Comes in the timing issue: less than 30 days until the dead line and everything left to do: designing, editing, printing, posting… Approximatively 500 hundreds posts, 100 pictures, 150 pages, and 50 copies to make.
Designing, took only a few hours, printing via Lulu will take a small week, the problem was editing.

Well, guess what: it only took a few hours.
I exported the content of the site in XML and imported it in inDesign, thus creating the whole layout.
(OK, it’s a little easier said than done, but it pretty much sums up the thing).
I still have to deal with a few bugs, mainly due to my experimenting while producing, but instead of the 30+ hours it would have taken manually, I think it will be finished in less than 5 hours, including research and development of the PHP/XML part.

This means particularly much to me. I have been in the designing/publishing business for more than 15 years,  and have been toying with Web technologies for a few years. And tonight, both of my worlds ran into each other and produced something quite satisfying.

This is a good day and a really nice way to start 2009.

This is not a HowTo post, and I don’t plan to do one. If you want more info, contact me.

A friend of mine launched his web site, and doing that, his company also : culinairement-votre.fr.
Being a cook, he offer his services to cook for you, or to teach you how to cook.
He’s not the first, nor the last, but he might be one of the best…

Regarding the site, I built it and I have to say, I like how it feels.
The übber connected among you might see an influence
(which I won’t divulge ; as Einstein said : “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”…)

This is one of these little things that can make my day.

Let’s say it, I think the design is pretty bad. Let’s say something else : some comments on the Flickr thread are plain wrong (a few are pretty funny though).

Steve Patt, the designer, posted a well deserved response (several actually).

Then, Ryan Singer from 37signals posted an article, seizing the opportunity to give a design course. He also links to Patt’s response, and as Ryan seems to be a well educated and nice person, he doesn’t judge Patt too hardly.

Comments on svn.37signals were more serious than the ones on Flickr, even if some, I think, misunderstood Ryan’s intention: He’s not defending the UI; he’s just forgiving the designer.

In the comments, I began posting a response to Patt’s.
(Responding to a comment on another’s site comments… Ain’t that Web 3.0 !?)

While I was doing it, I got more and more angry. I really think the UI is crap, and having someone defending and justifying it like that… makes me angry.
So, as nobody took the time to do it (at that time — a few did the same just after in SVN comments), I decided to do a mock up of something just a little less ugly.

Here is my take to it.
As I said in my comment, I’m not a UI designer, I never used the Apple SDK until then, it took me 1 hour, including the 1.25 Go of SDK download. I only tried to mimic Patt’s screen.

As a user, I still think it’s a crappy UI, the whole app should be rethought to really make it better; but it’s still way better than the original and it’s more compliant with Apple HIG.

So, to wrap up, Patt’s UI is really ugly and not easy to the eyes, an probably not to the finger.
He shouldn’t defend it too hard, especially arguing 20 years of designing apps. Designing Palm UI for 10 years doesn’t make you an expert at designing iPhone app.

This is just the first example of many to come, and the reason Apple is locking the App Store and filtering the content.
[update: App Store is up, and apparently, Apple is not filtering that much...]

PS: this earned me a link on Gruber’s Daring Fireball. Yay!

- Why did you do it like this ?
- Eh… We always did it like this ?…