1. Tabs are your friend

Tabs are in every major browser now. Although they took awhile to get to Internet Explorer, no one has to go without now. I think browser tabs are the most obvious of these tips, but just in case, here’s a refresher.

Those little tabs you may see from time to time across the top of your browser are actually multiple browser windows. Years ago we would have to literally open multiple browser windows and have a mess of them in our task bar or whatever OS you might have been using at the time. All browsers have different ways of using or adding tabs, but one that seems universal is the fast key Ctrl+T on the PC, or Cmd+T on the mac. This will quickly open a new tab. There are also clickable buttons in many browser along the top, but I’ll let you in experiment with those. In some browsers like FireFox you’ll have to add the “New Window” button manually by right clicking the top browser bar and selecting customize. Here you can drag and drop all kinds of elements into the FireFox interface, but using fast keys will always be faster than using buttons.

Why are tabs good? Well if you are like me you usually have anywhere from 5 to 20 of them open at a time. Everything from email to Google, or all the articles you intend on reading. You can also set up most browsers to save your tab session when you close the browser, this way the next time you open your browser all your tabs reappear. You can usually find this setting in the options section of your browser.

2. Tabs part II, the middle click is your friend too

Of course the easiest way to open multiple tabs is to middle click links. One of the main reasons why some web designers should stop breaking our middle click.

Where I find the middle click most useful is when reading a list of articles. You are on a news site, the front page has 5 stories and you know you want to read them all, why not just middle click each one and open all 5. This way you won’t forget to read them and you can go through them one by one. For bandwidth heavy pages, or people with slow Internet connections this will also allow all the pages to completely loaded by the time you get to them.

3. Finding stuff; your search goes beyond Google

So you have searched for the past 5 minutes and you have finally found that nugget with the tips or secrets you so desperately need, but darn, the page is huge, where is that one single paragraph you want. This is where your browsers find comes into play, pressing Ctrl+F or Cmd+F will bring up your browsers find dialogue. Type in the exact word or phrase that Google or your favourite search engine showed on this page and you should be able to instantly jump to that section. Remember that this is not a search engine, so you need to type the exact word or phrase that Google found in it’s preview.

This tip is a real time saver for me, and I’m usually greeted with surprise when I say to someone, “Search the page”.

4. Wrapping it all up with some more shortcuts

When searching on the page the first instance may not be what you were looking for. Ctrl+G or Cmd+G will quickly jump to the next instance of that phrase or word. Ctrl+W or Cmd+W will close the tabbed window you currently have open. Closed a tab by accident? Try Ctrl+Shift+T or Cmd+Shift+T for undo, a real life saver sometimes. This last one doesn’t seem to work in IE, so maybe it’s time to switch to a better browser.

I hope these tips help some of you become a better faster surfer. Happy surfing.

Audience is asking about how different SimCity for iPhone than SimCity for PC. It’s the same!!!

I am a huge SimCity fan and was pretty excited when I saw the screenshots. The only SimCity that I’ve ever been really disappointed with was the Nintendo DS Lite version. I really hope this iPhone / iPod version can hold up to the PC versions. It’s also amazing to think that at one time a game like this could make the average PC chug and now it can run on a device as small as an iPhone. Suffice to say, I am seriously stoked about this release. The iPhone / iPod Touch is becoming a real contender in the hand held gaming arena.

Update December 16th: The official SimCity iPhone / iPod touch website has been launched tonight on EA Mobile. Still no sign of the game yet, but it should be any day now.

Update December 17th: You can now download SimCity for 10 dollars on iTunes. My first impressions are pretty good so far.

If you have been making email newsletters that work in the majority of email clients out there you already know this; if you want your work to display the way you intended in web based and stand alone email clients then you have to use inline styles and tables, and a lot of them. You would also be wise to ignore any modern CSS, because most of it won’t work. Inline styles work well for email clients that strip out all the embedded styles like Hotmail (also a Microsoft product). Hotmail has come a long way over the past 4 years, but unfortunately Outlook took several steps back when someone came up with the brilliant idea of using Word as the email render engine. Previous versions of Outlook are much easier to support. 

