Macromedia introduces their [new site]1 which is almost entirely Flash. I understand the need to practice what they preach, but it ain’t dere yet. And it doesn’t work well in Safari and Opera. Aren’t many of Macromedia’s strongest proponents Mac users? Here’s [a Business Week story]2 with more.

UIE: .[Interview with Eric Meyer]1 The usual breakdown in thinking comes when we think “usable” means “looks exactly the same.” That’s the hurdle most people have to overcome. To me, “usable” means “the content is readable and easily understood.” The page can look a little less sophisticated in a six-year-old browser—that doesn’t strike me as a

I’ve been saying this for a while, but when the New York Times starts chiming in, it’s official. “The toy box has turned into a toolbox.” Indeed.

I’ve completely rewritten the CSS implementation of this site. I’m heading toward a structural markup and CSS only layout. For now, I’m down to just a couple of tables for layout. I’ve removed every table attribute into CSS rules and cleaned up a bit. At this point, I’m not spending too much time on how it looks in older or buggy browsers. If things look especially goofy in your particular browser, email me with details.

Jeffrey Zeldman (A List Apart) offers these tips for web designers: Think about the audience first. Minimize bandwidth. Give each site a personal voice and a real point of view. The audience will connect with that. Do what’s actually needed. Don’t do things simply because you can. Be entertaining. Inducing boredom is not a plan for growth. In most cases, use Web standards and test your work at http://validator.

John Udell comments on Groove and team blogging. Reminded me of how cool Groove really is. Unfortunately, I can’t get behind any “collaborative” tool that only runs on a single platform. Some of my best friends are Mac users.

I must’ve spend 4 hours trying to install, configure and connect to an LDAP server (OpenLDAP) on a FreeBSD box around here. During the process, for one reason or another, I ended up having to upgrade and reconfigure PHP, Berkely DB and who knows what else. It’s running and I can connect to it, but adding nodes just won’t work. Oh well, I didn’t need the sleep anyway.

Jamie Zawinski writes, or rants actually, about Linux usability. He’s right. “So I gave up on that, and tried to install gstreamer (http://gstreamer.net/). Get this. Their propose ‘solution' for distributing binaries on Red Hat systems? They point you at an RPM that installs apt, the Debian package system! Yeah, that’s a good idea, I want to struggle with two competing packaging systems on my machine just to install a single app.

Very funny Linux version of the Apple “switch” ads.

I’m rather impressed with the way Macromedia is handling the less-that-stellar response to their new web site. In sort of a “oh-that-was-just-a-beta” move, they’ve released beta 2, which is a vast improvement over the original release. They’re documenting what they’ve learned. The summary is here. Excerpts: First we learned (again) that itÂ’s the experience (stupid). You canÂ’t learn that lesson enough. Our first key lesson from Beta 1 is that there is a distinct

David Stutz leaves Microsoft – and some advice. Lots of bits about the onslaught of the open source movement. The last line sums it up nicely… “Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!”

You knew this had to happen. “We do view Google more and more as a competitor. We believe that we can provide consumers with a better product and a better user experience. That’s something that we’re actively looking at doing,” Bob Visse, director of marketing for Microsoft’s MSN Internet services division, said.