Alex Hardy

Line Rider is a Flash game that I only discovered today for the first time. Shame on me for being so out of touch .

It was originally created by Boštjan Cadež, a Slovenian university student, in September 2006. Since its release it has gained cult status via players sharing videos of their tracks on YouTube and has been viewed over 16 million times!

The game itself is simple, but fiendishly addictive. You don’t control the sledger, you draw the track. Then let him go. That’s all. It might sound simple, but getting the little guy to do one jump without taking a spill is tricky.

Play it, then you’ll understand.

Variations on this theme for the Wii and Nintendo DS are in development.

I love finding these little stories. They remind me that the web is a unique place, where a good idea can reach the world.

Web design and development is a world of endless debates on what is the best (or perhaps the least bad) way of achieving your goals. One such topic is screen space, and arises as we work on the Refresh design.

800×600? Higher? Fixed-width? Fluid? etc…

I’ll cut to the chase: we’re going to design the site in fixed-width format for resolutions of 1024×768 (1024px) and up. This decision has certain implications, and isn’t one that I take lightly. I’ll attempt to explain myself…

A current rule of thumb says that somewhere between five and ten percent of web users are on resolutions of 800×600 (800px) or less. Some would say that’s rather a lot of people to inconvenience by making your website wider than their window.

I would say that this is a matter of optimising graphic design, not accessibility. Requiring the minority on small screens to scroll horizontally a little bit does not make the site inaccessible to them.

Furthermore, in my experience and opinion it doesn’t necessarily follow that a site’s traffic will reflect that general statistic.

Under most circumstances I’d err on the side of caution and recommend a design that was no wider than 760 pixels. This fits 800px with an allowance for scrollbars and an amount of screen furniture. That is what I have done on this website.

Stephen and I have formed a clear idea of who we perceive the audience to be for this site. At least a large part of it is people very much like ourselves. We have also considered how to approach marketing it and the kind of recognition we want it to gain. The probability that users will be on 800px seems to vary from merely unlikely to practically inconceivable.

I think it’s fair to say that we have reached the painful part of the design process. The part where you are tantalisingly close to arriving at a design that you are very happy with, but feel far away at the same time. At this point a re-evaluation of previously assumed constraints and a fresh pair of eyes may revolutionise the project.

I’ve received Ste’s fifth concept design, done some work of my own and fired it back. He’s going on holiday from Thursday and will be back in a couple of weeks. I plan on relaxing too. I think that when we get back together we’ll both be re-energised and the look-and-feel will come together quickly. Once a few key sections of the site are visualised it’s full steam ahead.

If a) you have a PlayStation 2 b) you’re thinking of buying a PS3 or even c) you don’t like games but simply fancy making an easy buck on eBay a year or so from now, buy Okami.

Mere weeks after release to critical acclaim, it is nowhere to be seen on the UK all-formats chart. This proves two things:

1. The British public prefer to play garbage like “Little Britain: The Videogame.”
2. Okami will surely join Panzer Dragoon Saga, Ico etc in the exclusive club called “Ignored at launch, fought for on eBay.”

Don’t say I didn’t tell you.

I use Firefox as my primary web browser. This is partly down to it doing a satisfactory job of rendering web pages, but also because I use Chris Pederick’s Web Developer Extension and Google Browser Sync to keep my bookmarks in step between work and home Macs.

Lately though, my Firefox had kinda lost the plot. Browser Sync had stopped working properly and I was even getting rendering problems on webpages that I wasn’t seeing on other computers.

So it was time to un-holster AppZapper for the first time. We all love the drag and drop simplicity of installing most software under Mac OS X, but removing it is another matter. Apps distribute preferences and other support files around your system that aren’t removed just by trashing the app.

AppZapper bills itself as “the uninstaller Apple forgot” – drag an application onto its window and it will identify the related components. A press of the “Zap” button causes a cute screen flash and all that junk is moved to the trash.

$12.95 promises free upgrades for life, for when a fresh start isn’t so simple.

My newly installed copy of Firefox 2.0.0.2 is working fine.

My friend and colleague Stephen Meehan has posted a set of logo designs for his rebrand of D3 Creative.

Some of them are reminiscent of ideas that fell by the wayside when developing the Refresh logo, but just because they weren’t chosen for that project doesn’t mean good ideas should go to waste!

I know that Ste would appreciate some feedback on his work, so head on over there and give him your 2¢ worth.

… and in with the new. Behold, my first crack at a WordPress theme .

