The names of the tools of the trade

Chris Norton, May 19th 2006, 10:17AM

As usual the web is lit up like an indignant christmas tree with discussions about the latest developments in what is usually (and somewhat laughably) called the console war. The big news is Nintendo's unhinged decision to call their new great gaming hope The Nintendo Wii. The Wii! Pronounced 'wee'! Oh, the hilarity!

This made me think about names. We routinely talk a load of old rubbish in IT, forced to do so by the strange names of the programs we use. Let's have a look at some of the big names:

Internet Explorer - good, solid, boring name. Does what it says on the tin. My only issue would be that it really only explores the web, not the whole net. And using its initials makes you sound like you've just been stabbed with a protractor. Iiieeeee!

Firefox - much more romantic, mythical sounding. Foxs are... kind of quick. Fire is... sort of fast. OK, so it sounds like a rebranding of the word hotdog, and has nothing to do with the web. Still it does sound cool.

Flash - a great name, as with Firefox it tries to intimate speed, plus the technology is all about adding flashy stuff to websites. Makes me think of the Queen song and the film, which can't be a bad thing. Perhaps a slight hint of self-exposure is in there, but it's well hidden.

Dreamweaver - hilariously unconnected to what it does. A great program (and this is coming from an avowed hand-coder), but sitting there with your tables and CSS palettes does not feel particularly dreamlike. Also makes me think of spoof horror writer Garth Marenghi, who describes himself as 'Author, Dreamweaver, Visionary'.

Photoshop - it is, basically, the modern version of a photoshop. Sounds definitive, and is.

The Gimp - everything I feel about this program is summed up in that name. Except I'm more inclined to leave it sleeping than ever decide to 'bring out the gimp'

Tags: dreamweaver, firefox, flash, gaming, internetexplorer, names, photoshop, thegimp, windows
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Hotmail Devolved

Chris Norton, April 13th 2006, 10:02AM

Disclaimer: I know what 'beta' means!

Up until a few days ago I was using the new Windows Live Mail beta, instead of my usual Hotmail account. Now I'm back to good old Hotmail. Why? Mainly because the new system doesn't work in Firefox. In my tricked-out browser of choice the whole Live Mail system is actually worse than Hotmail. You can't seem to sort your mail, or type in a contact's name and have it replaced with their email address, images don't open up how I like them... it's been making me grind my teeth daily since I started to use it.

Now I don't know if Microsoft are planning on de-crippling the system for use in FF - as far as I can tell, all the AJAX (blimey, the A, J, A and X keys on my keyboard seem to be wearing out at the moment) bells and whistles Live Mail uses should be easy to implement on other browsers. But Live's inability to work on my favouite orange beast isn't the only thing that puts me off. The whole look of the system is artless; there's certainly nothing to compare with the friendly pastel shades and spot-on branding of Gmail. The name 'Windows Live Mail' is similarly awful, and seems to be another attempt to tie in this web-based service with a specific operating system. Isn't it a principle feature of the web that it is non-platform specific?

It seems fairly silly of Microsoft to assume that, if they migrate my current Hotmail over to this new, more Windows-ish, more Internet Explorer-ish system, that I will feel more inclined to stick with all their other products. I won't. If Live Mail doesn't get a lot better, when they switch off Hotmail I'll be considering a defection. Hey, I've even used Live Mail under IE and I'm still fairly unimpressed. Then again, perhaps one thing keeping me hanging back from a Gmail defection is this (prepare for a highly suspect metaphor): I don't want to put all my information eggs in one shiny, smiley and ever-so-slightly-too-powerful Google-shaped basket.

Tags: ajax, google, microsoft, websites, windows, windowslivemail, worldwideweb
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Desktop Psychology

Chris Norton, April 5th 2006, 10:12AM

You can tell a lot about a person by sneaking up to their desk when they're out of the office, rifling through their pockets and messing around on their PC - or, if you're afforded god-like status by virtue of network permissions and the like (and don't mind missing out on the pocket-rifling), you can do so via VNC. Not to say that I've ever done this, but I keep my eyes open and have noticed a few things about my colleagues' desktops.

At the helm of R&D, Daz runs a two-screen behemoth of a desktop. Aside from making me jealous this lets him juggle about ten things at once, and gives him the luxury of running both a 'testing' screen and a 'coding' screen. For a man with such an elephantine memory this system is perfect - as for me, when I try it I'm always forgetting where I've left the mouse pointer.

Like Darren, designer Rich favours a CRT monitor over TFT. Being a design bod and thus obsessed with Pantone references and the like, he needs the superior colour reproduction. Rich has only the one monitor, but to make up for this he has it set to a resolution that means the biggest 72pt text comes out eye-bleedingly small. When he's not battling with his weapons of choice, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Photoshop, it's always amusing to send Rich an email and watch him peering at the screen trying to decipher the small print.

My next door neighbour Giles likes things much like I do - highly customised. He has that whole 'Windows taskbar on the top of the screen' look going on (a case of Mac OS envy?), and a set of wallpapers drawn from his current work on Airwaves-Ducati, all carefully tailored in his beloved Gimp.

Desktop wallpaper is one of the most revealing components of your setup - if you're going to customise one thing, normally the wallpaper is it. Next to Giles, Laura has an inexplicable picture of some men with some fish. Jonathan has a picture of his little god-daughter, last time I looked Rob in sales had his dog, and his manager George has some kind of fantasy island. Work, fish, family, pets and holidays - all subjects that pop unbidden into our minds during the course of a working day.

Myself, I have a jarringly minimalist Windows environment that's been tweaked and fiddled with as much as is humanly possibly. There are no icons on the desktop itself. None! This tends to upset anyone who tries to use my PC, and in turn that pleases me greatly. It's mine, get off (NB. this attitude can backfire when you need to ask tech support to fix something). It's a very different approach from that of someone like Daz or Laura, plastering files across the desktop, using it as another inbox. I have my quick shortcuts to Ultraedit, Firefox and Filezilla in my taskbar, and all documents are hidden away in rigid directories. It's anal, and perhaps a little contrary - but it's me, and I love working in my way.

As for desktop images, if Jonathan has a picture of his goddaughter, well, he's a people person. So Giles must be an aspirational type, with his pictures of superbikes, and George is thinking ahead to his honeymoon. If this is all so, I'm not quite sure what my collection of wickedly grinning Terminator pictures says about me...

Anyone else care to psychoanalyse through the medium of the desktop?

Tags: desktop, windows, workplace
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