The Hickensian

This just in: I’m leaving Opera.

Before I go any further, I need to make this very clear. I’m not leaving because I unhappy working for them, or any such rubbish. Neither did we come to blows over 42 different shades of red. Opera as company, and as individuals, have bent backwards to accommodate my remote working ways, and it’s been nothing but a fruitful and joyous time. I’ve made many friends, and it’s been everything I hoped it would be and more. I could very easily carry on for as long as they would have me.

But, I’ve got that itch. I’m sure a lot of designers feel the same way when they work on long term projects, and that itch is the desire simply to ‘do something different’. That is the sole reason. In fact, I’m hoping that we will still be working together in the future, it’s just that my work for Opera won’t be full-time as it is now.

I ‘finish’ full-time at Opera in late April. The reason for publishing this post now, rather than then, is that I need to get word around. I’ve been ‘off the market’ for a rather long time (looong before I started at Opera), and I’m now looking at an empty diary for the rest of the year. I have a few ideas, but very few plans at this stage, other than speaking at Future of Web Design London in May.

So if you’re looking for a icon/interface/logo/website designer or even character illustrator (the Mailchimp mascot has become the new ‘animal on fire round a globe’ request!) from May onwards, then please drop me an email. Thanks!

The last thing I needed was more choice in apps for keeping a ‘Design Scrapbook’, but that’s what’s happened with Zootool. At first glance, it looked like just another FFFFound, Ember or Img Spark, but it turns out it’s much more than that. The developer, Bastian, told me to think of it as more of a visual Delicious. Once I got into that mindset it made more sense.

Zootool ‘lassos’ not only images, but documents (like PDFs), videos, and pages (not complete pages yet) and stores them in your ‘zoo’. Content can be organised into ‘packs’ (folders) and as you would expect, it stores the original URL, and offers fields to change the title, and add tags or a description. It also provides integration with services like Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, along with short urls, for sharing what you’ve found.

So, rather than having favourites being stored on different sites like Delicious, Vimeo, YouTube etc, they’re all in one place. In some ways I think of it as a huffduffer for anything that isn’t audio.

What’s particularly interesting is how well it’s been engineered to act like a Mac desktop app. Double clicking or pressing space bar on the thumbnails, takes you to the detail view, just as you would expect. Multiple thumbnails can be shift-selected, and to put content into a pack, you can drag and drop it. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I think it’s rather spiffing! It works so well it feels like it’s been a part of my workflow for long time.

I do have a couple of concerns however. With any system that has tags, I never feel it’s worth the effort of tagging unless I can be sure that the tags are portable in some way. I can download a bookmark file from Zootool (with delicious tags), but should the service ever go down, all that data and effort is lost. This is where desktop apps like Leap that support OpenMeta win. I feel this especially in tools like Evernote and Littlesnapper – is it really worth tagging if I then change system in a few months? The answer is no – I’m tagging less and less for this very reason.

It also exists online only. Part of what I love about Evernote (which isn’t really a comparable service BTW), is that it’s everywhere, even when I don’t have a connection. However, Zootool still has a place in my life, even if it isn’t used as a design scrapbook.

If you haven’t tried Zootool yet, I recommend you give it at least a few minutes of your life. While you’re there, here’s my zoo

How often have you read a snide, bumptious or haughty comment where you feel the only reaction could be a raised handbag, accompanied by the high-pitched mocking call of “oooOOOooooh!”?

If you’re not familiar with the work of Vic and Bob, the chances are that it’s never. Well, hopefully that will soon change, as Hicksdesign has launched a site to fulfill that need you never knew you had to “oooOOooooh!”:

Now whenever you see such a comment, you point them in the right direction: oo00.eu (2 oh’s, 2 zeros and a european union). Obviously, feel free to use it on me if say some deserving! ;)

If you’re still confused, this video might help explain the origins of the raised handbag as a retort, (before going on to become a surreal contest):

Playing catch-up

This little side-project was the perfect opportunity to play with new CSS3 toys and HTML5 tags that I haven’t had time to experiment with yet:

CSS Animations: In any webkit browser (Safari, Omniweb, Chrome), the handbag will actually be raised, waved at you, and then lowered. There is a separate animation for the shadow underneath the bag. It’s a little clunky, but that suits the context.
CSS Media Queries: Just as this blog does, the layout changes when the viewport is reduced smaller than 700px. These style rules also govern layout on mobiles (only tested on iPhone so far though). Not currently supported in Camino or IE, but work in everything else.
HTML5 structural tags: Added footer, header and section, with simple javascript to allow their use in IE. Not forgetting to add display:block to each to compensate for lack of browser default styles.
HTML5 audio: In Opera 10.5 (Win), Chrome and Firefox, you should get the .ogg file, and in Safari, the mp3. It won’t be in time with the animation sadly, but I’m hoping that’s something that will be possible in the future. Thanks to the Webble Millers for providing their oooohs.
Web Fonts: Type goodness is supplied via Typekit, namely the gorgeous slab-serif Adelle. Currently a no-show in Opera, but hopefully once 10.5 final is out, Typekit will update their sniffing.

So depending on which browser you use, you’ll get a slightly different experience, but the same content.

Leigh picked up a little gem from an antiques and curios shop in Burford, titled “The Internet A to Z”. This little tome was published in the year of our Lord 2000 (so possibly written in 1999), and it was interesting to see what difference 10 years makes.

In particular, there were 2 very relevant entries:

Opera

…and then iCab…

…ouch!