It took me a little longer than I originally estimated. This is mainly because I’ve found more enjoyable things to do with my spare time this last week than editing PHP and CSS files. An “About Me” section with a colophon will follow soon.

I’ve gone for Simple with this version and haven’t been too ambitious where it came to dissecting the code. Inevitably you have to get your hands a bit mucky to achieve what you want, so here’s a rundown of the main things I’ve done:

• There’s nothing at all to be gained by changing all the ids and classes in the theme to match those that are used in the site’s main CSS file. I cleared out the theme’s CSS file and reassigned the styles I’d created to the existing hooks.
• Inserted my navigation block and the Mint JS include into ‘header.php’.
• Inserted my footer block into ‘footer.php’.
• I’m using Automattic’s sidebar widgets, with the following tweaks:
  • Added span tags (for CSS image replacement) around the ‘Archives’ and ‘Categories’ titles in ‘/wp-content/plugins/widgets/widgets.php’.
  • Linked to my RSS feed around the ‘Recent Posts’ title in the same file.
  • Added my little buddy badges to ’sidebar.php’
• I added the get_sidebar() function to ’single.php’, so it would be viewable on post pages.
• Minor tweaks to ‘comments.php’ and ‘404.php’.

I’ve tested this theme under Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox, Safari and Opera so I’m satisfied that it works well.

I’ve got ideas for my first redesign already though, which I intend to start work on once Refresh is up and running.

I’ve been thinking about why the BBC’s iPlayer is so irksome.

It isn’t so much that a lot of the content will originate on Macs, but they apparently can’t be bothered to make it available unless you’re on Windows. Or even that despite the irony, they are jumping on the (rather tired) ‘i’ prefix bandwagon to imply modernity…

I think it comes down to branding.

One of the functions of branding is to establish “brand values.” Human values that is (such as caring, cool or sex-appeal), to confer upon a company or product. The desired effect is that we will identify with these values and aspire to attain them, buying the product in pursuit of that goal.

It’s in our nature to anthropomorphise. We ascribe human personalities to everything from companies to our pets, our cars, to even the frost on our windows. But there lies the rub – when a company presents itself to us with human values we treat it as such. If they go on to fail to meet our expectations, or otherwise behave in a way that is inconsistent with character, we feel it as a human betrayal.

I’m a child of the 80s, so I remember when the BBC was channels one and two (of four) on my parent’s telly, and a handful of radio stations. No BBC3, no BBCi, no podcasts. I imagine the BBC as a faithful old civil servant, tirelessly creating news programs, documentaries, great childrens’ shows etc.

When I read a story on the BBC’s website with sloppy journalism, when I see an advert for a program I fancy only to find it’s on a BBC channel I don’t have, it annoys me. When I read that an exciting new service won’t work on my modern computer and broadband internet connection, I’m pissed off.

I gladly pay my license fee. I’m working my way through the Planet Earth series on DVD at the moment. It’s a masterpiece, the likes of which commercial stations will probably never produce because there’s more money in “Extreme Celebrity Self-Degredation 2007”. The BBC is a great asset to this country but one that we are made to pay for, in a manner comparable to paying council tax.

I expect access to every part of it, but if that doesn’t happen it will only be the latest let-down.

A petition has been placed on the Prime Minister’s website regarding the BBC’s nascent iPlayer service. iPlayer will let users watch shows online or download them to a computer for later viewing. The petition objects to the BBC’s intention to deliver this service exclusively in Windows Media (to provide a DRM framework). It requires that they deliver a platform agnostic solution.

The BBC plans to launch an on-demand TV service which uses software that will only be available to Windows users. The BBC should not be allowed to show commercial bias in this way, or to exclude certain groups of the population from using its services. The BBC say that they provide “services for everyone, free of commercial interests and political bias”. Locking the new service’s users into Microsoft Windows whilst ignoring those members of society who use other operating systems does not fit in with the BBC’s ethos and should not be allowed.

I’ve signed this petition, and whatever your platform of choice I urge you to do the same.

You don’t see a gig for ages, then you go to three in a week . Steph and I carried on our crazy gig-going week with two visits to the Manchester Apollo. I have to say, I prefer the Apollo to the M.E.N. Arena. It’s a smaller, more intimate experience and the decayed grandeur of an old theatre – turned gig venue gives it a great atmosphere.

The Fratellis – 19^th February 2007

Band frontman Jon Fratelli seems quite modest, thanking the audience on the band’s behalf for their recent Brit Award and went on to say that they were unused to being so far away from the crowd. It’s not that long since they were playing clubs – in fact we missed a chance to see them at the Late Room before they were famous.

