Internet Madman – Tech & Web News

Have you seen Microsoft’s redesign of the msn.com homepage??? Personally, I’ve seen better looking Worpress themes, but let’s focus on the changes, and the features.

1. Whitespace abounds (Good)
2. Ad For Internet Explorer 8 (Check)
3. Tabs for news content (Good)
4. Local weather (Who cares, look out the window.)
5. Advertisements labeled as, “Advertisements” (Okay)
6. Local events listed. (Neat)
7. What’s this??? Facebook and Twitter Integrated. (Now we’re talking.)
8. Hotmail tab
9. Popular searches listed. (Nice)

Although this isn’t a full list, you get the idea. Overall the design in clean, intuitive and not the blue Microsoft is so accustomed to using in EVERYTHING. With FaceBook and Twitter being featured, they are on the right track, and it’s a heck of a lot better than the recent Yahoo Redesign. That’s utter catastrophe as far as I’m concerned.

Honestly it looks pretty good, very readable. I’m setting my homepage there for the time being. Of course I’m not too fond of pink, unless there are certain circumstances present that is

Madman’s Rate 4/5. Msn.com is lookin’ better, lookin’ a whole lot better, lookin’ good.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Seriously, I went to Digg a post, and I wanted to connect with my FaceBook user Id, cause for some reason I didn’t remember my Digg password, so I proceeded to connect with Facebook.

All was good until it stated, “Looks like you already have a Digg Account.” Well Okay, I thought and so I then did remember it, “I guess” so I entered that info. It did find me, “I guess” (Not much feedback from that page)

But I thought the whole point was to log in with my FaceBook credentials??? Apparently not. Apparently, they just want to associate the account. I’m not really a great fan of leaving around 50,000 personally identifiable pieces of information everywhere, but whatever.

Anyway, I select not to share my photo, and not to follow my FaceBook friends on Digg. Then I click the submit button, and whoila…

Anybody elese think that this error was a little bit dumb? And not just because it’s an error, but because it tells you nothing about why it happened. To me as a developer, irritates me mildy. Every web application has errors, but developers need to show the user exactly why the error ocurred, intead of some generic message, but of course, I’m an Internet Madman. So my opinion means very little to some and more to others. Of course the developers probably know exactly what happened, and to that I give them credit, but as a developer myself, I hate when stuff fails to work (and I don’t know the reason). And that’s my vent for the day.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Alright, in the past, I’ll admit, I’ve used CSS Tab Designer, available for free download, at http://www.highdots.com/css-tab-designer/ The program is completely free, and also free of spyware, and viruses. So what’s my point? The program is great for beginners, and professional designers alike, however the looks and styles included in the program are getting somewhat dated, as the program has been freely available for wuite a while. I’m wondering here when the folks at Overzone will be good enough to add some fresh new designs inside, and I know from using the program in the past that any update to CSS Tab Designer from OverZone is worth the download.

The CSS Tab Designer has a lot of style to choose from, and of course you can always create your own looks based on their code. the program itself is extremely easy to use, and I give is 5 / 5.

Popularity: 9% [?]