I'm still holding out for http://nokiaplanxp.com/

I love the design of the 6300.

If this is object oriented then his approach can best be likened to multiple inheritance. Because CSS doesn't offer any kind of native inheritence he's forced to redefine each and every class for each instance. This is the equivalent of defining code like:

    var foo = new Animal Brown Quadruped Barking();

Even if styles could be inherited, this seems to be taking the wrong approach. Most of use realise that classes should be used to denote identity, and not behaviour (or in this case, styling). CSS preprocessors seem to fix the same problem in a much nicer way.

    /* Define classes used in HTML */
    .sidebar {
      @include bordered-box;
    }

    #special-offer {
      @include bordered-box;
      position: absolute;
      top: 0;
      right: 0;  
    }
     
    /* Define theme information */
    @mixin bordered-box {
      h3 {
        background: red;
        color: white;
      }
      border: 1px solid red;
    }

That multiple-inheritance comparison as you showed it is just about perfect, thanks! And yes, preprocessors make a ridiculous amount of sense. That mixins and variables aren't part of CSS seems almost like an oversight.

At least there's Less. Anyone use it, or know of a better system?

I have tried out both Less (http://lesscss.org/) and Sass (http://sass-lang.com/), but not used either in a big website. It looks like Sass is better – it is more powerful in that it supports more functions and you can optionally use an alternative, less-redundant syntax with significant whitespace and no semicolons. The 2009 post http://nex-3.com/posts/83-sass-and-less by the creator of Sass compares the two, and the two deficiencies in Sass mentioned in that post have since been fixed. From what I can tell from looking quickly at the Less website, it hasn’t really improved since I last saw it. I’m using Sass for my very simple personal website, and it works fine for me.

That looks like a good start, but is missing the multi-pass approach from the original article.

IE (with certain settings on) is sending page data back to Microsoft. If it sends the URL, title and referrer back then the following session is pretty easy to reverse engineer.

    1. URL: "test - Google"
       Title: http://www.google.com/search?q=test 
	   
    2. URL: http://test.org.us
       Title:  "Test"
       Referrer: http://www.google.com/search?q=test 
       Time: 2 secs

    2. URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_cricket 
       Title:  "Test cricket - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"
       Referrer: http://www.google.com/search?q=test 
       Time: 249 secs

It's really just an extension of page rank by seeing what links are being clicked on and not just which links exist. Whether MS should be capturing this data under false pretenses is another issue.

If this is the case, then it's rather easy to stop Microsoft from doing this. Just use POST instead of GET in the search page if you detect the browser is IE8. The referrer will always be the generic http://www.google.com/search with no search term information.

Using POST instead of GET is not a good idea for a search results page. Most likely, the user would have to click through a dialog box ("are you sure you want to resubmit this form") every time the browser back button is used to return to the search results. Even if Google used redirects to circumvent this problem, searches won't be saved in the browser's history, which is a bit inconvenient.

Changing from POST to GET in IE8 would stop Microsoft from mining data in the short term, but would drastically decrease the UX of Google for a large portion of its users who could very easily switch to Bing.

OK, so for IE8 users return a single page AJAX app instead as a variant of what's already done with Instant. Still no referrers but no POST warning messages (which, BTW, have to be one of the most annoying things about ASP.Net web forms - postback was a boneheaded design decision from someone who didn't understand HTTP.)

Topic drift: but I'm convinced that ASP.NET postback was a very deliberate design decision from someone who perfectly understood HTTP - and is intentionally obscuring HTTP in order to keep programmers and implementers ignorant of it and dependent on the Microsoft ecosystem.

I find these overly soppy ads a bit baffling. Ads in Australia and UK are nowhere near as sickly sweet. Perhaps we are a bit more cynical.

Most ads in North America aren't like this, which is probably one reason this stands out.

While the tab behaviour is good, the close buttons are hopelessly small. They are a tiny 12px by 12px on Windows. Compare this to the close window buttons, which are 64px by 24px.

Compounding the error is the poor choice of middle-click as the alternative close mechanism. Many older mouses and most laptops don't have middle click. When browsing on my laptop I can't use the touchscreen to close a tab, as the hit area is much to small to accurately hit. Likewise, using the trackpad to land the pointer on the button is something I find difficult to do reliably.

I don't understand why the hit area can't be increased. There is little penalty for incorrectly closing a tab, as Chrome has a handy "Recently closed tabs" menu.

Edit: A search turned up the newer "Chrome Toolbox" plugin, which brings the missing double-click-to-close behaviour to Chrome tabs.

