Friday, September 28, 2007

Not much content here

I'm finding it quite hard to blog these days since I haven't got anything I really want to post about.
I've got my exams from next week so I haven't been hacking on any specific program, just messing around with some game physics like gravity, collisions and messing about with vectors.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Wanna learn a language. Try Mango

I learnt through Lifehacker
about new site Mango which aims to make language learning free, quick and easy. So I just played around with it for a few minutes and it seems to be really good.
The first thing I really liked was the password less login. You basically just register with your email id and use that as the login. It's really annoying when a site which doesn't hold any of your private information requires a password.
Created in flash, it requires flash 9. But the interface is quite snappy and quick loading, without unnecessary bloat.
I tried the french lessons, and apart from loading quickly they were of high quality. On of the coolest things is that each phrase is colourcoded and anchored. So you can click on a specific phrase to hear it again. The slides constantly make you remember what you just learnt a few minutes ago, but that tends to get a bit repetitive and should perhaps be spaced out wider.
Overall Mango is really good for a beta. I look forward to learning something from it.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Counterintuitive Writer Page Preview icons

I just came across this UI malfunction in OpenOffice Writer's Page Preview mode.


Notice how the next and previous icons represent two things. In the context of turning a page the icons are in their right positions, the one to the left turns back the page, the one to the right moves to the next page. But most users will probably notice the arrows first. And in that context the arrows are in the wrong position. Is it just me or does this confuse everyone?