Linked List: November 28, 2007

Wednesday, 28 November 2007

Quay 1.0 

Rainer Brockerhoff’s new €7 (roughly $10) utility that restores hierarchical pop-up menus for folders in the Leopard Dock. It’s implemented with an app that runs in the background — no hacks. The only downside (vs. the old 10.0-10.4 Dock menus) is that you can’t drop items onto Quay’s folder icons to move or copy items into the corresponding folder. (Well, Michael Tsai notes one other downside: the menus only appear on mouse-up, not mouse-down.) Quay makes up for it with a bunch of options that the Dock’s old built-in menus didn’t offer. Definitely worth a look if you miss hierarchical folder menus in the Dock.

Quick Look Works With Binary Plist Files 

Neat.

A Brief Message: Notify the Next of Kindle 

Chip Kidd on what effect he thinks the Kindle will have on book design as we know it.

Stupidest Thing I’ve Heard Today 

On Moneymaking argues that it’s a good thing that Amazon’s Kindle is ugly:

6. You Can Be Pretty Later

The Kindle is ugly. It’s nothing like the iPhone, where people bought it just to show off the slick interface to their friends. Instead, Amazon focused on creating a product that does exactly what it’s supposed to do: give you nationwide access to over 80,000 books in the palm of your hand. They can make it pretty later.

For the retort, I’ll hand the mic over to Mr. Steve Jobs:

“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.”

Pester 1.1b7 

Long-in-the works update to Nicholas Riley’s excellent little alarm clock and timer.

Fray: The Quarterly of True Stories 

Derek Powazek’s Fray returns, in the form of a quarterly printed journal. Dig that widescreen web design.