http://blog.thinkature.com Designing Thinkature; web application and company. Fri, 29 Dec 2006 06:04:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Yes, folks, it's going to be another one of those posts. We discovered as soon as we (and our users) got their hands on Internet Explorer 7 that freehand drawing in Thinkature was misbehaving. In particular, we learned that it was only possible to start a drawing in IE7 if ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/12/29/odd-mouse-handling-with-transparent-objects-under-internet-explorer-7/ I had the privilege of speaking with Eric Miraglia of Yahoo! earlier this week, and they've just posted the interview on the Yahoo! User Interface Blog. Eric works with the Presentation Platform Engineering team, which produces the Most Excellent(tm) YUI Library and Design Pattern Library. We use YUI ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/12/14/jon-interviewed-by-yahoo/ Whew. I'm tempted to come up with a shorter title for this post, but I think "Flash-to-JavaScript communication with a streaming HTTP connection in Internet Explorer" appropriately and specifically defines the problem (which I'm sure people run into all the time). I digress. If you're interested in the Hot ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/12/10/flash-to-javascript-communication-with-a-streaming-http-connection-in-internet-explorer/ We're pleased to announce that we've added voice chat to Thinkature! When you log into a workspace, you'll notice a speaker button to the right of the user list. Click on that button to get at the voice chat controls (join/leave voice chat, adjust microphone settings, etc.). You'll always ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/12/08/voice-chat-added-to-thinkature/ Part of what characterizes the Web 2.0 era is the close connection between (and sometimes merging of) creators and consumers. This is part of what makes this era fundamentally different from previous ears. We've seen this all over, but primarily on the web. Blogs turn anyone into writers, and ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/12/03/creators-consumers-and-whats-right/ While staring at http://www.microsoftshitbrick.com (a site not for work or for the turd-phobic), Jon said (of the Zune): "why do people still think imitating Apple will make them successful too? It's like a design cargo cult." Quite so. Apple has been an incredibly strong force in popularizing design in consumer electronics and ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/11/28/cargo-cult-design/ Setting up handlers that run after an event has fired is a tricky thing to do in JavaScript. Suppose you're trying to work with text as it's being entered by a user. As a silly example, suppose you wanted to have a <div> mirror the contents of a ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/11/26/escaping-the-javascript-call-stack-with-settimeout/ Jon and I were answering some interview questions for an email interview we’re doing with the folks over at VoodooVentures a few days ago. One of their questions was about how we defined Web 2.0 and whether we thought we were a Web 2.0 application. The idea of Web 2.0 ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/11/20/web-20-describes-an-era-not-a-genre/ Here’s a conversation Jon and I have a lot: What is the incremental cost to the usability of our application if we add a specific new feature? We think this is a critically important question when designing an interface. Thinkature is intentionally a really simply application. We offer fewer features than ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/11/16/the-cost-of-adding-new-features/ We're currently a two person operation, so we're looking for someone (in the Boston area) who wants to get involved at the start of something we believe will be really great. This is an almost-founder like position, so it's critical that you're really excited about web applications, collaboration, and being ... http://blog.thinkature.com/index.php/2006/11/11/thinkature-is-hiring/