Tag: MINIMAL

I have a thing for full-screen text editing. I use WriteMonkey for my creative writing needs, and VIM in a full-screen PuTTY session for my Web development work. That being the case, I'm all over the monospace, dark-background, focused editing scene. OmmWriter attempts to take that aesthetic and make it somehow more spiritual, with three picturesque backgrounds and ambient background audio ...

Google has begun rolling out a new version of its cross-site navigation bar. Google's search tools still get top billing, with Gmail sliding in just before the more menu -- which is where you'll have to go to find your Reader link. Elements have a bit more padding now as well, which will make them more finger-friendly on your Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet (or other touchscreen device). Another ...

It's a little hard to describe what Firefox Home Dash is -- beyond the basics, anyway. It's an experimental add-on born from Mozilla's Prospector project which replaces (or removes) nearly all of the Firefox UI. You're left with a title bar, scrollbar, the big orange button, and not much else. The goal is to get the browser out of the way and just give you the Web. Hover over the Firefox logo ...

Every once in a while, a tool comes along that just blows my mind. I'm sorry if that sounds hyperbolic. I mean, when technology progresses, it often moves in the direction of complexity: Take my current Android phone and compare it to the Nokia I had ten years ago, and I think you'll see what I mean. And every now and then I come across something that completely, and beautifully, bucks this ...

Remember that leaked image of the Internet Explorer 9 interface we saw last month? As it turns out, that's pretty much exactly what the beta looks like. As you can see in Ed Bott's screenshot, Microsoft has gone with a more subdued, minimal look for IE9. Tabs are positioned to the right of the address bar, and home, favorites, and settings buttons appear at the far right. Also like Chrome, ...

One of the most talked about features in Safari 5 has been its Reader function -- Apple's built-in implementation of the Readability bookmarklet. Both are nice ways to reformat articles on blog or news sites for distraction-free reading. If you like the look of Safari Reader but would rather not change from Google Chrome or Firefox, don't worry. The iReader extension brings the same ...

Plenty of people scoffed at the original Google announcement about Chrome OS. It's just another minimalist Linux distro, they said -- but that's actually not quite true. Unlike most lightweight Linux distributions, there won't be any traditional local apps apart from the Chrome browser. If you'd like a Chrome OS-like experience without having to give up apps like Transmission, VLC, or DropBox? ...

Since the release of the Firefox 4 beta, I've been happily using it as my default Web browser once again. Google Chrome had been my primary browser for quite some time, but Firefox 4's improved speed and the fact that it can do three things I've wished Chrome could do for ages have won me back. The three things? A real download manager (plus great add-on options like DownThemAll and Automatic ...

You may not use the page menu a heck of a lot in Google Chrome. Most of the functions listed there are easily accessed via a hotkey or aimed at developers, so the average user isn't likely to utilize the menu all that often. The wrench menu, on the other hand, is where all our configuration options lie -- as well as things like the history, download, and extensions pages. In truth, I barely ...

There's been a lot of blog hype about Google testing out a new, minimal homepage. It's true, some users have been seeing a Google.com main page with just the logo, the search box, and two buttons. If you're not one of them, but you want to try it out, here's how you can make it happen: Go to Google.com and put this little bit of Javascript into your address bar: ...

Thanks to GMail on my iPod Touch I've gotten used to a label-free view of my inbox. The actual subjects of the message I receive are much more important to me than seeing how my filters auto-sort things. Let's face it, by now most of you probably know whose messages get labeled as what. Don't need the multitude of multicoloralism cluttering your inbox? Head over to the labs page and turn on ...

Dateline is a slick little Mac app that adds a clean little one-line calendar to your desktop. You can adjust the width of the calendar, and change the window level so it's floating on top of your windows or flush with the desktop. Double-clicking on a date will open that date in iCal, so Dateline's minimal featureset isn't a liability at all. A couple of tricks you should know about using ...

We play with a lot of Linux distributions, and plenty of them leave us wanting more. NimbleX, on the other hand, leaves us screaming for less. How much awesome can you cram into a 200MB live CD? A whole lot. NimbleX comes with 550 packages preinstalled, and you'll find the usual Linux apps here: Firefox, K3B, XMMS, MPlayer, Gimp, Kopete, Transmission, Klam AV, and K Office, to name a few. Boot ...

In her never-ending quest for interface perfection, Lifehacker Gina Trapani has written a great Geek to Live tutorial called Consolidate Firefox's chrome. In it she teaches you how to pare down Firefox's menus, toolbar, address back, and bookmarks toolbar until all that's left is what you absolutely need. To be specific, you'll learn how to eliminate entire menus from the menubar, how to keep ...

Is your WordPress blog too cluttered? Too dark? Too boxy? Take a look at plaintxt.org's list of the Best Minimalist WordPress Themes. Minimalism isn't quite so in vogue as it was last year, but it's definitely still going strong, so if you're looking for something clean, airy, and uncluttered, these 10 themes, with names like Barecity, Way Too Clean, Zen Minimalist are for you. I'm particularly a ...