It's here. The all new design for Liquidicity. We hope you didn't mind waiting, but we think it's paid off. We went back to the drawing board and decided to rework the blog from the ground up. Before we waffle on, let's get into the reasons why we decided to redesign Liquidicity.

A few things we noticed from the old Liquidicity

* People like our icons.
* People like our design reference posts - like Help Sheets.
* People want to be able to see what other posts we have produced without having to Google for them.
* We had a lot more people going to the site than reading our RSS feed.
* We never thoroughly looked at the Comments area before.
* We weren't making it clear that Liquidicity was just one part of the GoSquared site.
* People often find it easy to search for stuff.

So we went ahead, and tried to design a better Liquidicity.

As a side note, you may be interested to know we've been working on redesigning the rest of the GoSquared site, so many of the concepts we're playing with here on Liquidicity will soon be making their way across the whole site.

So what have we done? We've been very keen to clean up the many different areas of Liquidicity and form a more unified, easy to navigate interface, so we worked to a grid pattern (of 980px width) to structure the page. All navigation now falls strictly into the grid, from our subtly modified top navigation menu, to the Liquidicity navigation menu, to the sidebar, to the category and archive pages. We've tried to stick to the grid wherever possible.

Showing off the Feed

We broke the grid on purpose for the RSS badge in the Liquidicity navigation menu for obvious reasons - we wanted the element to stand out as much as possible. Trickier than it looks, but it makes sense. Along the same lines, with the aim of increasing awareness of our RSS feed, we are now showing the number of subscribers in at least two locations: the Liquidicity navigation menu and the sidebar. We didn't want to use the ugly Feedburner widget, though, so we dug a little deeper and found we could use the Awareness API to pull our feed count from Feedburner's servers without needing to show anything but pure text.

Comments that don't suck

We wanted to improve the appearance of comments so we added Gravatar support. Now your Global Avatar will show up along side your comments on every post. We also ensured the actual form that members use to submit comments looked a bit better. We worked hard to design some new buttons that have multiple states so your click is rewarded with a grateful "active" state.

Down Below the Fold

A lot of time went in to improving the footer area of Liquidicity. We now show the (new) global GoSquared footer, along with a breadcrumb trail to help you find your way in the navigational structure of the blog. Further helping navigation, we have made some new buttons (in the style of the comment submit button) for browsing back and forth in time through the list pages of posts. Again, we hope these will encourage people to further explore more content on Liquidicity.

All in all, we hope you like the new Liquidicity. Have a quick look through the images in the gallery below to see close ups on what we've done, and a few sketches we made when planning the new design.

As always, design gets better with feedback, so we would love to hear your thoughts on the redesign.

Thanks!

The GoSquared Team

It's Halloween time again, and we haven't made a new wallpaper in a few weeks, so we thought we'd treat you to some vectorised pumpkin scariness.

Available in a 320x480 iPhone friendly size, all the way up to a freakishly large 2560x1600 for you lucky ones with exceedingly wide displays.

Here's the large one (click it to go to the full size image):

Here's the iPhone sized one, click to go to the full size image:

I'm not too sure how long this has been available, but it would appear that Google are now putting a search field inside the embedded YouTube video player that you see everywhere. I tried it again just now and the search bar didn't show up, so I would give an educated guess and say Google is still playing with the idea and testing it out on a selection of videos.

I found thus just as I was browsing around after checking my thousands of RSS Feeds, I decided to pop over to MacRumors and read up some more on the upcoming Classics app. It's gonna be fantastic - plus it's had the influence of awesome designer Sebastiaan de With which can only be good thing.

The other day, I went back to this piece by Richard Sprague (Senior Marketing Director at Microsoft) from January 2007.

The whole article can be summed up by:

"So please mark this post and come back in two years to see the results of my prediction: I predict [Apple] will not sell anywhere near the 10M [iPhones] Jobs predicts for 2008."

This is referring back to the original announcement of the iPhone, and the time when Jobs, being asked by numerous reporters, publicly clarified that Apple aimed to sell around 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

On Tuesday of this week, Apple held their quarterly earnings call. The results for the last quarter were stunning, there's no denying it. Apple sold more iPhones than RIM sold Blackberries. Apple is now the THIRD largest phone retailer in the world, in terms of revenues. And Apple has only been making ONE phone, in the market for just 15 months.

Jobs gave this comment, showing their uncertainty (like everyone else) about the future of the World economy:

"Now, both of these things, beating RIM in units and becoming the third largest mobile supplier in revenues are amazing feats but part of this was the result of expanding into over 50 countries and there’s no guarantee that sustained sales will equal initial sales. And who knows what the future results will be, given the worldwide economic slowdown but we actually outsold RIM last quarter and ranked as the third largest mobile phone supplier in revenues. Not bad for being in the market for only 15 months."

