tools-and-technology

Update 26 Feb 2018: This post was written about Scrivener 2 some years ago. While there is still a Scrivener 3 learning curve for anyone new to the application, the particulars are different in important areas. Overall, I think Scrivener 3 represents a huge improvement. For my writing—and editing, and prep for publication—I’ve been using Scrivener. It’s not an intuitive app by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it feels like something of a patchwork of basic functionality with miscellaneous add-ons....

When it comes to Open Source software, forking is a feature! Anil Dash said it well: There are several related technical concepts that can answer to the name “fork”, but the one I reference here is the dramatic moment when a software project undergoes a schism on ideological or technical grounds. Instead of merely taking their ball and going home, those who forked were taking a copy of your ball and going to a new playground....

So last night, I saw that John Gruber had favorited one of my Flickr photos from 2008: a screenshot of the Google Maps app on the iPhone. Hmm, what was that about? It turns out quite a bit. I found Gruber’s Daring Fireball post pointing out what appears to be Samsung’s alteration and reuse of a screenshot image I created in 2008. Samsung’s alteration and reuse of a screenshot image I created in 2008....

You theme with the mark-up you have, not the mark-up you’d like to have. That’s the essential truth that designers and front-end developers new to Drupal need to understand. You don’t get to construct your pages from scratch, building out essentials, never a wasted div, never an extraneous class. No, you have to flip the entire process around. With Drupal you’re getting markup shot at you from a firehose, and as a themer you need to sop it all up and make it pretty....

I love my apps! I have an iPad and a Droid. I used to have an iPhone (before I decided I wanted my phone to also be able to make calls). I love apps! They’re efficient and fast. Websites on mobile browsers can be difficult to manage. The apps can connect with internet data, but do it with a much improved user experience. No doubt. When it comes to mobile at least, a well-designed app beats a well-designed website 99% of the time....