In reference to ‘The Rise of Chrome‘.

It’s not often that you can start from scratch and create an amazingly easy product. Yet Google does that so efficently with Google Chrome that you have to ask the question why wasn’t this done sooner?

I’ve watched the Internet evolve over the past (what) 12 years? I’ve seen Browser Wars 1.0 and 2.0. come and go. At this stage of the game Internet Explorer has so much kibble in it that it’s worthless to do anything with, let alone rely on for any world-wide standards. In fact the only thing IE is good for is company Intranets simply because developers can rely on one browser for a standard within an organization.  Still it’s slow, buggy, and the user interface is so overworked now it’s not even funny.

Firefox (or foxfire as some may call it, mainly my friends) use to be the upcoming star champ. But this too has become bogged down with too many plugins, and features that make the once stable and quick browser slow and annoying. Firefox is now as slow as IE and taking on some of that bad IE design.

Safari is great for a mac user, and terrible if you have windows. Not much else to say there.

And here comes Chrome, not only is it free, and simple but it is QUICK, and like really quick! I count up to ten seconds before IE launches and only 4 for Chrome. PLUS Google did something that should of been done a LONG time ago and combine the search bar with the URL bar.  Also, go figure, every tab runs in its own environment so if one hangs you don’t lose the whole application. Hey this browser rocks!

Let’s also slap on another well designed logo (I think that is a KEY point as see my earlier post on Firefox’s logo), that stands out very well on the desktop. Also you don’t have extra plugins trying to read PDF’s (just download them for me please?) and RSS readers (just load this for me in Outlook please?) and you have an amazing fast, simple browser that is the way it should of been back in 1995. No extra junk, no stupid features, just simple web browsing done right!

We as users never knew what to use for our hompage. The opening page showing you the top 12 items you recently used was also genius. This was such a great design that Apple stole it for Safari and made it even better!

Chrome is what a modern browser should be. Fast, Quick, Simple, well designed and did I say FAST!? I love the simplificty of it. Please Google don’t try and add any more extra crap to this. Chrome is fine just the way it is!

I tried using Drupal for my homesite and while it gave new appreciation for the amount of work one must go through for… well hell who am I kidding, Drupal is a pain in the ass!

Put it this way, Drupal is like Microsoft and WordPress is like Macintosh. One is way over complicated and a pain in the butt to configure, and the other is just easy and simple. WordPress proves to me once again that good interface design can go a long way! Where Drupal makes things way too complicated, has too many features and still doesn’t provide you with some basic functionality in some areas, WordPress has gotten cleaner, meaner, leaner with every release.

As such I’ve decided to switch my personal website over to WordPress. However there’s no real easy way to convert all my past content (another flaw I have with Drupal), so bringing online some of this content may take some time. My apologizes to everyone who needs to re-register on this new system. Hopefully this will be the last for a long time.

This has been something I’ve been meaning to write for a while. It was reported Europe has jumped on the Firefox bandwagon and started to give some real heat to Internet Explorer. Many people all over the world are clamoring on how great Firefox is. But why did Firefox succeed where Netscape 8, Opera and others have failed? Is it the easy to use, simple interface? The faster page loads? The fact that security is much better? The tabbed interface? The better web architecture, or just the ability to give your wife something to keep your booksmarks separate from her’s?

No, I tend to argue that the reason why Firefox caught on where others failed was due to the it’s really well designed icon. The Firefox icon jumps right out at you on any desktop with any background. It’s great combination of rich bold colours, combined with a neat looking idea, really make the browser stand out next to the singular blue Internet Explorer or the boring ‘O’ from Opera. As well there is no letter associated with this but a view of the world surrounded by a spiritual fox. I might point out you don’t even see the fox’s eyes, which I would garner, if shown might have made the logo look too childish or even scary.

The Firefox logo is a simplistic work of art in itself. It justs looks good and works well. It entices you to launch something and it harkens back to the days of 16 bit systems with colour games that gave you the idea of what you were going to play, and not the need to be photo realistic. This combination of a stylist cartoon and stylistic drawing also works for Mozilla Thunderbird icon, although not as well as the Firefox one.

The icon uses the three most vibrant colours on the color wheel, yellow red and blue. This makes the icon stand out on even the worst desktops. There’s also white space (as seen one of again in the Opera ‘O’, so the icon looks more ‘full’ and more complete. It’s easier to find in the Apple Dock.

This combined with a great user interface design and experience, plus stripping out all the advance crap you don’t need in a web browser is the reason why Firefox is current shaking up the internet world. Where IE has been way too complex, and riddles with bugs and unstability, and Safari is way too simple for advance users. Firefox hits the ‘just right’ mark in both design and functionality making it the dominant web browser in terms of design for years to come.

Check out http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/branding-firefox

Phil Collins appears in the new video game Grand Theft Auto – Vice City Stories, just released (for PSP) by Rockstar Games. Collins plays himself in the latest in the hugely popular and successful GTA series, which is set in Miami in the 80s, and great attention to detail has been paid to everything – the cars, the clothes, the music – to ensure period accuracy.

As with all the Grand Theft Auto games, there’s plenty of opportunity to drive around in fast cars and create mayhem, taking out other vehicles, flattening pedestrians, shooting guns and offing anyone who gets in your way.

There’s also the music: Vice City Stories includes more than 100 hits from the 80s, which you can listen to by tuning in to radio stations while driving around the city like a maniac.
Of the many missions you can take on, there are some where you must kill Phil, one of which is by sawing through the cables holding the lighting rig while he’s on stage playing drums and singing his 80s blockbuster In The Air Tonight. Whether or not your success in that mission results in Phil lying on stage in a pool of blood under a pile of mangled cymbal stands and with a bass drum stuck on his head, well, you’ll just have to play the game to find out.

“From the late 80s through until the late 90s I was a big gamer myself,” Collins told Classic Rock concerning his involvement in the GTA game. “I just fell in love with platform games, as they call them – Crash Bandicoot, Spiro The Dragon…”

And what does Collins think of his look and wardrobe in the game?

“Well it’s what I was like, you know – the long mane down the back, with the widow’s peak that was thicker than it is now, five o’clock shadow, the check suits. They spent a lot of time on the look.”

Well finally decided to join the blogosphere and move the site into a content management system. This should hopefully help to make things a little easier in terms of managing content and such. Don’t forget to check out the revised family trees and feel free to sign up to help contribute information. Beyond that check out the rest of the stuff to come and… enjoy life!