Referring back to Sprague's article, he posted again the other day asking people why they thought the iPhone performed so differently to his predictions.

The problem is that he didn't see the iPhone as the versatile device it is. He compared it to existing phones. Whereas the iPhone is not really a phone, it's everything you could possibly want in one device. And it's all of these things combined beautifully.

There are numerous reasons for its success, but to name a few:

The existing massive consumer base of iPod owners already have a major part of the iPhone equation on their computer: iTunes. No other phone company has anything near the power of iTunes (the software) or the content and quality (the iTunes Store). The ability for Apple to reach its already happy customer base of iPod owners through iTunes, and the email lists that the majority of them have joined is a greater advantage than many realise. Everyone I know knows of the iPhone and what it can do. They have the expectation of it being a well built, well designed device like their existing iPods. We can conclude that one of the strongest selling points of the iPhone is that it has been released after the iPod - it must be better.

The iPhone ad campaign is aired worldwide to huge audiences. The ads show off a beautiful product with a beautiful interface that performs tasks that normally seem mundane, easily and with flair. These ads are also localised to each country so show that Apple has genuinely considered the needs of each nation (even if all it has done is hired a native speaking commentator and shown a national newspaper as the news site in Safari.)

The price of the iPhone (the original iPhone) was exactly the same concept used for the original iPod. Price it high to gain artificial scarcity - the select "elite" have an extremely attractive device that is difficult to obtain for the rest of the population. Bring out a newer, better iPhone several months after at a (still relatively expensive) but cheaper price point and the customers flood in. The iPhone is still expensive, and it is still a product owned by the minority, but as Apple revises the iPhone again, and inevitably releases a second device to the line, the customer base will grow and grow.

We haven't even begun to spoke about the number of big names building high quality iPhone apps - EA Games, SEGA, Google, Facebook, the list goes on. The press's addiction to Apple fuels the hype given to their products. Whatever Apple does - or doesn't - do gets reported, (the shares usually respond, too) but it means Apple's name is seen by consumers every day. Apple is a household name unlike any other phone company around (other than Blackberry). You don't see Sony Ericsson's latest set of handsets on the 3rd page of The Times very often.

Other than starving the stock pre iPhone 3G launch, the last 15 months have been constant growth for the iPhone. As we enter very unpredictable times, who knows how many iPhones Apple will sell this quarter? All we tell is that Apple has historically sold double the number of iPods in the 4th compared to the 3rd quarter every year. If Apple does this with the iPhone, which is a stretch, Apple will have sold around 20 million in the same time frame they intended to sell just 10 million.

It's no surprise the iPhone is (so far) a success, but the future is very uncertain.

Today, we're introducing our all new Help Sheets. You loved our original CSS and HTML Help Sheets, so we went back to the originals, tidied them up, and gave them a sprinkling of coolness.

We're also pleased to bring you an entirely new Help Sheet - the PHP Help Sheet. This should be a saviour for you hardcore coders when you forget the odd array function or two.

You can download the full set as a ZIP (5.4MB) right here:

The all new PHP Help Sheet. Everyone needs a handy reference now and then, so go ahead and print this off. Stick it on your wall and never get lost again!

Get the PDF [1.9MB]

The HTML Help Sheet has been updated and tidied up, so now you have no excuses for not decorating your office notice board with snippets of usefulness.

Get the PDF [1.9MB]

The CSS Help Sheet - our first ever, but updated to match the set. Never forget those styling options with this at your side.

Get the PDF [1.9MB]

We hope you like the new Help Sheets, and would love to know what you want us to Help Sheet-ise next: JavaScript? Actionscript? JQuery? Tell us in the comments!

Oh and another thing, the other day one of our readers sent in a photo of our CSS Help Sheet on his office notice board. If you're using our Help Sheets at your office / home / garage / Starbucks we'd love to see! Email us a photo or upload to Flickr with the tag "GoSquared".

Enjoy!

There has been a lot of talk lately that Apple will be releasing something code-named "the Brick".

There have been many rumours and suggestions as to what "the Brick" may be. 9 to 5 Mac is reporting that, according to their sources, the "brick" refers to a new manufacturing process that would involve using lasers and jet cutting instead of the traditional method of pressing to construct new Apple MacBooks from bricks of solid aluminium. If true, this process would truly revolutionise the manufacturing process of consumer electronics. It would, yet again, put Apple several years ahead of the competition, and would ensure Apple gained control over even more of the manufacturing process.

However, let's pretend for a minute that we haven't heard that rumour. Let's think of "the Brick" as an actual product, rather than a manufacturing technique. What could it be?