They were a lot of fun, projecting artwork and playing tracks from their debut album Costello Music along with some new material. Towards the end I was beginning to tire of the way that many of their tracks sound so similar, but they didn’t outstay their welcome.

They encored with a cover of Goldfrapp’s Ooh La La (which they had previously performed for Radio 1’s Live Lounge) and a message on-screen “Thank Fuck for the Fratellis”. Indeed.

Digression: I saw Goldfrapp at last year’s O2 Wireless Festival, where they were definitely one of the highlights.

The Kaiser Chiefs – 21^st February

I’m not a fan of the Kaiser Chiefs. I basically went because Steph wanted to see them. When I hear them on the radio, I find their music brash and annoying. So I’m quite surprised to say that I enjoyed myself.

Those same tunes work very well in a gig – rousing, repetitive jump and clap and shout songs that got the crowd far more worked up than the Fratellis managed (the photos testify to this). Ricky Wilson knows how to work a crowd, and dived into them at one point. The security staff struggled to extract him and replace him on stage, but he kept singing all through it .

I won’t be going out to buy their Employment album, or their new album which is out soon. I do recommend seeing them live though.

I’ve been trying to find an explanation for the colour shifts we experience when exporting from Photoshop. When we preview graphics in ImageReady or open them in our Mac browsers, they appear noticeably washed out. We found the process tremendously frustrating when building the John Smith’s website, and we needed a solution.

To be honest we’d blamed Photoshop, but it turns out the Mac itself is behind it. Ironically the problem does not arise because Photoshop is stupid, but because it is clever.

Now, professional colour management is a black art that I do not claim to know. I’ve been able to gather some information, and I’ll relate my understanding:

The Problem

• Gamma is a colour setting that is most noticeable in the mid-tones.
• The Mac ships to this day with a display gamma of 1.8. This is due to its print heritage which predates the dominance of Windows and widespread use of the Internet.
• Windows displays colours in sRGB (standard Red Green Blue) with a gamma of 2.2. This setting is a de facto standard shared by TV, scanners, digital cameras and the vast majority of computers on the Internet - which are not colour managed. This is why graphics on Windows appear darker and with more contrast than on the Mac.
• Photoshop is clever enough to display an image in 2.2 gamma for editing.
• However, it can’t possibly know how to preview your image when saving for web, because there is no single display profile for the web.
• So it takes its best guess, which is to render the image to your monitor profile (if you are on a Mac, the odds are its gamma setting is 1.8).
• You will observe a colour shift in the Save For Web window, but confusingly not when you reopen the image in Photoshop (see fourth point).
• Open the graphic in a non colour managed application (like a web browser) and the shift is visible.

The Solution

As is often the case with technology, there is no 100% Right Answer, but a series of steps and choices. You have to decide for yourself which you consider to be the lesser of evils.

Firstly, you must ensure that the working RGB space in Photoshop is sRGB IEC61966-2.1 (Edit menu / Colour Settings). The easiest way to do this would be to select an Internet preset. I’m using “Europe Web/Internet.”

Work away! What you see is what Windows users will see (barring monitor variances which can’t be accounted for). You can preview how your work will appear to Mac users by selecting (View menu / Proof Setup / Macintosh RGB) and turning Proof Colours on. There’s our colour shift…

Now we come to export and where we make our choice. There are those, such as Don MacAskill of SmugMug, who recommend setting your monitor profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1 for an easy life. Your monitor profile will match your working space, so hey presto! No shift!

In practise, I don’t like this method. It produces an undesirable blue cast on my iMac’s screen. Buried away in Aperture’s online support docs, Apple’s recommendation is:

Unless you have a color management expert instructing you otherwise, select a 2.2 gamma and a D65 white point.

I did this – From (System Preferences / Displays / Colour) I walked through the “Display Calibrator Assistant” and created another monitor profile called “iMac calibrated.”

This is a hotly debated step. Print professionals argue that this is not a solution for them. They go on to contend that sacrificing colour quality on your Mac screen to see things in the same way that the masses do is unwise. Better to accept the colour shift.

I agree with MacAskill, that Apple is pleasing an expert minority at the majority’s expense. Print professionals are skilled at tweaking their colour settings, while the public in general are not – they just want things to work. It all seems a bit pointless if you can’t view your own work the way you intended it. I’ve retained the new profile subject to further experiments.

As Apple gets more consumer focused I expect they’ll quietly start to ship with 2.2 gamma by default.