Microsoft Office 12

After my first look at the screenshots of Microsoft Office 12 I was disgusted and thought wtf? But after I watched the promo video and the other stuff on the net, I understood where they are heading. It may not be very good, but I think it will be a big improvement over the previous overloaded UI design. But what really hit me is, that Microsoft is at least trying to change some UI stuff fundamentally.

I mean look at Keynote and Pages. What do we have? Inspectors and Palettes and much too big toolbars. That doesn’t work. It’s annoying in Photoshop, it’s annoying in OmniGraffle and is annyoing in Pages and keynote. Ever tried to edit a keynote presentation on a 12’’ powerbook on 1024×768? No way you can adjust your window setting in a pleasant way to work. Inspectors are old, and while an quite ok idea, the screen clutter they create is really a pain in the as. I really would like to see Apple to innovate in that area. Microsoft did in its own way, by forcing the inspectors in the upper toolbar row and making this row very context sensitive. I think its a big improvement and a step in the right direction. It will be very interesting what the next Office for mac will look like.

New Website, new Logo, new Language

Hi everybody! Hallo zusammen!

Our new website is up, featuring our new Logo! I hope you like it, comments are very welcome.
Seit Gestern ist unsere neue Website online. Feedback ist erwünscht.

The Logo was designed by Frank Röpke of the DesignerInNot and we are very happy with it.
Das Logo ist von Frank Röpke, einer der DesignerInNot und wir sind sehr zufrieden.

And we finally made our homepage and the SubEthaEdit page bilingual. As is this blog. As I know not many of my readers are bilingual, so I added 2 rss feeds – one for all german articles and one for all english articles. Articles like these with weird bilinguality will show up in both feeds.
Endlich haben wir auch deutsche web-seiten. Sowohl die Firmen- als auch die SubEthaEdit Seiten sind jetzt zweisprachig. Und da ich auch gerne mal deutsch oder englisch blogge, hab ich mein Blog jetzt um die Kategorien english und deutsch erweitert, zu denen ich auch eigene RSS feeds gemacht habe (ganz unten auf der Seite und rechts in der Seitenleiste). Zweisprachige Einträge wie dieser erscheinen in beiden feeds.

Back to blogging...

Hi everybody!

I’ve been quite busy the last few month to get my university degree and therefore neglected my blog somewhat. This will change again now. With the degree in my pocket I will concentrate on TheCodingMonkeys and my other ventures. And on my way I will blog along regularly again. So stay tuned!

Pom Pom Pom Pom mit TheCodingMonkeys

Pom Pom Pom Pom ist ein witziger deutscher Mac Podcast. Und wir waren diesmal dabei. War ein Riesenspaß und ich hoffe ihr habt soviel Spaß beim anhören wie “Affen die coden” beim machen hatten. Wir haben das mit einem netten binauralen Micro auf einem Basketball gemounted aufgenommen, so dass mbo rechts ist, map links und ich in der mitte.

We have been on the german podcast Pom Pom Pom Pom , if you understand german, check it out. We did it with an binaural microphone mounted on a basketball, mbo is on the right, map on the left and I am in the middle.

New iPod...

Just to be the first to have said it: no more firewire for your iPoddy… so no new iPoddy for my old PowerBooky… (30GB via USB 1.0? don’t think so).

And no more remote control, which is equally bad for me in my car. So definitely no new iPod for me anytime soon.

Finally: Xara will come to the mac!

After years of begging the Xara people for making a Mac version they really will do it. More so, they will make it Open Source. For Linux too. I hope this isn’t a hoax. Finally a decent creative vector graphics package will come to the Mac. For me it is christmas already…

Schwarz Gelb verspielt jegliche Glaubwürdigkeit...

