Jonathan D'Mello, Designer of Visual Communication» Design

Foliage Control

Jonathan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:04:22 +0000

I’m always intrigued by the way people find new and innovative ways to use typical controls. I recently saw this control on Komodo Media.

Its a typical horizontal slider that I’ve seen on many sites. I’ve seen horizontal sliders used for filtering prices, scaling images, zooming in and out of maps and even as volume controls. The interesting thing about the slider on Komodo Media is that it is used to control the number of plant images on the page. it also incorporates a cool fade effect for extra goodness!

Google’s new favicon

Jonathan — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:54:58 +0000

Have you noticed Google’s new favicon (for those of you who don’t know, a favicon is the small square-shaped icon that you see in the address bar, next to the url) ? It’s been changed to a lower-case “g” from an upper-case “G”. Although this might not take that much getting used to, could this be an indicator that Google is planning a major change sometime soon.

It’s a shame that only Apple has a huge cult-like fan following, who are willing to investigate each and every print ad or flash banner that the company puts out, eager to find that hidden clue.

You iBallin’ me ?

Jonathan — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:29:57 +0000

I was watching TV the other day when I saw an ad for computer peripherals and cases. The ad was showcasing pretty regular, plasticky stuff that you’ll find in any Indian household PC along with pictures of hot models(apparently this sales technique still works for them). But then something in the ad caught me eye, behind a semi-desperate looking model. It looked familiar, almost too familiar, so I decided to go to the company’s site and check for myself and this is what I found.

This is the iBall Workhorse PC Cabinet. A plastic replica of Apple’s Mac Pro Case. You can check out the URL for yourself here:

http://iball.co.in/inner/show_product_details2.asp?catid=20&pid=10

And if you want to compare it to the original:

Apple Mac Pro

Comments?

Pressed and customized

Jonathan — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:49:23 +0000

For the last few weeks I’ve been testing a number of blogging and CMS platforms to see which one fits my needs best.

I’ve tried:

WordPress
Textpattern
Joomla
Drupal
Mambo
Mephisto
Serendipty
Expression Engine Core
and a few more..

As some of you’ll may have guessed I’ve finally settled on WordPress 2.5 for a couple of reasons

The community: The design and development community around wordpress is large and active.
The customization options: In my opinion, WordPress offers more “good” themes than any other CMS.
The ease with which i can build or customize my own theme is incomparable.
The WordPress 2.5 admin console: The new dashboard and console is intuitive not only to power bloggers but also blogger newbies.

I’ve yet to discover the all of intricacies of WordPress and its functions. I hope to create my own theme in some time. For now I’m using Simplicity, a German based theme that I’ve customized for English content. It’s still got a few bugs that got lost in translation so feel free to leave a comment on them.