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Linked List: January 17, 2006

Tuesday, 17 January 2006

Right-Alignment for Form Labels 

I think the author, Swapnonil Mukherjee, has grossly over-analyzed this, but he’s right. (Via Khoi Vinh.)

Update: As reader Jacob Arnold said via email: “This guy’s article could be summed up by a simple rule of graphic design: ‘Avoid trapped white space.’”

Ben Franklin on the Feeling of Security 

Great Franklin quote from Bruce Schneier.

Startup Key Combinations for Intel-Based Macs 

Two interesting things about this: (1) the Intel-based Macs support all the main startup key combinations as PowerPC Macs, including FireWire Target Disk mode (which is yet another reason why I don’t expect to see FireWire dropped in any Macs any time soon); (2) this is the first time I’ve seen Apple use the term “Intel-based Macs”, which is the term I’ve been using for a while. Needless to say, we won’t be abbreviating it to a TLA.

Poor Richard’s Redemption 

Excellent New York Times Op-Ed essay by Stacy Schiff, commemorating the 300th birthday of my hometown hero, Benjamin Franklin.

Running Things Periodically With Launchd 

James Duncan Davidson:

I’ve mentioned a few times before in my essays that launchd simply rocks. It can slice, dice, and peel your tomatoes. As is already fairly well covered on the web, it can replace init and watchdog like processes all in one feel swoop. What hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, however, are some of its other talents. In this essay, I’m going to focus on how it replaces cron. Yes, our venerable friend cron is due for replacement and launchd brings on the goodness.

A List Apart: Web 3.0 

Jeffrey Zeldman:

Web 2.0 is a fresh-faced starlet on the intertwingled longtail to the disruptive experience of tomorrow. Web 3.0 thinks you are so 2005.

Intel Macs Break Mac::Glue 

Note to Mac Perl nerds: Chris Nandor reports that while most of Mac::Carbon works on Intel Macs, the Apple event features don’t work at all, which means no Mac::Glue.

iMac 17-inch Core Duo Review at Ars Technica 

Looks like real-world Rosetta performance is definitely “good enough”, which is great news.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones: Numbers 

Fifteen new fonts containing only numbers, punctuation, and symbols.

Wil Shipley on Coming Up With Product Ideas 

Wil Shipley:

But, for example, when the Excel product manager got up on stage at Macworld several years ago and said, “We’ve found that 85% of our customers use Excel just to make lists and outlines,” we (Omni) said, “Shoot, that’ll be our next product. We can do a GOOD job of making lists and outlines, and sell it for a lot less.” And OmniOutliner was a pretty decent success.

Introducing the Web Inspector 

Very cool new feature in the nightly builds of Safari, useful for both web developers and Web Kit hackers:

I would like to introduce a new addition to WebKit—the Web Inspector. The Web Inspector lets you browse the live DOM hierarchy in a compact HUD style window, catering to the needs of web developers and WebKit hackers alike.

Update: I just realized that the Web Inspector is itself implemented as a Web Kit view, so you can inspect the UI of the Web Inspector using the Web Inspector.