Only a small post, but I just signed in to Google Mail and received a loading bar progress indicator.

No need to stop the press, but it's a whole lot more useful than the old "Loading..." message.

I hope they do the same with file attachment uploads as well. Progress indicators are a much more user friendly display of loading times than just a spinning icon, or as previously on Google Mail, writing "Loading...".

Hint: Always aim to explain to your users the progress of whatever operation they are waiting for. Progress bars are a simple and efficient way of doing so.

Gary Jones from BlueFur contacted me today about a new project they're working on call BlueFur Jobs.

The aim is simple- to turn Wordpress into an easy to manage job board that anyone can host. It's not quite ready, but you can try it out here. The best thing about it is when it is 100% ready for prime time they're going to release the code for free so we can all enjoy the benefits of their blood, sweat and cheers.

I wrote about the project over at GoSquared Discuss earlier today, but I thought I would promote it to liquidicity so everyone can see what a great piece of work this is.

I tested it out briefly and first impressions are great:

The Great Stuff

* Posting of new jobs is really simple
* Useful RSS Feeds for each job category
* Instant preview of job post
* Clear division of job categories at both top and bottom of page
* "next" and "previous" job categories at bottom of page
* No sign-in necessary
* Overall really simple to use

Improvements That Could be Made

* First and foremost - a search function would make it much easier to find jobs. Especially if the number of jobs reaches into the hundreds.
* People may not be over keen on their email address being posted out in the open. Perhaps hiding this with a coded image or a hashed code would be better.
* Greater focus on "job description" to ensure enough detail on what the job is about is given. Perhaps allow basic html formatting (bold, italics, bullets etc.)
* On posting a new job, clicking "preview" would ideally scroll the page up to where the preview text shows.
* Indication of new jobs to returning visitors with an icon or formatting.

To Make it Kick-ass

* Link "location" field to a mapping site like Google Maps.
* Allow people to sign in to post jobs without having to fill everything in again.
* Ability to share a job with friends by email.

All in all, BlueFur Jobs looks to be an awesome job board, and we are really looking forward to seeing it develop.

Drop a comment to help them out - they are looking for as much help as possible while they develop it.

We are overwhelmed with the response from our first post on the Dream Browser project.

To follow up, we have a couple of small mockups of 1) A better way to look at Bookmarks, and 2) How you might go about viewing videos.

A Better Way of Looking at Bookmarks

We have CoverFlow in iTunes, we have it in the Finder, where next? Yep, the Browser.

CoverFlow is a controversial concept - people either love it or hate it. One could argue that CoverFlow makes sense in iTunes as you can view all of your music just like the ol' days by flipping through your virtual CD covers. One could also argue that it makes sense in the Finder because you can view all of your documents with a scaled down instant preview without even having to open them.

 However, there are others who may argue that CoverFlow is an over-engineered,  graphics hungry, time wasting piece of eye candy.

 I must admit I don't use CoverFlow terribly often in the Finder - it is useful for pictures, PSDs, and videos, but when I get to my Applications folder, CoverFlow serves very little purpose.

Hang on a minute, though - when was the last time you browsed through your internet history? How long did it take to find what you were looking for? It's true - currently, internet browser history sucks. To make a start, things need to be more visual.

Introducing CoverFlow into the Browser makes perfect sense - whenever you navigate to a web page, the Browser could capture a screen shot of that page at a smaller resolution of, say, 640x480. These images would then be stored in a directory that was easily accessible by the user. When browsing history, any item deleted would also remove the thumbnail from the directory.

Add to this an advanced method of search. When you currently search your history or bookmarks, the browser compares your search term to the URL and title of each page. A far superior way of finding what you want would be to index every site you have navigated to, so when you search, your query will be compared to more than just the title and URL, but also the very contents of every page, just like Spotlight does with your documents.

How to View Videos

In Sebastiaan's original post, he mentioned the archaic way of viewing video that is still the norm on the web.

 Breaking content apart has been something of a challenge for years on the web - separating content from design with HTML and CSS, but not much has been done on the user side to aid separation of content such as text, video, and pictures.

If we were able to identify different media (which we are), we could organise, for instance, all of the videos you have viewed in the last day into a list, and the same for photos, and maybe even maps*.

 The image above shows a simple, iTunes style list of videos. These videos could be QuickTime, YouTube, or any other video content provider theoretically. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to restrict the classification of content as"Video" within the Browser to avoid Flash sites being organised into the same category. Restricting the classification of video could be done by filtering files from certain domains that are between a range of media sizes.

So, for example, if the domain of the video file is one of the following "media-site-1.com; media-site-2.com; media-site-3.com;" AND the filetype is one of the following ".flv; .mov; .avi; .swf" AND the filesize is  between "X mb" and "Y mb" THEN class content as "Video"

 *Maps - that one literally just came to me - perhaps with a plug in we could gain better ways of keeping track of maps within the browser, and relating those maps to other information, such as contacts, web addresses, and more. 

 Just a few more thoughts, please keep the feedback coming!

 I might upload the Illustrator file I made for the screens I have been producing so you guys can visualise some of your ideas if you want.

Thanks, oh and see the previous post if you're not sure what this is all about.

The other day, Sebastiaan de With of Cocoia wrote a blog post entitled "My Dream Browser".

This immediately grabbed my attention and reminded me of a few ideas I had a while ago for changes in the browser space.

Here is one of the images he posted to visualise his ideas:

The internet browser market is currently moving quickly in terms of new competition with the release of Safari for Windows, and Firefox 3 in beta, but in terms of design and UI it has been a while since any major changes took place.

