JeffCroft.com

Link // 08.27.2008 // 2:43 PM // 0 CommentsMatt Brett redesign

Matt has redesigned his personal site. It’s brown and pick, so you know I love it. Matt’s stuff is always full of great texture, good typography, and awesome little details. Check it out. Visit site »

Link // 08.27.2008 // 8:37 AM // 0 CommentsUbiquity for Firefox

The latest from the amazing Aza Raskin, Ubiquity for Firefox is sort of a Quicksilver for your browser. Definitely cool stuff. Visit site »

Link // 08.26.2008 // 7:28 PM // 0 CommentsDjango in Linux Magazine

Frank Wiles has a nice piece on Django in the latest issue of Linux Magazine. He talks to Django lead developer Jacob Kaplan-Moss and covers all the basics. Both Frank and Jacob worked for the Lawrence Journal-World back when I did and have since moved on. In fact, Frank led the team that built a very cool Perl web framework called Gantry (http://www.usegantry.org/). It’s a little known bit of trivia that the Lawrence Journal-World actually is home to not one, but TWO open source web frameworks. Not bad for a small-town newspaper in Kansas, huh?

Not god enough for you? How about this: Linux Magazine is also based in Lawrence. :) Visit site »

Link // 08.26.2008 // 7:13 PM // 0 CommentsDjango 1.0 release party

Django 1.0’s release party will be at the Tied House in Mountain View on Saturday, September 6th at 7pm. I totally wish I could be there. Don’t feel sorry for me, though — I’ll be trying to find some hot karaoke action in London at the time. :) Visit site »

Link // 08.26.2008 // 5:26 PM // 1 CommentLas Vegas Sun Weather

Really nice design work on The Las Vegas Sun’s new weather page. And of course, I’d be remiss to not point out that it’s Ellington and Django-powered. ;) Visit site »

Link // 08.26.2008 // 7:56 AM // 0 CommentsGarrett: Why does it take so long to update iPhone applications?

I’ve wondered the same many times. Most apps are smaller than a typical MP3 — and yet it takes probably 10 times as long to install an app than it does to copy over a song. Why? Visit site »

Link // 08.25.2008 // 6:30 PM // 0 CommentsDjango comments app refactored (finally)

Since the first day I started working with Django in January of 2006, Jacob told me that the comments app would be rewritten before Django 1.0. It’s become something of a joke to me. Whenever someone says a feature is coming in a future version of Django, I throw out the classic, “oh yeah, along with the comments app refactor, right?”

Well today, that vaporware solidified into something real. The new version is documented, combines the old Comment and FreeComment models, and makes use of all the modern Django APIs that didn't exist when the first version was written. It looks quite nice.

I’m really curious to see just how many people who already have comments on their Django site go to the trouble of switching to the new app. I know I probably won’t. The trouble is, the old app was so — well, old — that almost everyone has written their own, or adopted something like Eric’s django-threaddedcomments. While it looks like it’s pretty easy to upgrade from the old comments app, I’m not sure anyone is really using the old comments app — and switching from custom apps, like the one I’ve written, wouldn’t be nearly as easy.

I think I’ll use the new django.contrib.comments going forward for sites that it feels appropriate for, and I'll probably steal a few ideas from it for my own comments app -- but migrating jeffcroft.com to it just seems like more trouble than it's worth.

That’s definitely not a dig on the new system though — like I said, it looks very nice. Kudos go to Thejaswi Puthraya, who did most of the works on the new system as part of Google’s Summer of Code, and Jacob Kaplan-Moss, who I know has had this thing on his radar for a very, very long time. Visit site »

Link // 08.24.2008 // 8:32 PM // 0 Commentsnorthtemple: journal of design

The Northtemple Journal of Design is a periodic design journal, published online and in print, on topics covering the entire field of design. Starting this month, we’ll publish articles twice a month online, written by members of our team of 29 designers, as well as guest authors and design experts. Every quarter we will collect the past quarter’s articles and publish them in a more permanent medium.

Sounds like a plan. Cameron wrote the first article, and it’s great. Visit site »

Link // 08.24.2008 // 8:28 PM // 1 CommentDjango Documentation

The Django documentation has been entirely refactored. It’s much more readable online, now. I like. Visit site »

Link // 08.24.2008 // 8:27 PM // 0 CommentsThe Python Property Builtin

Adam Gomaa explains the Python property built-in and some clever ways to use it with Django. I particularly like the caching-of-URLs suggestion at the end of the article. Visit site »

Link // 08.23.2008 // 9:29 AM // 0 CommentsPro CSS Techniques: by Jeff Croft, Ian Lloyd and Dan Rubin

Dan made us a site for Pro CSS Techniques. Sure, the book was released almost two years ago — but better late than never, right? The site Dan designed is beautiful. Ian and I couldn’t ask for a better promo for our book. Thanks, Rubin! Visit site »

Link // 08.22.2008 // 3:31 PM // 1 CommentThe vexed question of punctuation

Some great typesetting rules here. Most of them don’t really apply to the web (that is to say, they should, but we simply don’t have the control to allow for them), but there are a few that do. I was particularly excited by the rules for emoticons, which I’ve always wondered about. I’d created this rule for myself; I’m glad to see someone else agrees:

A smiley may coincide with a closing bracket (given that it is preceded by an opening one :-).

(Note to Sara Flemming: your ass-backwards open-paren-colon smileys destroy all meaning these rules may have had (:). See!?

Via Dan Mall. Visit site »

Link // 08.22.2008 // 1:15 PM // 1 CommentJon Tan: Typeface != Font

The difference between “typeface” and “font” is one of those things where you know it doesn’t really matter when people use them interchangeably, but when you know the difference, it still grates on your nerves to hear them used incorrectly. By the way, if I haven’t said it before: Jon Tan’s site has some of the best web typography around. Check it out. Visit site »

Link // 08.22.2008 // 9:17 AM // 1 CommentSimon Willison joins Guardian News & Media

Former Yahoo and Lawrence Journal World developer Simon Willison has been recruited by Guardian News & Media as a software architect.

Big congrats to Simon, one of the smartest and nicest guys this industry has to offer. Sounds like a great gig. I can’t help but wonder: will we see a Django-powered Guardian in the future? ;) Visit site »

Link // 08.21.2008 // 11:25 PM // 2 CommentsMy first Django pluggable: django-mailfriend

I finally got the balls to put some of my code out there. This simple app allows for “e-mail this to a friend” functionality for any instance of any model in your Django database. If it sounds interesting, check it out. I’d love feedback. As you know, I’m a designer first, coder second, so I’m quite sure some of my code is not as optimal as it could be. Hopefully someone will find it useful. Visit site »