I’ve done everything right, why are my links turning purple when clicked!

So you have your inline styles set up everywhere including on your links, but when you send out your deployment the links turn purple when clicked in Outlook 2007. This is Outlook ignoring your inline styles and applying the default link colour for visited links. If you have an embedded style at the top of the page, it will respect those. I had stopped using embedded styles all together since inline styles were much more reliable. The fix for this is to add your link styles back in the embedded style at the top of the page inside the head of your markup.

<style media="all" type="text/css">
a:link, a:visited {
     color:#64698c;
     text-decoration:none;
}
.sideBar a:link, .sideBar a:visited {
     color:#893d00;
     text-decoration:underline;
}
</style>

In this example all link styles are set to a specific colour and the second style sets a different set of colours for links within a sidebar class. All you really need to fix your Outlook link woes is the a:visited declaration, but it can’t hurt to add the links in there too.

Inline styles are still king with email

Remember, dont’ get rid of your inline styles. One of the reasons I got rid of my embedded styles is because I could not tell when I was missing an inline style. This is a real pain for links, because using this fix will show your links as the right colour while working on the email. If you or others use editors to work on your HTML they will not add inline styles, so you must always remember to add them after. Again, the down side with this fix is now you cannot see which links you have missed. At the time of writing Gmail still strips out the embedded link styles and I’m sure a few other clients still do this too.

Galcon is probably one of the most simple games you can play on the iPhone. It’s basically a real time strategy, or better known to the gaming world as an RTS. Unlike traditional RTS games, this one is extremely simple, but rich with strategy and technique. This game has so much going for it. The games are super short, something that’s good for a phone based game. You can easily get off a few rounds while waiting for your streetcar or bus, especially if you live in Toronto. The best part is this game is multi-player even over 3G, and I think that’s what really makes it shine. You will probably tire of the AI quickly, it’s not very bright and every round feels the same, but even the AI in some of the greatest RTS games like StarCraft can be pretty flaky at times. Nothing beats real people, at least not yet, maybe someday.

So how do you play?

Basically the game has 2 to 4 game slots, but I really recommend having 3 or more players. The game does not always start off perfectly balanced for each player, which is actually pretty cool when there is more than 2 players, but when there are only two in the game, the victory will usually go to whoever has the most favourable starting position.

Galcon is a space RTS and the only goal is to claim as many planets as possible and annihilate your opponents, every last stinking one of them. When you start each player will have one large planet with 100 military units. Every unit is the same. You will be surrounded by different sized planets that are neutral each with a number on them. This number is the amount of neutral units you will have to conquer before you can lay claim to that planet. Obviously the first planets people go for are the ones with the lowest numbers and closest to them, but wait, there’s one caveat and that’s the planets size.

Size matters

The larger your planet, the faster your units will replenish. Tiny planets replenish very slowly, while large ones replenish very fast. The player needs to weight the size vs the amount of units they must conquer. A tiny planet with 1 to 5 units is worth taking over, while a tiny planet with 45 or more units might not as it would take several minutes to replenish those forces. Yes, minutes matter in this game. It’s all about tactics and speed of execution.

Describing the games crack like addiction is hard, but every game is unique. Just when you think you have the upper hand another player will begin to attack you while you attack your initial foe. It can be infuriating at times when another play does something that seems to not be in either of your best interests. Usually if one player becomes very powerful the other players sit tight and see what happens next. Attacking each other when one player is dominating is suicide, but you must also know when you take that big guy down these temporary unspoken alliances with weaker players will quickly break down once the main threat is gone.

This is the main player screen. You can start a round with two or more players, but I really recommend at least 3.

This is a typical starting match. My player is red. Although you can’t see the other players military units, they have a 102 just like me at this point. Once they start attacking other planets it can be hard to keep track of how powerful they are. The 50% at the bottom right corner is your attack percentage. It can be changed from 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%. This is the percentage of units that will be deployed from a planet.

