Normally, I don’t deviate from web-specific discussions on this site, but I saw something yesterday that REALLY caught my eye: the new demo video for Windows 8.  Watch the video below (it’s ok – I can wait; it’s worth watching once)

Done? Great!  Now, show of hands; how many of you are legitimately excited by this? I know I am.  It’s no secret that while I’m not a person that deeply hates apple (I have an iPhone after all) that I prefer Windows because of a few specific areas (mainly price and gaming functionality).  Anything your Mac can do my PC can do.  Not necessarily better, but it can be done.

Windows 8 is really exciting for me.  The tiles are all built with Javascript and HTML5 (YES!) and the windows 8 “apps” are as well; basically this gives anyone with a semi-competent knowledge in web languages a decent shot at writing a really useful app, including guys like me who are specifically “front-end” designers.  I’ve also always had an affinity for the Metro UI (think Zune player and Windows Phone 7 interface).  The idea that one system can run on any device is exciting to me as well.

One thing I keep hearing in comment threads (and on other blogs) is how it’s a mistake to allow legacy support for older softwares to run on the tablet.  Basically, from what I can tell, people either want Windows as they know and love it, or the tiled touchscreen interface. They think that trying to have the best of both worlds is just a mistake waiting to happen.

I disagree.

I think that you NEED legacy support for businesses to even second glance at Windows 8.  No business will use the tiled start screen, and having the familiar workhorse that is Windows powering behind the scenes is a smart move.  Having the “tiled” apps alongside power user favorites like Excel and Photoshop allows you to truly get the best of both worlds.

Plus, having a machine that functions the same, even with different interfaces, is appealing to me.  For starters, my laptop will remain more like Windows Vintage, whereas a tablet and phone running the same software (and having access to the same apps and files) is appealing for work on the go.  I have one technology web that I can access at any time, but with the appropriate interface for the appropriate needs.

I welcome the new version of Windows, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the demo turns out when they release it.  Microsoft has never come out this early with a “sneak peek” at their new designs, but seeing what the prototypes have in store can only mean that the finished product will be that much cooler.

Related articles

• Dismissing Windows 8 as an iPad rival is premature (slashgear.com)
• Windows 8 and Its Incredibly Cool New Touch Interface [Video] (gizmodo.com)
• Windows 8 finally demoed: Is it just a fancy skin or is it innovative? (intomobile.com)
• Windows 8 revealed: Tablet-friendly UI, HTML5 apps [Video] (slashgear.com)
• Windows 8 Previewed At D9 (tech.slashdot.org)

Some interesting tidbits are arising now that Firefox 4 is out in the wild.  It turns out that Firefox 4 will accept both the standard and –moz specific versions of CSS3.  For example, take the following drop shadow css:

.shadow{

box-shadow: 0px 0px 12px #000;

-moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 120px #000;

}

In the current order, the –moz statement will be the rendering statement. However…

.shadow{

-moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 120px #000;

box-shadow: 0px 0px 12px #000;

}

…switch them around and the regular box-shadow will override.

Box shadows also follow the !important convention as well:

.shadow{

-moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 120px #000 !important;

box-shadow: 0px 0px 12px #000;

}

Even though the normal box-shadow is on the bottom, the !important tag forces the browser to render the –moz rule.

So?

Basically, this means that Firefox will accept both arguments, but will allow you to style your code as such to continue to tweak for specific browsers.  Need one setting? use box-shadow. Need one for IE and one for Firefox? use box-shadow for IE and specify –moz for Firefox.

Got a really interesting email today – thought I would share it with you guys:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

I really don’t remember when a company so large has taken a single outburst against a single browser, but this is a huge step by Google moving closer to a “standard web” – and a day when designers everywhere will rejoice!

Any thoughts on why this is (or isn’t) a good idea?

I have to admit, I was super excited about a week ago when I started reading into all of the hype of what Apple’s new tablet device could do.  I had lots of possibilities in mind: video chatting, sketchbooking websites for clients, and just in general reinventing the way we look at handheld devices.  I was all but set to go out and purchase one the day they went on sale.

And after reading the entire transcript from Engadget’s fantastic review, and hearing the presentation live on TWiT, I have to say…

I’m not impressed.  At all.

There is so much more that this machine could have done, and that people were expecting it to do, that it just doesn’t live up to the hype – even Apple’s side of the hype.  No background applications (re: no pandora while I work on other stuff), no intuitive sketch interface, and no camera (granted a camera would have been strange unless it was done correctly… but even something is better than nothing.

