Symphonious

Glen Stampoultzis complains (rightfully) about the Windows XP look and feel. It fits in a lot better than his example makes out for our usage - not sure if that’s just because we never use JFileChooser (use java.awt.FileChooser instead, JFileChooser is awful in every L&F) or if it’s some particular setting somewhere.

Anyway, if you’d like to pick up a whole bunch of fixes for the Windows L&F (both XP and non-XP), take a look at WinLaf. It provides some really nice fixes for the L&F on Windows and is very easy to integrate. Be warned though, it occurred a very heavy performance penalty in our application, though I still can’t say why exactly. We wound up removing it again because we just didn’t have time to fix it before release.

If a few more people get behind it and particularly if someone hits it hard with a profiler it could be a very useful project. OS X users should check out QuaQua which is a similar kind of thing for OS X. I haven’t used QuaQua myself though.

I’ve reclaimed top spot on the google ranking! Ha! Take that Adrian Sutton!

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about see the front page and this entry.)

It seems WhereIs Australia is getting a face lift and much needed usability improvements. Gone are the six clicks to get your directions and cryptic instructions, now it’s replaced with a simple, enter start and end destination (on the one page no less - AND you don’t have to pick the street type from a drop down anymore) and bang you’ve got your results. No more “Did you really mean exactly what you just typed in or were you only joking” page.

Better yet, the Wacky Mario Ramp feature has been turned off. For those of you not familiar with WhereIs.com.au and Brisbane’s roads - Brisbane has a lot of on and off ramps that go winding around at all kinds of weird angles and quite often one ramp leads onto another which leads to another. If you were unfortunate enough to have to navigate through such a section (like the rather central Riverside Expressway) using WhereIs instructions, you’d be trying to follow something like:

(Straight) South East FreeWay
(Straight) Riverside Express Way
(Right) Ramp
(Left) Ramp
(Straight) Ramp
(Left) Ramp
(End) Destination

Needless to say you had no chance whatsoever. Now however you’d get something more like:

Turn left at CORONATION DR, BRISBANE
Turn right at CORONATION DR [RAMP], BRISBANE
Continue along BOOMERANG ST, BRISBANE
Turn left at MILTON RD, BRISBANE

Much nicer. Sadly, on this trip it leads me straight into a dentists chair. Perhaps getting lost would have been more pleasant.