In this early stage of battle above white is already attacking blue. While you are playing you can double tap your planets to select all of them, and then single tap planets to deselect some.

The online play is what makes this a killer iPhone game, but there are also several other variations of game play against the AI. Oh did I mention there is also an online ranking system? I really hope the developer keeps updating this great app, and right now it’s only five dollars. If you are a gamer and looking for that killer iPhone game then look no further, I can’t recommend Galcon enough. If you don’t have an iPhone, there are also PC, Mac, and Linux version of this game. If I haven’t convinced you, try the demo.

iTunes App Store links

Full version
Demo version

The place is called “The Church of the Silver Ball” and if you live in the Toronto area it’s located in a desolate Missassauga industrial complex. Every month or so there is a tournament; you can also rent the place. It’s crammed full of Pinball tables and all kinds of other memorabilia from old Coke bottles to posters decorating every inch of the place. The machines range from very old to modern. Some of the older ones were a blast to play since they were a bit before my time. It’s amazing to hear your score go up with a tick tick tick sound as the flip numbers chug away.

Eventually the tournament started and that’s where it all went down hill. My friend and I had not played “real pinball” in years. Video game pinball is not a substitute for real pinball no matter how much fun you’re having. Suffice it to say, we were destroyed. For anyone who thinks that pinball is luck, think again. We would have our ball in play for 30 seconds to a minute while our competitors would have theirs in play for 5 minutes or more. Yes there are those annoying instant gutter balls, but some people have serious mad pinball skills. Maybe I’ll fair better at the next tournament. If you are in the Toronto area and like pinball, you should really check out The Church of the Silver Ball. They also sell and repair tables.

Beautiful art direction

Maybe it’s just my taste in art, but I think the art direction in this game is stunning, it’s very Tim Burton, only very vivid at times. Every level has a life of it’s own, and as I played I found myself wanting to see the next level and waiting with anticipation. The screenshots that follow are beautiful, but keep in mind these are static shots, in the game everything is animated and moving which makes the experience even more rich. 

The screenshot above is actually in game. Basically World of Goo is a puzzle game, but it’s like no puzzle game I have ever played before. The only games that I could sort of compare it too would be Lemmings or Enigmo, but make no mistake, World of Goo is about as original as you get.

World of Goo is a physics based puzzle / construction game. The millions of Goo Balls who live in the beautiful World of Goo don’t know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious.

Addicted from the start

This game is extremely addictive and the demo comes with the entire first chapter of the game, which is quite a few levels. By the time you are done you should be itching for more, which is fine because there is a lot more to come if you buy the game. As I mentioned already the other great news is that this is a DRM free game. There is no serial or any kind of piracy protection on it, so do the developers a favour and buy the game if you do like it. Once you do it’s yours to install and play when ever and where ever you want. 

It’s raining Goo

Each level is set in a vibrant original World of Goo. There are different types of Goo and the way it reacts to the environment around will vary depending on the type and various other factors. My big question is where is an iPod Touch / iPhone version of this game. The whole concept screams for a touch based interface, but you will have no problems with a mouse either. 

Balloon Goo will help you hold up your bridge of Goo supports, but be careful of those spikes up top. 

Sometimes you have to build your Goo towers quit tall and it will begin to sway back and forth. If it sways too much the entire tower can come crashing down. 

Sign posts are in every level and they will either give witty humour or cryptic tips that will help you get through the level.

This is what the level selection screen looks like. You can go back to any level you have already completed to try and beat your records, which include time you took, number of moves and Goo balls collected. As you collect Goo in each level you get more and more Goo balls on the main screen of the game where you can do anything you want. The more of the game you play, the more Goo you have to play with in this sandbox mode. You can also see how tall other players have built their towers here.

Wind is also another element along with those wind mills which will actually destroy your Goo balls if they come in contact with them.

Scroll down to see the rest of the screenshots, or stop if you don’t want too many spoilers. These screenshots consist of chapter one and two. You can find out more about the game at 2D Boy where you can also download the demo of the first chapter. This is one of the most creative games I’ve played in years. 