Apple had a golden opportunity to turn the mobile and handheld computing worlds on their ear.  And they failed.

Apple could have reinvented things, went back to the drawing board, and thought about how we use the products in our daily lives.  Instead, we get a giant ipod touch that (while having a few promising features) basically does the same thing it’s little brother does. 

Apple, you had me at the iPhone, but you’ll have to do something REALLY amazing to prove this pad is worth it. As of now, I’m still holding out hope for the Courier, or at least for another pad (windows, linux, android, or chrome) that does half of what I hoped the iPad would do. 

If you saw the Huffington Post’s online version today, they did a great photo essay about the top 12 things that have gone obsolete.  Some of them you may agree with; some of them you may not.  But I think they forgot some of the most important things that we can’t live without now that may not even have existed 10 years ago.

To start it off, here’s the Huff’s list:

• Calling Someone on a Phone
• Newspaper Classifieds
• Dial-Up Internet
• Encyclopedias
• CDs
• Fax Machines
• Film and Film Cameras
• Handwritten Letters
• Catalogs
• Landline Phones
• Wires
• The Yellow Pages (and address books)

Sure, it’s a good list, and it covers the basics, but here are five more things that I think have gone the way of the buffalo this decade.

1. Tube Televisions

It took a good few years, but LCD and Plasma Televisions have made mainstream markets, and in August had passed the 50% barrier, marking  a controlling figure.  With the digital cable switch happening earlier this year, it made the choice even more clear to switch (or convert to an analog signal).

2. Missing Television Programs

Not only can we watch our television in high-definition, but now we aren’t regulated to schedules or lineups.  Thanks to Hulu, On-Demand, and TiVo/DVR, if we want to watch a show, we simply log on or record it for later watching.

3. Physical Video Rental Stores

The aforementioned services, plus the RedBox DVD kiosks, Netflix, and iTunes, have also spelled the demise of the physical retail rental store.  Thousands of Blockbusters have folded under pressure from clients to match the speedy service and selection of the online retailers.

4. Single Function Devices

10 years ago, you had a phone that made calls, a still camera that took pictures, and a video camera that took video.  My iPhone, and lots of other devices like it, have merged three (or more) devices into one.  And more and more apps are being developed daily to increase that functionality.  After all, could you imagine having a handheld device that’s only used for twitter? 

5. Privacy

Let’s face it: “Privacy Is Dead: Get Over It”.  We tell the world our silly trivial daily exploits, and no tin-foil hat is big enough to stop the indexing of information.  People know our favorite restaurants, where we are, who we fellowship with, and even our drunken texts from nights past.

What about you guys?  What did you embrace 10 years ago, or even less, that you could care less about now?

So, if you haven’t been closely following the incident involving TechCrunch, Twitter, and a very astute hacker called Croll, then you’re missing out on a turning point for internet security as we know it.

In case you’re new to the story, here’s what happened in a nutshell, via TechCrunch:

1. HC (Hacker Croll) accessed Gmail for a Twitter employee by using the password recovery feature that sends a reset link to a secondary email. In this case the secondary email was an expired Hotmail account, he simply registered it, clicked the link and reset the password. Gmail was then owned.
2. HC then read emails to guess what the original Gmail password was successfully and reset the password so the Twitter employee would not notice the account had changed.
3. HC then used the same password to access the employee’s Twitter email on Google Apps for your domain, getting access to a gold mine of sensitive company information from emails and, particularly, email attachments.
4. HC then used this information along with additional password guesses and resets to take control of other Twitter employee personal and work emails.
5. HC then used the same username/password combinations and password reset features to access AT&T, MobileMe, Amazon and iTunes, among other services. A security hole in iTunes gave HC access to full credit card information in clear text. HC now also had control of Twitter’s domain names at GoDaddy.
6. Even at this point, Twitter had absolutely no idea they had been compromised.

Whoa.

So, in retrospect, and even while the rest of the story is sorted out, what surface lessons can we learn?  And, maybe a more fitting question, how many of them should we know already?

(Most of these lessons assume people are only working online.  If someone wants your information bad enough, they might be able to use other, offline means to get it.  Make sure to take similar precautions offline as well as online to keep your information safe!)

Lesson 1: Don’t Use the Same Password on Every Site

Most of us are guilty of it, but it goes without saying that you should have different passwords for different sites.  Hacker Croll took advantage of the “human habit” of using the same password to access multiple services from one user (Gmail, Google Apps, iTunes, etc.)  What’s more, is that the victim had no clue that he was hacked because the hacker changed his password back to normal after accessing the account.  The result?  Hacker Croll was in the account, and the victim went about his daily business.

