A preview of my new project, T8Writer

Since late March, I’ve been working a little application: a browser-based word processor accessed using a bookmarklet, called (for now) T8Writer. This project was inspired by a cool piece of software called Ommwriter. Ommwriter is a minimalist word processor designed to minimize distraction and create an ambiance conducive to uninterrupted writing. Unfortunately, Ommwriter is only available on Macs, and I don’t have one. I couldn’t find a comparable application for Windows and, anyway, I like the idea of a web-based take on this theme. Because T8Writer uses a bookmarklet, it can run on top of any open page; you’ll be able to click to launch it from any page, so you can get to writing as soon as the inspiration strikes.

There are plenty of details to discuss, which I’ll do as I get closer to launching the app, but for now a little video preview. You’ll see a few bugs and please forgive the clumsy narration. And yeah, it’s a little small.

Missing the Obvious

It just kills me when web designers miss the really obvious low-hanging fruit of usability—he says, as he frantically goes through a mental checklist to make sure he’s not a hypocrite. Today, I checked out a site called Goby (www.goby.com), which Mashable evidently describes as “a dead simple way to find activities in your city.”

It’s kind of cool, certainly addresses a need (though it’s not the only site doing so), and is pretty handsome. It has a nice, clear search form so that I know exactly what to do and have a good idea of what to expect Goby to do. Hurray! But… when I fill out the form from any search results page (e.g.) Goby doesn’t search. I mean, really? And once I have searched, if I choose a search result and then click the back button, Goby performs the whole search—which, as Goby seems to crawl a large number of websites, can take a long time—again. This is very disruptive, as I might do this five or six times for a given search.

And a minor caveat: the search form asks “What would you like to do?” and lists examples like “bed and breakfasts, hiking, live music, museums.” What would I like to do? Stay at a bed and breakfast. Hike. Listen to live music. See art or visit museums.

Get the basics right. (And I’ll try not to be a hypocrite and do the same.)

“Please welcome to the stage the very innovative Bela Fleck”

Believe it or not, those are not the words I’d want to be introduced by. Every week I see a new article about the secret(s) of innovation. And then articles dissecting the word, suggesting better words, lauding innovation, deploring it. At the least, it’s fatiguing. But often I think it’s just barking up the wrong tree.

Don’t get me wrong: I find nothing categorically wrong with innovation. How could I, right? But as a designer, 90% of the time I’d rather do something really damn well than do something that’s innovative. I like much of Bela Fleck’s music, but I hope we’re not celebrating the man because he can make pitch-perfect quail calls with his banjo or because he’s sure to be the all-time best-selling heavy metal banjo crossover artist of all time. Innovative (if a bit hyperbolic), but not necessarily great.

There’s nothing innovative about any of the design I do, save for (maybe) a CSS hack developed as a means to an end now and then, but I can’t see why there needs to be. I’m in the business of communicating content visually and interactively. I respect the designers who not only push the craft forward through excellence in execution, but actually push the medium forward through innovation. Maybe the iPad (e.g.) will really enable us to better communicate content. I’m not denouncing innovation, but if no one ever calls me “innovative” I’ll be totally okay, as long as someone calls me “really good.”

Pseudo padding-right with text-indent and direction

When I write CSS, I maintain a general habit of respecting box-model discrepancies, meaning I don’t apply border, padding, or margin to an element on an axis for which I’ve specified a fixed dimension. One of my go-to hacks is to use text-indent to simulate padding-left when there aren’t multiple lines of text. (I also use line-height to simulate padding-top and -bottom.) So I can cover top, bottom, and left in most cases, but not right. Now I’ve hit upon a way to simulate padding-right (again, when I only need that padding on one line of text).…

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