No more Power Brick?

Initially, when I heard the term, my mind thought power bricks - the bulky blocks that ensure your laptop (or Mac Mini) gets charged when you plug it into the wall. If Apple could innovate a way that would mean we didn't need a power brick for our laptops that would be truly astonishing. It would put Apple's laptops a major step out in front of all competition. However, as much as this would be groundbreakingly cool, I simply don't believe it is possible yet. Sure, power bricks are getting smaller and smaller, and Apple's are looking better and better (See iPhone 3G), but to eliminate the power brick entirely is, as far as I know, not currently feasible.

New Mac Mini?

So, what else could "the Brick" be? Perhaps the Mac Mini. The Mini hasn't been updated for a very long time. It has almost been forgotten about. This means either a) it's going to be eliminated from the product line, or b) it's going to have a massive overhaul very soon. Personally, I think it is much more likely to be b). With the current state of the global economy, and the increased growth Apple has seen in the higher end of the computer market, their low end, affordable Mac is overdue a massive sales increase.

On the one hand, Apple could attempt to make the Mini even thinner, even sexier, and perhaps re-brand it to Mac Nano. This would be great, but it could well confuse consumers with the similarly sized, and similarly priced AppleTV. Instead, I believe Apple will need to differentiate the Mini in another way other than to make it smaller...

No more Computer?

Let's take a look at Neil Curtis's idea for what could happen to the Mac Mini. He proposes that we dispose of "the Brick" entirely. Instead, we would have our entire computer inside the keyboard that sits on our desk. This would look simply breathtaking if you imagine that all that would be sitting on your desk would be a strikingly thin Apple Cinema Display (they're also long overdue a design refresh), a keyboard, and a mouse.

It is arguable that this concept would be possible, but I reckon, with Apple's knowledge, the Macbook Air's internals could be re distributed and altered to fit within the constraints of a keyboard shaped computer. Let's not forget that there would be no need for a battery, a trackpad, or even speakers, already saving a large amount of space. Neil even suggests that an optical drive could be crammed into this design, just like on the MacBook.

View the video above to see Neil explain his ideas in full.

It will be interesting to see what Apple releases in the next few weeks. So far, the rumour is that October 14th will be the day of announcements.

We can't wait!

Read the Top 100 Requests on Dear Adobe and see if you agree.

Adobe has a lot of work to do to please their customers. This is a site that has been set up for us poor developers, designers, animators, and general creatives to vent our anger at Adobe - the company, the products, and their pricing. If Adobe ignores this site, and sees it as a small number of angered individuals determined to destroy Adobe's reputation they will be much mistaken. This site has comments from some of the most loyal users of Adobe products, from the people that genuinely care about their business, and these are also the most vocal - they are the core users that matter most to Adobe.

They are telling Adobe, directly, and in crystal clear English, exactly what is wrong with their current business. They're even telling them how to put it right.

Dear Adobe, Ignore this site at your peril.

With the latest version of iTunes - 8.0.1, the Genius feature introduced in the original release has made it into yet another area of the interface - the "Now Playing" screen.

Apple seems extremely keen to promote this feature throughout its music product line, almost as if there were a profit motive, but other than the iTunes Genius Sidebar, it would seem that Steve and co. simply want us to listen to and discover more of our music.

iTunes 8.0.1 addresses quite a few bug fixes, and is recommended for all iTunes users.

You can download the latest version of iTunes here.

Parallax is a really cool, powerful use of javascript from Stephen Band. Think of looking through a camera and having layers of objects at various distances moving around. Parallax achieves that effect using a combination static images, one for each layer.

"Parallax [is a jQuery library that] turns a selected element into a 'window', or viewport, and all its children into absolutely positioned layers that can be seen through the viewport. These layers move in response to the mouse, and, depending on their dimensions (and options for layer initialisation), they move by different amounts, in a parallaxy kind of way."

Like the look of Google Chrome, but waiting for its release on OS X? Wish you had something similar to meet your multi-tab-tasking needs? Meet Stainless, the (very early) development version of the same concept. Stainless breaks each tab into an individual process just like Chrome to ensure when one goes wrong, it doesn't screw up the whole browser.

It's still early days - there's no bookmarking, history, or download management, but this WebKit based browser has a lot of potential. It also looks pretty good, with minimalism on a par with Chrome itself.

Stainless is for Leopard only (sorry Tiger users, time to upgrade!), and is very (VERY!) early beta. Try it out at your own risk.

Regardless, this is a fantastic start, and I look forward to seeing it develop. If a small group of developers can get this together in a matter of weeks, why can't Google get something out the door shortly?