Lesson Learned: use different passwords for different accounts.

Lesson 2: Security Questions are Anything but Secure

Let’s hypothetically say you have signed up for a new social network. You create your password and set your security question is “What is my pet’s name?”  Your answer: “Spot”.  Three days later, you mention Spot’s no-good couch chewing accident on that social network.  Someone has just filled in a piece of the puzzle needed to access that account.

Combined with a password, a security question isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  But an either/or scenario for them is dangerous.  Basically, it boils down to “Either you tell me your randomly generated password, or your pet’s name” – scary to think about in those terms, but it happens everyday.

Lesson Learned: the best way is to falsify or randomize the answers, and keep them in a safe or secure locked location.

If it asks you for “favorite food”, “favorite color”, and “favorite book”, then your answers could be:

• Favorite Food: Red
• Favorite Book: Jackknife
• Favorite Color: Treehouse

Of course they don’t make sense, but that’s why writing them down and securing them is (or not writing them down and just remembering them) will outwit any online hacker.

Lesson 3: Emails from Web Services = Keys to the Kingdom

You sign up for service x, you get an email thanking you for signing up… it’s pretty standard practice.  Some services even send you your password (isn’t that thoughtful of them).  Delete those emails as soon as you can.  Any email that gets archived for later, stored in a folder, or (even worse) kept in your inbox is a prime threat for hackers to access your sensitive information.

Of course, combine that with lesson one, and any email from a service could spell a hack.  If you use the same password for Gmail and Twitter, then finding one password opens you up for attack in every service.

Lesson Learned: Delete emails that have account information, or print them out and keep them in a secure place.

Bonus Lesson: Don’t Use a Hotmail Account as Your Secondary Email

Hacker Croll is a wily one.  When he found out that the Gmail account of “victim zero” was a hotmail account, he quickly hopped over to hotmail to try and access that account.  What he found was nothing short of a gold mine:  after a certain amount of inactivity, a hotmail account deactivates itself.  Hacker Croll simply recreated the account, requested a new password, and gained access to the account.  Shame on Hotmail for trying to cut their bottom line so much they take security into question.  <opinion> Then again, shame on Hotmail for not being more like Gmail.  </opinion>

Basically, they sound like common-sense items, but when it comes to online security, most of us fall into the “human habit”.  Online information is supposed to be quickly accessed, and passwords (honestly) get in the way of that access.  So we take shortcuts, simple solutions, and forgo security for simplicity.  I hope that what happened to Twitter, a big company, can encourage someone smaller (aka, the user) to be a little more careful in their security.

Designers and Developers have lots of things they use on a regular basis in order to get work done.  Software, Hardware, Apps; there are multitudes that I end up opening on a daily basis in order to efficiently plan out, execute, and update the sites that I create.  So, every Tuesday, I’ll be diving into some of the tools I use in the process of creating a site design.

Most people immediately start out with Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc. But I wanted to go into something a little less known (but not by any means less important).  When I work on WordPress themes, it’s hard to get the CSS styling just right because all of the content is dynamically generated.  Sure, using dummy text helps, but you still want to get the styling JUST right, and it’s a hassle to upload and reupload CSS stylesheets for a simple change.

Enter Firefox and the Web Development Toolbar.

This toolbar is absolutely invaluable to me in the course of development.  It puts an entire arsenal of web development tools at my fingertips to give me absolute control over what i’m doing.

Some highlights:

• Disabling Cache so you don’t have to clear it everytime you want to refresh a page
• Disabling stylesheets to see what your site looks like to people who have older browsers
• Allowing you to switch on the fly between the main stylesheet and Print/Mobile styles to see what they look like
• LIVE (!) Stylesheet Editing – the feature I use the most.
• Outline mode that shows div containers, table cells, and what tags are called on what elements
• Built in validators for CSS, (X)HTML, and other standards
• too many other tools to list in bullet form

The main tools I use are the outline and the live CSS editing.  I can copy/paste the stylesheet edits I make right into WordPress and save the changes – takes about 20% of the time that it takes to fire up my FTP program and load in the new files.

If you use Flock instead of Firefox, don’t worry (so do I) – the toolbar works great.  If you use Internet Explorer… why? (no, I’m joking – there’s a development toolbar for it too – but it’s not nearly as user friendly).

Do you use the toolbar?  Any features that I may have overlooked that make it even more useful than I mentioned?  Let me know!