I know your game, fickle public. Two days ago I announced that I was leaving Delicious Monster and starting a new charity-based software company, United Lemur. I’ve gotten so many public and private responses that I feel like my résumé should end, “References: Frickin’ Everyone.”
All well and good, but so two days ago. Already you’re muttering to yourselves every time someone mentions me, “What has he done for us lately?” Unfortunately, I have no time for such nonsense, because I can’t stop staring at Delicious Library 2’s amazing web pages.
Of course, Delicious Library 2 itself is still under NDA, so it wouldn’t be right of me to reveal that upgrading will increase your sex appeal, strengthen your hair follicles, and make you slightly better at sudoku. I can, however, talk about something the application itself makes public: web publishing.
Delicious Library 2 produces these fantastic AJAX web sites. They’re tiny, animated works of art, thanks to design by Adam Betts. They’re also gorgeous inside, fully standards-compliant XHTML with CSS. Fun fact: Lucas beta tested Coda by building these sites. Every time someone publishes their library to the web, Cabel Sasser gets his wings.
I fully expect to see a tiny economy grow entirely out of custom Delicious Library 2 templates. The templates themselves remain fully standards compliant, so any shmoe who can cobble together a web site can build one. What can I say? I take pride in my work.
This is why Delicious Library is such a big damned deal. Do you think anyone else would put this much trouble into their exported web sites? Of course not. That’s insane, like powder coating the inside of a NeXT cube, or pressing the signatures of the team onto the inside of the Macintosh. These are so many tiny details that no normal person would ever bother with.
“Screw you,” I can hear my douchebag former competitors comment-spamming, “we have so many features, we had to add a checkbox to point out how many checkboxes we have.” But your interface looks like Larry King’s nutsack because you live a normal, healthy life where you get along with your coworkers and remember your spouses’ names.
Try viewing my Delicious Library page on your iPhone. Lucas built a separate iPhone application right into the goddamned template! Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page and boggle at the cryptic incantation: Seattle, WA zipflap congrotus delicious library Lee, Mike.
That’s right; Delicious Library 2 is imbued with voodoo magic to ward off zombies, and it’s activated automatically, just by publishing your library. Wil actually spent six weeks in Haiti as a voodoo acolyte. This was last summer, right about the time I started getting those sharp pains in my abdomen.
That’s not the kind of commitment you get at other companies. Are you willing to experience the living death of tetrodotoxin? No? Then your application is not going to protect your users from zombies, which, compared to Delicious Library 2, kind of sucks.
.
Addenda 
Some comments, some bugs. The good news is, you can file bugs with Delicious Monster against the publishing output. The better news is, any yahoo with HTML experience can fix it themselves.
Johan
It doesn’t really seem to work on anything other than Safari, though. (ie. Firefox etc)
Or is this a feature? :)
It doesn’t really seem to work on anything other than Safari, though. (ie. Firefox etc)
Or is this a feature? :)
Johan
More specifically, the little info panel that shows up when you click on an item doesn’t show up.
More specifically, the little info panel that shows up when you click on an item doesn’t show up.
Random Lemur
That’s all very well and good, but what I want to know is this: what happened to your nose?
That’s all very well and good, but what I want to know is this: what happened to your nose?
Mike Lee
Damned thing was sneaking out and getting into mischief in the middle of the night, so I’ve had to start strapping it down before I go to sleep.
Damned thing was sneaking out and getting into mischief in the middle of the night, so I’ve had to start strapping it down before I go to sleep.
Ahruman
Speaking of the little info panel, the last line of text gets cut off in Safari (actually, a WebKit nightly from this weekend) if the text size is anything bigger than the default. But hey, I guess that sort of thing is why it isn’t out yet. ;-)
Speaking of the little info panel, the last line of text gets cut off in Safari (actually, a WebKit nightly from this weekend) if the text size is anything bigger than the default. But hey, I guess that sort of thing is why it isn’t out yet. ;-)
Random Lemur
Slick. But the user agent sniffing gives no love to us lowly iPod touch users. (FYI, the touch has “iPod” in the agent string where the “iPhone” would be.)
Slick. But the user agent sniffing gives no love to us lowly iPod touch users. (FYI, the touch has “iPod” in the agent string where the “iPhone” would be.)
Random Lemur
This simultaneously has me saying, “This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time” and “Why the fuck would I want to do this, exactly?” Like the 1st Gen iPod, I probably just don’t get it, but will someday.
This simultaneously has me saying, “This is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time” and “Why the fuck would I want to do this, exactly?” Like the 1st Gen iPod, I probably just don’t get it, but will someday.
Shawn
The template is beautiful!
I was expecting a link inside the info pop-up to allow further information about purchasing through your Amazon affiliation link. I get a link at the bottom of the info pain on my iPhone, but not through Safari on Leopard.
I would say keep up the great work, but you’ve recently relieved yourself of that ‘luxury’!!
Best of luck and I look forward to your next endeavor.
The template is beautiful!
I was expecting a link inside the info pop-up to allow further information about purchasing through your Amazon affiliation link. I get a link at the bottom of the info pain on my iPhone, but not through Safari on Leopard.
I would say keep up the great work, but you’ve recently relieved yourself of that ‘luxury’!!
Best of luck and I look forward to your next endeavor.
Random Lemur
Johan’s right, Firefox only. But it looks great on the iPhone!
Johan’s right, Firefox only. But it looks great on the iPhone!
Try viewing my Delicious Library page on your iPhone. Lucas built a separate iPhone application right into the goddamned template!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Delicious Publishing