The problem with current browsers is they are not designed for the new ways we are using the internet - RSS feeds are a late addition in the whole scheme of things, downloads are resigned to a small window in the background, and other media such as video and photos are still embedded into pages with no easy way of cutting through the clutter.

With this growing multitude of content flying around, perhaps a more organised approach would enable users to collect and share information online easily and efficiently.

Looking at iTunes, the most popular media software in the world, media is organised into groups of Music, Videos, TV Shows, Purchased Content, and then User Defined selection (Playlists). What if a similar approach was taken to the web? It would make sense - imagine being able to see all of the videos you have watched in the last week in a single list, with the ability to play any of them all from one page. Imagine you are downloading a 90 page PDF while also downloading a new app from your friend's site, as well as downloading the latest movie trailer from the Quicktime site and being able to monitor all your downloads, and see what type of media each of them are, without even leaving the current window.

That's our dream browser.

We also had some UI ideas of our own, some of which we are working on bringing into GoSquared itself sometime in the future.

You may remember, a while ago we wondered "why isn't CoverFlow in Safari?", well we still wonder, and it would definitely be in the browser of our dreams. CoverFlow wasn't the only idea we had though...

Take this scenario:

I find an image I really like on a page and want to share it with a friend or a colleague. Currently, I copy and paste the image into my favourite email client (Mail), fill out the "To:" field with his or her name, and maybe leave a little comment in the "Subject:" field, then maybe another little "Yo, check this out" in the body field, and then I hit send.

Wouldn't it be cool if you could do this:

Drag the image to my friend's name in the sidebar, and wait for it to arrive in his inbox.

The ability to do things like this would drastically improve the way people communicate ideas on a regular basis.

We have a few more ideas, and this blog post could run on for another few days, but for now we would love to hear what you guys and girls think.

We are actively working on the browser to make it a reality - Danny Greg from Crimson Sky Software is the lead developer on this project and he is just as passionate as we are about creating this awesome browser.

If you would like to help out, or have any ideas of your own, please let us know below!

The "copier" company.

For such a major brand, I am surprised the logo design is so short term, so "web 2.0".

It works today, but will I be saying that in 5 years?

Ever since Facebook began to dominate headlines, people have been criticising their "closed wall" approach to the web by not allowing developers to build apps on other sites that can use the network's data, and by not joining Google's OpenSocial project.

“… Users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems …”

Facebook recently disapproved of Plaxo's Pulse, an app that allows you to link your Plaxo and Facbook accounts and grab all of your friends' information including (the bit that Facebook really rejected to) email addresses. Facebook responded to Plaxo by banning people (mostly reporters trying out the new system) from Facebook entirely.

The biggest surprise of this announcement is clearly the unexpected (and sudden) willingness of Facebook to progressively become more open.

Will this change anything in the near future? Who knows, but it can only be a good thing if the major companies are (at least) appearing to work together on more open, flexible standards.

This move will surely help to make several more major players think about becoming open.

The open web is the future.

The search engine, set to "take on" Google, built by the same people as Wikipedia has finally been released as a public beta.

Much to the disappointment of the majority of the media, Wikia is in no way a finished product.

I have spent a while experimenting with the new "human powered" search project, but, mainly due to the limited search index, am bitterly disappointed with the quality of search results. For example, searching "GoSquared" on Wikia will, as the first result, give one of our previous most popular posts, while Google will present you with the GoSquared homepage. Which is more useful to our potential visitors: our home page, designed to provide easy access for first time viewers to anywhere else on the site, or a blog post we wrote several weeks ago?

Wikia's search index needs updating fast, and their social tools for promoting "good" pages, and demoting "bad" ones need to be developed greatly, and fast. Thankfully Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and Wikia, has already responded to many criticisms by commenting on various blogs, including TechCrunch. He made the comment "It’s a project to *build* a search engine, not a search engine."

Whatever is said, I sincerely doubt many will be switching from Google just yet.

Since yesterday, we thought we had better get a move on with something iPhone related - to justify our purchase in some way.

We ain't no domain squatters!

So here is an early release of GoSquared for iPhone. Obviously, you need an iPhone or iPod Touch to experience this as it should be. Unfortunately, us poor UK residents are still anxiously awaiting November 9th for our iPhones [anyone else going to Regent Street, let us know!]

From what we could tell, using Safari 3, and iPhoney, we have at least managed to get GoSquared fit for viewing on an iPhone sized screen. I guess, proportionately, we spent most of the time on those icons. Squares is still very early in the development stage, but we do intend to develop /squares into a very cool little online application. We have also included an about page just to inform people of GoSquared if they really have no clue as to what we are all about.

We are pleased to have liquidicity entirely redesigned for iPhone, so check it out if you have time.

I will repeat, this is still in the very early development stages, so give us your feedback [especially those of you with iPhones!]

Thanks,

The GoSquared Team.

To signify the changes we're making to GoSquared, the new homepage has just gone live.

You will notice we have moved to a wider layout, after a good long debate between ourselves. We questioned the problems this could cause to some users if their screens were not large enough. So we carried out some research, and concluded that only 0.88% of visitors viewing GoSquared on their desktop had screens below 1024 pixels wide. The new homepage fits nicely on all screens including and above 1024 pixels wide.

We have also included a little personalization for our loyal members: when you sign in you are now greeted on the homepage. A lot of people were struggling to find the Control Panel to monitor their Squares, so you can now go directly to your Control Panel with one click [this only shows when you are logged in].

All in all, we hope you like the new home of GoSquared, and we look forward to bringing you more goodies soon!