A longish, interesting writeup of a Steve Yegge presentation on server-side Javascript. It’s called Rhino, and is hosted in the JVM (which I don’t think is as bad as it sounds). Yegge comments on the stigmas around the JVM and Javascript itself. He asks the crowd about Javascript:

Who here thinks JavaScript is kind of icky? Come on, come on, be honest. Yeah, there we go, a couple of people. Yeah.

And then jokes about Java:

You need to write unit tests, and unfortunately in Java it’s very painful. I’m speaking into the mic now, so that everybody can hear. Unit testing in Java is painful!

What I like most about the talk is that he’s an open thinker about languages in general, and is willing to look at their respective strengths and weaknesses. It’s a mindset I can respect, where merit is based on good sense.

I agree with the 37Signal way of mocking up web stuff, using HTML/CSS straight-up. It’s fast, it pushes you to know your tools better, and produces layouts that can actually be solved in the medium. There is still a place for Photoshop/Gimp/Illustrator/Inkscape, however, as you still need to explore the look and feel, textures, colours, and shapes.

For my own sites, I use Inkscape sketch out new ideas. It covers most of what a web designer needs, and is freely available. Today’s 10 minutes of mock-up produced a very blue, boxy alternative layout for my blog. I limit myself to 10-20 minutes of sketching, then I put it away for a few days/weeks and look at it compared to other sketches made over the year. When I find something I like, I move on to slice it into a theme.

Today’s sketch:

• Inspired by Eric Wendelin’s excellent blog. I’m thinking of a 1-column version, with the sidebar in the footer, with subtler colours (I’m not sure I can pull off his excellent bright colours).
• Background is 2 layers, one as a background colour, the second as a diagonal texture (pattern-fill, rotated + sized, at 10% opacity)
• The body is another 2 layers, one as the shadow for the second (a 2% layer blur, reduced color level)
• The header is in two parts, one for the text/menu, the second will be some sort of art (hopefully classy vectors, or a high contrast photo)
• The date callouts are a simple box combined with itself rotated (with a second layer for the shadow)
• I’m not sure about the blue, and textured charcoal is a good possibility. The blue was the first colour I picked from my current Inkscape palette (Khaki).

Download the SVG.

I’ve come up with a simple rule-of-thumb for cropping group pictures: Center heads horizontally, so that the left and rightmost people are the same distance from the edges of the shot. Don’t worry about torsos and legs, focus on the heads. Vertically, aim for the rule of thirds.