Archive for October, 2006
Surround-sound for GUI sound effects
Friday, October 13th, 2006A change in the latest MacOS Leopard build: “3D audio cues to indicate locations of items on the screen in the VoiceOver screen reader“.
What an awesome idea! With enormous screens, it would make more and more sense for the plinky beepy noises in the user interface to locate themselves using the system’s surround sound. If you receive a new chat message, it makes sense for the new-message sound to come from the little chat window forgotten in the corner of the screen.
It’d be interesting to consider what it should sound like when minimised applications make a sound (does it ‘come from’ the minimised app tray/dock? Does it sound muffled?), or applications sitting on other virtual desktops (distant and echoey? ‘Through a wall’?).
Iceweasel!
Monday, October 9th, 2006Consistent branding:
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Original Mozilla Phoenix (then Firebird) logo | Official Mozilla Firefox logo | Current Debian and Ubuntu Firefox logo | Proposed Iceweasel logo |
Background: To protect the Firefox brand/quality from damage, the Mozilla organisation has asked that all changes to Firefox by third-party distributors be submitted for approval, or the “Firefox” name not be used. For some time now, Debian and Ubuntu have not shipped the official Firefox logo because of copyright restrictions (again related to ‘protecting the brand’), and now they’re talking about changing the name, as well, which gives them the excuse to replace the current blue globe with something cuter.