As a web designer I constantly run into browser bugs and 90% of these bugs belong to either IE6 or IE7. Remarkably these two browsers don’t even consistently break the same way. What is messed up in IE6 may be completely messed up in a different way in IE7. The standards compliant WebKit and Gecko engines used by popular browsers like FireFox, Safari and Chrome rarely see many of these annoying bugs, but the masses use IE, so we as designers and developers must make them work.

Fixing these bugs usually requires a lot of head scratching and pounding of fists and Google searches until I figure out a work around or hack that will fix it. I may not run across said bug for several months or even a year or more and then inevitably I stumble across the same bug and of course not realizing it is one I have dealt in the past. The IE6 redirect bug is one of those nasty ones that has caused me much pain and suffering, and it’s very simple to fix, although sometimes remembering the fix can take precious time, so I thought this time I would write it down and share it with others.

An anchor link, sometimes called a jump link, is pretty straight forward HTML, so you would think IE would have no problems with it. You would be wrong though, very wrong.

<a href="http://www.sitename.com/yourPage.html#AnchorName">Link to anchor on page</a>

Within yourPage.html you have an anchor

<a name="AnchorName"></a>

This is where it all went wrong

Under most circumstances this will work just fine, even in old clunky IE6, but where it won’t work is when there is a redirect involved. My issue started with an anchor link from an email campaign. This link would be clicked from an email client and then sent on to the email deployment platform, where it would then be redirected to the actual page. From here a nasty 404 would pop up. This is what threw me, because usually redirecting an anchor link in IE6 will only result in the anchor not working, but the page still loads fine.

The fix

The fix is quite simple if you can remember it the next time this happens to you.

<a href="http://www.sitename.com/yourPage.html&#AnchorName">Link to anchor on page</a>

See the difference? No? Check out the little ampersand “&” at the end of the html file and before the pound “#”. This will fix your broken anchor links in IE6 and they will now jump to where they are supposed to go.

My issue was a little more dire since the anchor links were actually breaking the page and giving a 404 error. We probably could have just ignored the issue if the jumping was the only thing broken. I think the reason for this is IE6 must parse the URL incorrectly when being redirected and ignore pound sign “#”. My page was a PHP file and contained a query string:

yourPage.php&var1=foo&var2=bar#AnchoreName

The last var2 was interpreted as bar#AnchoreName instead of bar. An ampersand “&” fixed this issue also. IE6 and IE7 never cease to amaze me with how badly they interprets the HTML and CSS specs. This particular bug is only an issue in IE6. I hope this saves some people a bit of sanity.

The plans have also changed and they seem to be less confusing than they used to be. The new base Fido iPhone plan is still 60 dollars, but it includes 500MB of data and unlimited texting. Right now my plan is 400MB of data and 75 text messages a month for the same price. Of course when Fido contacted me to tell me my 3 months of unlimited local calling was over they also said I could upgrade to the new plan for a 25 dollar setup fee. Why do they call it a setup fee? I’m already setup, why don’t they just call it an upgrade fee? I didn’t do it right then, I looked into it first and thought hey the connection fee savings alone will pay for the 25 dollar setup fee in four months. Anyway, here’s the good part, the Fido representative said that they could give me the connection fee credit with no upgrade and I could keep my plan. Since I don’t text much and the data increase is minimal I went for the free credit. I’m sure sometime next year their will be a data boost again, maybe then I’ll bite.

So call up Fido and upgrade your plan for 25 dollars or have them remove the 7 dollar system access fee for nothing. I think you need to call them though, otherwise they will probably just keep charging you the 7 dollar fee.

I’m wondering if these new changes are in response to the new National carrier Globalive which should be on the scene here in Canada sometime next year. There are also a lot of Virgin Mobile advertisements around Toronto attacking system access fees. Whatever it is, I’ll take the savings and increased features anyway I can get them.