Nachdem Sie mit Einführung des Kompetenzteams endlich Inhalte hatten, die über das “Durchregieren” aus “einem Guss” hinaus gingen, wird jetzt bereits wieder auf Distanz gegangen. Anstatt Schröder gekonnt in die Defensive zu bringen, hat Merkel sich die Angriffsfläche geboten, die er brauchte. Und das heißt nicht, dass das Konzept Kirchhof nicht auch sozial verträglich umgesetzt werden könnte. Nur, dass es an Vision seitens der CDU fehlte. Jetzt wird versucht zu retten was zu retten ist, und damit der Kahn ganz versenkt. Stoiber distanziert sich und die FDP beweist wieder einmal Ihre undurchdachte Wechselhaftigkeit: So werden die offenen Arme, die Krichhof entgegengestreckt wurden, wieder direkt vor der Brust verschränkt. Die einzig wirkliche Vision wird zu Grabe getragen. Jetzt haben die Wähler, genau wie schon das Bundesverfassungsgericht, die Wahl zwischen Pest und Cholera. Eine Rot-Grüne Regierung die nur zaghaft in die Gänge kommt und wegen fehlender Mehrheit im Bundesrat nicht voll Handlungsfähig ist, oder eine Schwarz-Gelbe Regierung, die auch keine wirklichen Konzepte und Positionen hat. Dafür aber eine tolle Beziehung zu Busch haben wird, und überhaupt alles irgendwie anders und natürlich besser machen wird. Der Iran ist uns sicher. Eins aber kann schon jetzt gesagt werden: Die neuentdeckte Ehrlichkeit, dem Wähler vorher zu sagen was nachher passiert, traut Merkel schon jetzt keiner mehr zu. Wieder nix geworden mit der Stärkung des Vertrauens in die Politik.

Another Mac OS X inconsistency: list views

When I read wil shipley’s rant about his treo I discovered that you can put groups in groups in address book. Seriously. Just drag a group into another group in the left most column. What happens? Now you have an entry for the group in the “Name” column. Super. And what happens if you select it? nothing. literally nothing. To view the content of this group you have to double-click it, and then the group is shown in the Group column.

Ok, thats obviously no great interface, as there is no indication anywhere that you can groups in groups, moreover there is no good way to edit such aggregations of groups. What does Safari in the same situation? If you look at the bookmark management, its somewhat better and somewhat worse. First, in safari, the left column has no multiple selection. Second you can’t drag a bookmark group into another one by drag and drop inside the left column, since the list is ordered, and hence only gives you the possibility to rearrange. If you want to add a folder to a subfolder, you have to do this with two windows and drag and drop from the left column to the right column of the other window. But then you do what you do always in safari, you move the folder, you don’t link it, like you do in address book. And, because you can’t multiple select the left column, you have to do this one by one, if you want to move many folder in one subfolder. If you want to do the opposite, you can use the multiple selection in the right column to move them all at once. And now for the better in Safari: in the right column you get a nice outline view, that shows folders and bookmarks nicely.

If you’re interested in more inconsitencies in list views look at this great article . As far as I am concerned we all should file bug against most of this behaviour. At least to allow for gradual unifying changes, like safari having multiple selection in the left column of bookmark management.

TheCodingMonkeys on Cocoa Radio

As “Blake Burris suggested, I wrote cocoa haiku:

Drinking Cocoa.
Being objective.
Using Java? .Not

---

KITT or RoboCop -
Strange Comparison you think?
Begin 'Cocoa Programming'.

If you’re wondering why I got into poetry, It’s at about 31:30 in the podcast. We had great fun doing it, and hope you enjoy it.

Share and Enjoy!

Window handling in Mac OS X is so inconsistent...

If you use the cycle through window shortcut in Mac OS X (look under system preferences → keyboard & mouse → keyboard shortcuts for the shortcut) then if only one window was in front of the other applications, it stays that way. The current window moves back behind the others, when you cycle through to the next. However, If you reverse cycle through application windows (hold shift), then all the windows you cycle through stay on top of all other applications. Inconsistent and getting on my nerves constantly, as I always work with more than one Application. This really has to improve in the next Mac OS X versions, but I really doubt it. Since Apple seems to care less and less about good consistent UI behaviour…