Bruno Abrantes

Everyone knows that, when starting out a new web project, you should do some extensive prototyping. Sketching your interface on paper, using the lowest level of detail possible, is a very good idea, mainly because it lets you quickly see the bigger picture as well as conduct some informal usability testing, without getting bogged down by the finer points of your design.

I’ll admit that so far I haven’t really been practicing what I preach. I find drawing on paper somewhat cumbersome, and it doesn’t really give me the flexibility I need to do changes, both big and small, without having to redraw the whole thing over.

Enter Mockups, a web/desktop application made by Balsamiq. It presents you with common web application interface elements, allowing you to drag and drop them around a stage in order to build prototypes. Unlike with actual pencil drawing, you can make changes really easily, and create sketches that are more accurate and actually good looking. Another cool possibility Mockups gives you is the ability to easily share your creations, and let other members of your team write comments, make changes or suggestions to your prototypes. The full version costs $79, but you can use a version with less features (such as saving) for free. Also, if you ask nicely enough, the authors just might give it to you for free. Try it out now!

The Yahoo Design Patterns Library is a must-see if you are into web design and web development. There you can find answers to common design problems, such as how to correctly implement tabbed navigation, date-pickers, sign-in wizards, etc.

Each section details the problem faced, when to use a certain UI solution, and the proper ways to implement it, considering both usability and accessibility issues. You can also join the forums to further discuss each pattern and suggest ways to improve it, or even suggest new patterns, if you think something is missing. Either way, this is a great resource that you should probably use extensively when working on web projects. Keep it at hand at all times!

Palantir is a small project developed by a group of Facebook engineers -  Jack Lindamood, Kevin Der and Dan Weatherford – at a Facebook Hackathon contest. Apparently the name derives from some Lord of The Rings mythology (but of course).

Anyway, the project seems really interesting, and it is basically a video showing Facebook users interacting all over the world. The images don’t do it justice, you should really watch the video.

Facebook currently says it would be interesting in making this into a real product, but that for now it’s not on schedule. Let’s all hope this sees the light of day.

If you enjoyed Pixar’s excellent animated film WALL-E then you’ll find this short film extremely cool. If you haven’t seen it, then I guarantee you’ll still find it awesome. BURN-E is included with the WALL-E DVD as an extra, and it’s a short film about a little robot trying to do a simple job: change a light bulb. This short definitely has the Pixar genius in it; just click play below and get ready for 7 minutes of fun!

Desktoptopia is what I can only define as a “desktop background manager”. Confusing? Keep reading. It’s a little application, available for both the Mac and PC platforms (sorry Linux), that changes your desktop’s background in a set time interval of your choosing.

What makes it different from most other existing solutions (Mac OS X has had desktop picture automated changing as an option since at least Tiger) is that Desktoptopia gets you desktop pictures directly from the web, downloading them from the cloud once it’s time for a new image. The quality of most backgrounds is stunning too, and there are a lot of themes covered: 3D, Illustration, Typography, Photography, etc. The software includes a rating system, so you can grade backgrounds as they come and go, or even reject a picture such that it’s never showed to you again.

That said, the application consumes fairly little resources, the download times are almost instantaneous and everything past the first configuration screen is seamless to the user. The only gripe I have with it is I can’t seem to download full versions of the backgrounds to keep locally. Oh well :P.