position: absolute - Design resources and inspiration.

It’s that time of the year again when I get tired of watching the WordPress version numbers grow and grow without joining in on the fun. So here we go, fresh and shiny WordPress 2.3. As usual, please let me know if you notice any issues (random error messages or anything), thanks! The InstantUpgrade WP plugin is a god-send, by the way. No more hassle.

The long-anticipated Pixelmator image editor for Mac OS X has just been released. I can’t say much about its capabilities, as I haven’t tried it yet, but damn it looks good.

Built up on a combination of open source and Mac OS X technologies, Pixelmator features powerful selection, painting, retouching, navigation, and color correction tools, layers-based image editing, GPU-powered image processing, color management, automation, and transparent HUD user interface for work with images. Pixelmator uses Core Image and OpenGL technologies that use the Mac’s video card for image processing.

I think the “GPU-Powered” bit sounds particularly interesting. I’d like to know why Photoshop doesn’t utilize my GPU’s power, what a waste of perfectly good transistors.

pdf-mags.com has lots and lots of free, lovely PDF-magazines. There are many inspiring PDF-publications scattered throughout the intarwebs, and this site collects them all (well, a lot of them) in one spot for your convenience. Now if someone could please let me in on the secret of how to find the time to read all of them, and do all my other stuff, that would be sweet.

37Signals get it right yet again, making a very good point about online shop usability: why do so many shops show the whole cable, when all you really need to see are the plugs? Show the plugs already!
This translates well to all the other web apps, too:

“Makes you wonder how often web apps miss the point and show people the cable instead of the plug: Showing a list of features when people want benefits. Telling facts when people want stories. […]”

The MIT Media Lab’s John Maeda lives at the intersection of technology and art — a place that can get very complicated. Here, he talks about paring down to basics, and how he creates clean, elegant art, websites and web tools. In his book Laws of Simplicity, he offers 10 rules and 3 keys for simple living and working —
but in this talk, he boils it down to one simply delightful way to be.

Entertaining tidbit for a Friday, eh? Have a great weekend.
(Thanks, swissmiss)

position: absolute is celebrating its second birthday. Well, it was actually yesterday, and I’d been anticipating it for weeks, but in the last minute I actually managed to forget. Sorry, p:a, I’ve been busy, you know, raking in the big dollars to feed you. Love ya.

When I started this blog to play around with WordPress on my little home server, I never expected it would have over 500 daily readers one day. It’s been two years now and we’re still here, and I’ve learned a lot in the process. I’d like to thank every one of you for your feedback, your post comments, and for sticking around, having me in your feed reader. You’re what makes this whole thing worth it, because, well, what’s a design blog without its readers? So, thank you, and to another two years!

Elements of Design is a design showcase that I think is a lot more useful in an everyday work environment than most of the others. Why? Because instead of showing us complete designs, Elements of Design showcases solutions to common design problems in a quick and concise manner. Among that are things like comment forms, date pickers, search boxes, pullquotes and headlines. They seem like small elements but often they are those parts of a design that take up the most time. I get caught up on these details a lot, especially when I’m trying to achieve optimal usability.

While I’m at it, I’d like to (yet again) recommend Defensive Design, a book that, in my opinion, offers a great deal of insight and solutions for bullet-proof user guidance.

(Thanks for the tip, neck).