of this year, the service will be discontinued, which is a real shame. This blog will continue using the service to the end but the new company website will have to use a new service. Maybe I should give Google another go, recommend any other analytics services? Thanks for all the page tracking data, it was very helpful!
Icon beta 2 for QuickPost Beta. What do you think? There have been so many icons for this app that I have lost count but this one I like. I think of it as the 'QuickPost Machine' capable of combinig your words, photos, videos and maps into one gorgeous post and announce it on twitter so the world knows. Ooh did I let something slip? Beta 2 which is coming real soon is an amazing leap forward in usability and features compared to the first beta. I'm still undecided though whether to drop Fern and make this the all-in-one editor the mac world has been waiting for? What do you think?
Amazon has just released some photos and launch details of their new Kindle, an ebook that uses and electronic paper display. A neat little feature is that it has access to the Amazon Wispernet via Sprint EVDO. My current Tafe course is based around designing and building electronic hardware, something I have always been fascinated about, with companies like Apple building devices and computers into incredibly thin enclosures. The kindle 2 as demonstrated below is an incredibly thin and sexy peice of hardware. 
From the creamy front to the aluminium back, design cues from a certain device have been used to their full extent. Great stuff Amazon, keep it up.
As you can see by the previous posts that I have been focusing on the iPhone, which due to a little free time has allowed me to try somethings I have always wanted to do. I decided to make an iPhone version of the 2009 Alex Mills Design preview page. In my research for a script to tell the iPhone to use a different CSS file, I came across this tutorial. Unknown to me was the fact that the Safari browser on the phone runs a little script every time it gets rotated, with a result of either 0 (vertical), -90 (left) or 90 (right). The tutorial covers writing the javascript that intercepts the angle result from the browser, which then tells the CSS to display a certain div. So I built a vertical, left side and right side 'view' in Keynote, imaged them using skitch and built them into a neat little site using Coda.
Rotate the phone to the left and the view will once again change to one almost identical to the previous, except with only one link to the current website and a different rotate instruction.
Yeah I could have just put the links on one view and while this setup wont be suitable for every page, it gives you complete control over how the page works in the browser. Also the fact that it's designed for one browser on one phone* makes testing simple, though you will need an iPhone or iPod touch due to the way the CSS hides everything, making desktop testing impossible.
I'm not one to brag, its just how I was brought up but even my parents are bragging about this one. A recent Curriculum Council High Distinction Award in IT means that I'm officially the #2 IT Student in Western Australia! I'm super stoked and really appreciative of all the teachers, parents and workmates who have helped and supported me along the way. Lets just hope I can make use of it :)
A design project I have been working on for possibly a pretty important client. Will give more information soon. This is my first time at designing an iPhone app.
With 2009 here and no equivalent design website ready, something had to be done to indicate that 2009 will offer significantly different services and style. My first true XHTML/CSS page, giving you the option to view this blog to keep track, Donalds or continue onto the current website. One unique thing about this page is that it was designed and built completely in Keynote 09, using Skitch to extract the images into Coda for engineering.
2 major updates to Keynote that allowed me to do this easily was the new measurement system (my major feedback request...they listened), resulting in accurate real world measurement and common placement guides. An example below. The second is that a 1px stroke on a shape is a 1px stroke, no shadowy crap like in iWork 08. I will post an overview later on, as you know I design my websites, interfaces and icons in Apple Keynote, using in-app graphics and photoshop. Nothing can touch the layout system in this app.
