Tag: web design

Social Fixer – improved Facebook experience

Social Fixer – improved Facebook experience

Enhance Facebook And Remove Annoyances!

Social Fixer for Facebook plugs into your browser and improves the existing Facebook.com web site. You get to pick which features you want to use:

  • Filter your news feed by keyword, author, and more
  • Tabbed news feed organizes posts by games, apps, etc
  • Hide parts of the page you don’t want to see
  • Don’t show posts you’ve already read
  • Auto-switch to the Most Recent news feed
  • Add some style with custom themes
  • And much more! See the List of Features.

WordPress 3.8 plans responsive redesign of admin area

WordPress 3.8 beta 1 has been announced a couple of days ago.  As always, lots of fixes and improvements are making their way to the new version.  But for me personally, the major change is the planned redesign of the admin area with responsive layout and support for mobile:

The new admin design, especially the responsive aspect of it. Try it out on different devices and browsers, see how it goes, especially the more complex pages like widgets or seldom-looked-at-places like Press This. Color schemes, which you can change on your profile, have also been spruced up.

Why is this so important? – you might wonder.  After all, there are native WordPress apps for both iOS and Android.  The thing here is that some WordPress themes and plugins modify the admin interface, and these changes aren’t supported by the mobile apps.  For example, when writing a new post, post formats might be different between what’s supported by the web admin interface and mobile interface.  With a responsive web design of admin interface, I’ll be able to use the web interface on my mobile and thus have the same options.  It’s possible to do it now with a table – where the screen is slightly larger, but using it on the mobile currently is the pain in the back.  So, that’s why I’m looking forward to WordPress 3.8.

Google pushing Mobile First

I’ve heard “Mobile First!” a gadzillion times by now, but I’ve never took it too literally, and I don’t remember seeing anyone else who did.  Google Operating System blog however suggest that Google does.

A few years ago, many people complained that mobile sites and mobile apps are too limited. They couldn’t include all the features from their desktop counterparts and some thought that was a bad thing.

Fast forward today and you’ll notice that Google’s desktop sites look more and more like Google’s mobile apps. Most Google redesigns are all about taking mobile interfaces and adding them to the desktop. That’s one of the reasons why many Google services drop advanced features and opt for simplified interfaces. This way, everything looks consistent and users can quickly switch from the mobile apps to the desktop apps.

There are also specific examples listed – Google Maps, Google Play, Google+ and others.