I of course jumped on the iPhone bandwagon, but before I did I spent a lot of time researching many of the smartphones out there. At the time just before the second iPhone was launched there were a lot of great smartphones on the way, but none were out yet. Now that the iPhone has been out for a few months a lot of new devices have emerged. One of the reasons I bought the iPhone was because Apple was ahead of the curve, now a lot of the other manufacturers have similar offerings, but are any of them really iPhone killers? I decided to do a quick smartphone round up to see what’s currently out there.

Android is the newest cool kid in town

Of course you can’t talk about smartphones without talking about Android and their new G1 offered by T-Mobile in the US. This phone by HTC came out a couple of weeks ago, but even before a phone was announced, the Android platform had huge buzz in the blogsphere and tech news sites. I wrote about it several times and was pretty hyped about it myself when I wrote Android Android Android! everyone’s talking about Android and I still am pretty buzzed about it.

Android promises a lot of innovation and is really shaking up the industry. First it’s open source, which means anyone can play with the innards of the code. Up until now this was practically unheard of, and this could be the end of locked down phones, which I think is great. I can do what I want with my computer, I should be able to do the same with my smartphone, which is basically a portable mini computer. This is one flaw with Apple’s phone, without special applications I can’t even treat this phone as a storage device or copy my music on to different computers. The Open Handset Alliance is another great by product of Google Android.

Everything I have read about the G1 says that it is no iPhone killer, but there is massive potential and that this is just the start. Google is on to something here, and one of these days there may be a Google phone that is an iPhone killer. Remember this is Googles first phone.

See Engadget’s review on the G1

Blackberry Bold and Storm

Research In Motion is one of the big players and has been around for a long time. The big toys from RIM this year are the Bold and the Storm. If any phone could have swayed me from my iPhone purchase it would have been one of these. In the end I’m glad I went for the iPhone because the Bold does lean towards business users, and the Storm is taking forever to come out.

The Bold is the newest and greatest Blackberry in town, with a higher resolution than the iPhone but smaller screen this thing is crystal sharp. I have played with it once and it is pretty clear, but you have to wonder what the point of such high resolution is with such a small screen? It’s a nice phone, but it still feels a bit flimsy, I’m not a fan of how easily the Blackberries tend to scratch, but with that said if I had to pick a second best phone, I would probably go with a Blackberry.

The Blackberry Storm may be a different story, this is RIM’s attempt at the consumer market and is a direct competitor to the iPhone. It has what RIM calls “tactile-touch” which is basically a spring loaded screen. You basically have to push all the way down to hit a key, which sounds pretty cool. I’m used to not having to push down, so it might be hard to get used too. So far I have read that the new touch screen is awesome, to not so great, so only time will tell. I think what you are used to will have a lot to do with how much you like the screen. Blackberry is late to the game and a lot of people who use touch screens have gotten used to how they work now, but this may appeal to the users who have not switched to a touchscreen yet.

You can find first impression reviews at Gizmodo and Engadget along with a gallery of PowerPoint slides on The Boy Genius Report.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1

Sony’s EXPERIA X1 has been rumoured and talked about so long that I almost forgot about it. Its already available in some places, but still pretty hard to find.

This is a pretty sweet looking phone, but I’ve read a lot of good and bad about it. First it’s Windows Mobile, so depending on how you feel about Windows Mobile, your decision may be already made. There have also been claims of slow response on the touch screen and that the keyboard keys do not provide enough tactile feedback. Either way, I don’t think this phone will be viable until it’s on major carriers. Rumours are that it will be available on AT&T at some point.

Unboxing of XPERIA X1 and some nice high resolution shots and a very early review at The Boy Genuis Report.

HTC and a world of cool smartphones

HTC has so many cool phones it’s hard to mention them all. They build the G1 Android phone and had a hand in the XPERIA X1. They also released the Touch Diamond this year, and the Touch Pro will be out soon. There is also the really cool HTC Touch HD which unfortunately will not be showing up in North America, but it has been called an iPhone killer.

HTC definitely makes a whole lot of cool phones, and I’m sure we will be seeing Google’s Android on a lot more HTC phones.

