maniacal rage

I'm writing this from my iPhone aboard the high-speed CAT ferry headed toward Nova Scotia where Katia and I will spend a week camping and hiking and driving. Katia starts grad school in a few weeks so this is our last hurrah before her year of hard work and sleepless nights (I'll be mostly drinking and playing Guitar Hero while she studies). Canada, here we come!

Since releasing Leaflets, we've received some feedback regarding the Safari 3 requirement. Generally, there have been two types: First, people wanted to try the demo and were frustrated that the browser check wouldn't let them if they weren't using Safari 3, and second, people were upset that we had designed for only one browser.

The first issue (demo browser-sniffing) was both an accident and a quality-control issue. It was an accident because I wrote the sniffing code late at night just before launch and I completely forgot that, hey, other browsers use WebKit. So searching the user agent string for Safari is pretty stupid. I fixed this a few hours after launch—users can now view screenshots of the various Leaflets and then try the demo, although they'll be warned before it loads the first time if they're not using Safari. The whole reason for the browser requirement in the first place, though, was related to the quality-control issue.

We didn't want to have people without Safari 3 trying to use the demo, because without Safari 3, Leaflets looks odd in places. We rely heavily on Safari 3's CSS3 support and when you view the site with another browser, parts of the navigation are rendered as blank or squares and are unclear (thus, it's difficult to use).

Aside from the use of -webkit-border-radius, which is not a valid CSS property, we aren't using any special hacks or tricks to style Leaflets. In fact, the primary feature of CSS3 we use throughout the site, and which is vital to the display, is multiple background support. Sure, we could design the site without using this (and, thus, support more browsers without visual quirks), but there's a huge benefit to using this feature: Bandwidth savings.

Each of our Leaflets that uses the common top navigation bar has a different color scheme. Some have different button configurations and differently sized breadcrumb elements. We use multiple backgrounds to share a few images to create many differently sized buttons and shapes. And because they're all transparent, we can change the background color of the bar to alter the shade of the images. Not having to download multiple images saves the user bandwidth. And by using multiple backgrounds, we can also cut down on the amount of code structure on each page, adding more to bandwidth savings.

A few complaints were along the lines of "if you had just written Leaflets in standards compliant code, it would work perfectly in every browser." And, of course, we did write it using standards compliant XHTML (validate it yourself). Leaflets does work in other browsers and older phones, it just doesn't look so hot without CSS3 support (see it running on an older Samsung A900). And, to be fair, we all know that writing things using web standards does not ensure things will work in every browser. I wish it did.

We didn't choose to limit Leaflets to Safari 3 because we're elitist jerks or to make it iPhone-only. It's just that iPhone is the only device on the market that has a really modern, nearly fully-featured browser. Javascript, CSS3, full-scale rendering—it all adds up to a great experience, and we wanted to create something that was more than just the average mobile application. Our goal was to take web services people were already familiar with and modify them to fit the mobile context. Fast downloads without compromising user interaction and experience. iPhone allowed us to do that quite well, we think.

Check out a new episode of the podcast—the Zima episode, in which we slowly get more and more drunk from the horrible concoction throughout. Over 30 minutes of Zima-powered hijinx!

Listen to the new episode now with the built-in player and subscribe already.

I've spent the last few weeks working on some really cool stuff for iPhone and today is launch day! Say hello to Leaflets.

Leaflets are small, mobile web-based applications you access from Safari on your iPhone. And since Leaflets are designed to run fast over AT&T's EDGE network, you can use them anywhere: no wi-fi required.

If you have an iPhone, you're gonna love Leaflets. Sure, I'm biased, but over the last week as we've been demoing the app and putting the final touches on version one, I've been using it regularly on my iPhone and it has been a joy. Being able to view your Flickr comments, Upcoming events, feeds and news in one uniformly designed, fast-loading place has been great.

You can read more about Leaflets or try it out on your iPhone at getleaflets.com. Have fun!

Turns out I'm not alone in my XBOX 360 problems—today, Microsoft admitted that every XBOX sold in the past 19 months has a "design flaw" that will cause it to eventually fail. Wow.

So if you have an XBOX that was sold before, oh, tomorrow, you could eventually (and probably will) have a failed unit that will take four to six weeks to repair (that was the repair estimate I received yesterday). Yikes.

To be fair, it sucks but I'm not nearly as mad as I should be because the console is just so damned good that it's worth it in the long run. But they're lucky. I simply cannot wait for more Guitar Hero II. Six weeks! Christ!

Three movies I've seen this week and my short thoughts on them:

Live Free or Die Hard: Exactly what Die Hard 2: Die Harder wanted to be but miserably failed at. The key? Wait ten years before putting McClane in another random situation. Short on back story (there isn't much), get right into it, not too crazy. Nearly perfect summer movie.

Transformers: Luckily, it wasn't too Michael Bay'd up. Some of the action sequences were really hard to watch because there was too much stuff happening on screen, but it was enjoyable for the most part. The transformations looked really cool and the voice of Optimus Prime was pitch-perfect. Just wish it didn't have so many hokey moments.

Ratatouille: Very, very cute. Not my favorite Pixar movie, but it was really enjoyable. The short before (Lifted) was really great, probably my favorite so far. There weren't as many laughs as I expected, though.

Not only is episode 21 of the podcast ready for consumption, but our show is currently being featured in iTunes!

Listen to the new episode and subscribe if you haven't. We're having a lot of fun making this stuff and we're only getting started. Many thanks to the folks at Apple for featuring us!