Jamie Zawinski writes, or rants actually, about Linux usability. He’s right.

“So I gave up on that, and tried to install gstreamer (http://gstreamer.net/). Get this. Their propose ‘solution’ for distributing binaries on Red Hat systems? They point you at an RPM that installs apt, the Debian package system! Yeah, that’s a good idea, I want to struggle with two competing packaging systems on my machine just to install a single app. Well, I found some RPMs for Red Hat 7.2, but apparently they expect you to have already rectally inserted Gnome2 on that 7.2 system first. Uh, no. I’ve seen the horror of Red Hat 8.0, and there’s no fucking way I’m putting Gnome2 on any more of my machines for at least another six months, maybe a year.”

Very funny Linux version of the Apple “switch” ads.

I must’ve spend 4 hours trying to install, configure and connect to an

LDAP server (OpenLDAP) on a

FreeBSD box around here. During the process, for one reason or

another, I ended up having to upgrade and reconfigure PHP, Berkely DB

and who knows what else. It’s running and I can connect to it, but

adding nodes just won’t work. Oh well, I didn’t need the sleep anyway.

John Udell comments on Groove and team blogging. Reminded me of how cool Groove really is. Unfortunately, I can’t get behind any “collaborative” tool that only runs on a single platform. Some of my best friends are Mac users.

Jeffrey Zeldman (A List Apart) offers these tips for web designers:

1. Think about the audience first.

2. Minimize bandwidth.

3. Give each site a personal voice and a real point of view. The audience will connect with that.

4. Do what’s actually needed. Don’t do things simply because you can.

5. Be entertaining. Inducing boredom is not a plan for growth.

6. In most cases, use Web standards and test your work at http://validator.w3.org/ .

7. If you think you know all the answers, you’re wrong.

8. If you’re doing what you did last year, you’re dead.

9. Test your site–not just on multiple browsers and platforms, but on people. Your interface is rarely as transparent as you think. But don’t be a slave to test results, either. Trust your instincts. Balance them against test results. Rinse, lather, repeat.

10. Get half the fee up front.

I’ve completely rewritten the

CSS implementation of this site. I’m

heading toward a structural markup and CSS only layout. For now, I’m

down to just a couple of tables for layout. I’ve removed every table

attribute into CSS rules and cleaned up a bit. At this point, I’m not

spending too much time on how it looks in older or buggy browsers. If

things look especially goofy in your particular browser, email me with details. I’d like

to solve as many problems as possible.

I’ve been saying this for a while, but when the New York Times starts chiming in, it’s official.

“The toy box has turned into a toolbox.” Indeed.

UIE: .[Interview with

Eric Meyer](//www.uie.com/Articles/meyer_interview.htm)

The usual breakdown in thinking comes when we think

“usable” means “looks exactly the same.” That’s the hurdle most people

have to overcome. To me, “usable” means “the content is readable and

easily understood.” The page can look a little less sophisticated in a

six-year-old browser–that doesn’t strike me as a

tragedy.

Macromedia introduces their [new

site](http://www.macromedia.com/) which is almost entirely Flash. I understand the need to

practice what they preach, but it ain’t dere yet.

And it doesn’t work well in Safari and Opera. Aren’t many of

Macromedia’s strongest proponents Mac users?

Here’s [a

Business Week story](//www.businessweek.com/technology/cnet/stories/991868.htm) with more.

I don’t often get to say “Damn! How’d they do that!?,” but check this:

Dial a phone number, speak your search phrase, click a link in your

browser and see the results. It’s called Google voice search.