I disagree about middle-click being a "poor" method. Middle-clicking is essential to mouse-based browsing these days, both for opening links in a new tab and for closing tabs. With middle-click, the whole issue of close button placement becomes moot.

Any laptop that doesn't have a separate middle-click button (hint: made by a fruit company laptops) likely provides some multi-touch method for middle-clicking. I also haven't come across a mouse in quite some time that does not have a middle-click (I use a including an 8 year old microsoft mouse).

"Any laptop that doesn't have a separate middle-click button (hint: made by a fruit company laptops) likely provides some multi-touch method for middle-clicking."

Middle click is good because it is consistent with the open-in-new tab, however there really should be an option for devices without middle click. It's not just Apple devices. Neither my Toshiba or Acer laptops have middle click.

On Mac it's Cmd+click, on Windows maybe it's Ctrl+click?

Do most laptops come with middle click buttons? I can't remember ever seeing one that does, and I've used plenty of non-Apple laptops.

My own anecdotal observations suggest most laptops don't have a dedicated middle-click button, though most do emulate a middle click when the right and left buttons are simultaneously pressed.

Consider teaching yourself to use Ctrl/Cmd-W. Once you've done that and some of the other shortcuts (like Ctrl/Cmd-T to open a new tab, and Ctrl/Cmd+Shift-T to reopen a closed one), you'll rarely need a mouse for most websites.

"Most 100,000 LOC "applications" created by people like this could be rewritten as five lines of Perl in fifteen minutes. I know because I've done it. [...] I should also mention that a lot of productivity comes from thinking beyond the current problem. The "YAGNI" attitude that is so popular these days is the cause of a lot of problems."

So your quick five line script does everything that the fully specced application does and is a generalised solution that will accommodate future expansion. Really?

Yeah. Making general stuff is easy. Making your app break for special cases is hard.

The more I read from 1000memories the less I like the concept. The entire of the premise seems insensitive from the outset, but the cold analysis they do in their blog posts makes it feel like they're more interested in growsing their business than helping people grieve (or whatever their mission statement is).

I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with the the founders. I can say, categorically, that your analysis of their motivation is wrong.

Yes, they are interested in growing their business, but their commitment to helping people remember loved ones in a positive, loving manner is inspiring.

I can see how you think the blog post is cold, but unfortunately death is the backbone of their business. You can't judge them for taking an objective look at the numbers. I loved 1000Memories from the beginning, since it solves such a real problem - a ton of facebook users will die, and facebook is an awkward place to honor/remember loved ones. They are providing an elegant and thoughtful solution.

I think in all their marketing they should use examples of successful specific individual memorials, even if they're trying to illustrate that this is a growing problem, and maybe adopt a consistent "tone" in dealing with death being inherently sad but not something you can just ignore.

How a memorial brought together friends from around a the country/world in a specific case is probably going to put people in a better frame of mind and makes it seem less mercenary. They should study how funeral homes, etc. sell services; I really doubt most people buy their caskets at Costco.

    function getCount()
    {
        return 
        {
            'count': 1
        };
    }

Not what I'd do, but a common style nonetheless.

It's also completely valid JavaScript that does something very different than what it appears to.

    function getCount () {
      return undefined
      { // open code block
        'count': /*labelled line*/  1  //numeric expression
      } // close code block
    } // close function

LINE BREAKS CONSIDERED HARMFUL.

Which is why I'd say if you're writing javascript, use { brackets properly, and ; properly.

I agree, it's a common style, but a horrible one IMHO.

Couldn't he gamble with them? Put one or two chips down at a time, keep the winnings as "clean" chips and gamble with the dirty ones until they're all gone?

Sure, I'd imagine so. However, just waltzing in and not visiting the counter for exchanging cash for chips might seem odd. Easily taken care of by bank rolling your trips with some real money and "peppering" in your stolen chips.

Except that this plan involves having hundreds of thousands of dollars in "real money", and this dude probably isn't that rich (because if he were, he probably wouldn't be risking the whole armed robbery thing).

Also, I'm just guessing what he looks like under that helmet, but I'm guessing your typical armed-robber type wouldn't fit in well at the high roller table.

Anyone who shows up and throws down anything larger than a $100 chip at a craps table is going to draw serious attention to themselves from the pit boss and the folks upstairs.

People just don't show up at a pedestrian craps table and throw down $25,000 chips, much less $1000 chips.

There were probably a very small amount of > $1,000 chips at a craps table anyway, and their only real use would be to pay out to a big winner.