Nokia

Nokia is huge in a lot of the world, but not so much here in North America. That may all change if they start bringing out slick phones like the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It comes with a stylus so you can write out your messages, so if a stylus is your thing, then the XpressMusic might be for you.

Engadget has a hands on review.

Samsung instinct

Samsung has also jumped onto the touch screen smart phone bandwagon, the big one this year was the Samsung Instinct. I’m a huge fan of Samsung products, especially their LCD displays, but for some reason their phones just don’t do it for me. The instinct did perk my interest, but then the reviews came out and laid my anticipation to rest. The Omnia on the other hand seems to score a bit higher, but it’s a windows mobile device and it doesn’t have the prettiest interface. Samsung is also a member of the Open Handset Alliance, so we may see a Google Android phone from them in the future; fingers crossed.

Openmoko, truly open

Although a much smaller player in the smartphone field we cannot forget Openmoko, the truly open source smartphone platform and the device it runs on, Neo FreeRunner. I have been keeping an eye on Openmoko for many of the same reasons I watch Google’s Android platform. I believe in the concept behind these platforms, but Openmoko steps it up a notch, this is a truly open source project, everything from the OS to the phone itself; even the CAD files can be downloaded so you can modify the actual phone itself. Openmoko is definitely a hardcore computer geeks dream.

More information can be found on the wiki entry for Openmoko. The phone can be purchased at the official Openmoko website, and you can also visit the Openmoko wiki website which has much more information.

Apple iPhone, the darling of touch smartphones

And of course this roundup wouldn’t be complete without the iPhone. Apple has lead the way here the same way they lead the way for mp3 players. Whether you love or hate Apple there is no denying that they are market leaders in innovation and have consistently upped the bar delivering a compelling product that’s hard to beat. Almost every review I have read on smartphones uses the iPhone as a measure of quality. You always hear references to Apple’s iPhone or “the iPhone Killer” catch phrase.

That doesn’t mean the iPhone has no flaws, one of the most mentioned features that is missing is “copy and paste” functionality. I don’t know if Apple will ever add this, but it’s a much needed and requested feature, especially for sending web addresses to people in applications such as Twitterific. There is an option to email someone a link from Safari, but copy and paste would be a lot more useful. Another thing that needs fixing is the browser, although it’s a fantastic mini browser, possibly even the best, it does tend to crash an awful lot, at least for me. That said, I am more than happy with my iPhone and it really is the best device I have bought in years. Many of the games are simple but very addictive, just what you want on a small device like this and there is a constant stream of new applications every day. When I was showing my phone to someone once they asked “is there anything it can’t do?”, well yes, it won’t do your laundry yet.

An amazing year for gadgets

It really has been a great year for great gadgets and smartphones in particular. I can’t help but get excited about 2009’s lineup. Where will Apple be this time next year, and the one I’m really keeping an eye on is Google’s Android. It will also be interesting to see how the Blackberry vs Apple battle turns out, I personally think Android is more of a threat than the Blackberry. The Blackberry has a strong loyal consumer base and owns the business sector. They are also making their phones pretty, because lets face it, even business men and women want to have a cool cell phone.

For the third iPhone next year I’m predicting a higher resolution, better GPS and a better camera as obvious places to work on. I hope all the other smartphones have surprises up their sleeves also. 2008 was an amazing year, lets hope 2009 is even more ground breaking.

So how does Google Earth hold up on the iPhone? Well obviously it’s a bit trimmed down, but still much better than I thought it would be. You can see photos, Wikipedia entries and move around the earth in the typical intuitive Multi-touch way that we are all so used too. You can even twist two fingers to rotate, and if you tilt your device the accelerometer kicks in and allows an angled view so you can see the 3D surface of the Earth. You can also use the iPhones GPS to find your current location on planet Earth. The application runs fairly smooth on the iPhone, but I did notice a few hiccups which sometimes even happens on the full Google Earth.

I have taken several screenshots below. You can also check out the official Google announcement on the Google blog which also has video, but the application is free, so check out the app store and get it now.

Toronto via GPS.

Wikipedia entry via iPhone Google Earth

Mount Everest in all its 3D glory