Linked List: January 26, 2009

Monday, 26 January 2009

Adobe UI Gripes 

Hilarious expletive-laden analysis of Adobe CS4 UI design details. Go ahead and read the whole thing, it’s worth it, but I’ll point out a few of my favorites here and here and here. (Via Michael Tsai.)

iLife ’09 Available Tomorrow 

Available in Apple stores tomorrow. Or, if you don’t want to leave the house, you can make me rich and buy from Amazon:

Unofficial Web-Based Version of iTunes App Store 

I saw this last week and wasn’t sure if it was going to be around for long, but it’s still up, so maybe Apple doesn’t mind. You still have to use iTunes to actually buy or download apps, so effectively it’s just an affiliate site, but it more or less tries to reproduce the layout and appearance of the official App Store. I can’t figure out who’s responsible for this.

Intego: New Variant of ‘iServices’ Mac Trojan Horse Found in Bootlegged Photoshop CS4 

Similar deal as the version identified last week in bootleg distributions of iWork ’09.

The HAL Project 

Gorgeous homage to HAL by Joe Mackenzie. I haven’t used a screensaver on my computer in at least 10 years, but I’m running one now.

(Thanks to DF reader Darren Geraghty.)

ClickToFlash 

BSD-licensed open source WebKit browser plugin that prevents Flash content from loading automatically. Instead, each Flash element appears as a simple gradient; to load it, you click it. Works in both Safari and WebKit nightly builds, and, in my testing, significantly decreases the amount of CPU used when you have a slew of open windows and tabs. And it’s a legitimate browser plugin that goes in ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/, not a dirty input manager hack. I can’t remember the last time a piece of software made me this happy.

(Via Steven Frank and Erik Barzeski.)

Update: The project has been forked.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall 

Errol Morris:

During the last week of the Bush administration, I asked the head photo editors of these news services — Vincent Amalvy (AFP), Santiago Lyon (AP) and Jim Bourg (Reuters) — to pick the photographs of the president that they believe captured the character of the man and of his administration.

Rob Griffiths Reviews Eight Third-Party iPhone Web Browsers 

Interesting that Apple is now allowing them in the store, but none seem particularly useful yet.

The Curious Case of Missing Yen 

Ken Aspeslagh has an interesting tip for App Store developers:

If you don’t remember filling out 12 pages of Japanese tax forms, you might want to go do so immediately.

Layers 1.0 

New $15 screenshot utility captures images as layered Photoshop images — one layer per window.