Bazooka // Design and technology » Observationer

Bazooka does something right

andreas — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:36:37 +0000

Andreas Leijon, editor in chief at the design magazine Cap & Design, complains about bad communicating potential on the web sites of many bureaus. Bazooka however, receives shining golden stars, together with Vinter, Oktavilla, Wjos and Daytona. That’s the kind of things that makes us really, really happy.

Read the full article here.

Newsmill wins price!

Bazooka — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:27:02 +0000

Whoohooo!

Our client Newsmill has won an award for being one of the best sites in Sweden.

http://internetworld.idg.se/2.1006/1.192127

Blender 2.48 released

calle — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:01:59 +0000

When Blender 2.48 came out a couple of days ago I decided to give it a try. I had no real previous experience of the application besides some half hearted attempt that resulted in me finding the GUI confusing and uninstalling. However this time was different.

After spending some time with tutorials, reading about Blender and watching the result produced with it I was getting hooked. The thing that struck me was that this free program got feature updates that should make all of the mayor 3D developers nervous. But most important of all – the dedicated community that makes sure it never gets old and tired. I believe this will make Blender (and similar apps) market leading in time. Don’t believe me? Listen to what Shawn Kelly, cofounder of Animation Mentor and senior animator at ILM has to say on the subject:

…”I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the world was stunned by a true blockbuster film someday, created by people collaborating in their garages all over the world”

(Full interview at www.blendernation.com)

The modeling in Blender is really intuitive and once you get the hold of some shortcuts it’s fast to work with. There are some free tutorials in the various forums and at Blender.org but I highly recommend the Creature Factory DVD if you wish to take it further. And don’t forget the Manycandy rig by Bassam Kurdali. It’s free and totally amazing.

Read more and download blender at Blender.org

Adobe CS4 develops important details

calle — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 09:06:31 +0000

Working with graphics every day makes you a expert of tiny irritating details that no one outside your profession care about. I’m talking about that you can’t make a unsymmetrical gradient in Adobe illustrator. That you can’t look at your Photoshop document in 66,7% zoom without irritating artifacts and messy pixels. After effects layers soon becomes a mess when making complex scenes. The list goes on.

So when Adobe release their CS4 package and shows of new sollutions for these and many more problems it makes my nerd heart beat extra fast. Some of the stuff like the 3D painting functionality in Photoshop seems like more of a “show off” and not that useful in my every day work. There are better ways of doing this. The strength of this release is in the details and I’m impressed with the way the Adobe team keeps on developing their products. I Can’t wait to get my hands on this release!

www.adobe.com

Google joins the browser wars

kim — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:39:03 +0000

After some years of rumors of a Google browser, the kings of search and all things web-related have finally unveiled the WebKit-based Google Chrome. Google says their main focus has been on security, speed and stability – that is, pretty much the same as every other browser maker!

But Chrome does seem to have a unique take on some things. For instance, all tabs run in their own process so if one tab crashes, the rest of your browser session lives on. Similarly, if a plug-in on a page you are browsing decides to kick the bucket, the rest of the page is still browsable. Just the way it should be. Google have also started from scratch with JavaScript, creating their own virtual machine that’s supposed to be smarter and faster than the rest. How this holds up in practice remains to be seen.

Developers, developers, developers, developers!
What does this release mean for the web, and to web developers? As mentioned, Chrome is based on WebKit, the same rendering engine as Apple’s Safari. Theoretically this makes them “layout and layout bug compatible”, making web pages look the same on both browsers (even though web browsers these day behave pretty much the same, most of them adhering to most of the standards, each rendering engine still has their own quirks and bugs). This might be considered good news for developers (like us) who don’t have to check their pages in yet another browser. In practice, though, both companies (Apple and Google) are likely to have modified parts of the code separately, fixing bugs the other company hasn’t yet integrated into their code. So just to make sure, you’d better test your pages in this new browser as well.

Chrome features built-in support for Google Gears, Googles API for rich web applications. For other browsers, Gears must be installed as an extension in order for applications built on this framework to function. Since your sites shouldn’t rely on extensions being installed, this means it will still take a while before you can build public sites based on Gears. (Our hopes are instead set on HTML5 being released soon, solving some of the same problems as Gears. Sadly, this still seems like years away).

Finally, any improvements in JavaScript technology is good for the web. Web applications are become more common, and any speed improvements to these applications are more than welcome. Googles V8 JavaScript engine is open-source, so any smart ideas are free to be implemented by other browser makers as well.

Will Google control the web?
Google has got many worried by their growth. Search, advertising, hosting, office applications, hardware, etc, are just some areas of the web that the collective hive-mind of the Googleplex has been set on dominating. For the good of the world, of course. The browser could be seen as the last step that has kept Google from totally controlling the web, since the browser is the lowest common denominator among web users. Having a lot of different browsers surfing the web means that browser makes must co-operate to create standards, and having more organizations involved in creating standards is generally a good thing. If the Google Chrome browser becomes too popular, it would give Google more power to set the standards for the web. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it probably isn’t good either.

But, given that Chrome usage stays “average”, it’s actually good for the web in the long run – the more browsers that compete, the bigger the need for standards among browsers. This is good for developers, and this is good for the user.

Moodstream from Getty Images

emil — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:52:13 +0000

A moodboard is of course very good for the creative process. But that is old school now. Getty Images has released a new kind of moodboard called Moodstream. It let’s you set your mood and then shows fullscreen images and music that correlates to the mood. They call it a “powerful brainstorming tool designed to take you in inspiring, unexpected directions.” Take it for a spin.

Information Architects

calle — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:39:13 +0000

A very inspiring article about readability on the net. The author puts it down in simple terms and lists five steps to the “100% Easy 2 Read Standard”. A header that catched my eyes was “don’t tell us scrolling is bad”. It’s a common misconception that all the information on the pages must fit the screen without the user scrolling. I agree fully when the Information Architecs states “Because then all websites are bad. There is nothing wrong with scrolling. Nothing at all. Just as there is nothing wrong with flipping pages in books.”

IA has also developed the “Web trends Map” (picture) that is well worth a visit.

http://informationarchitects.jp/100e2r/

http://informationarchitects.jp/web-trend-map-3-get-it/