blog.fredrikohlin.com
A weblog by Fredrik Ohlin (@fohlin),
CompSci Lecturer and PhD student,
from Malmö, Sweden.
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Tumblr, simplicity and 210 lines of HTML
I’m a big fan of simplicity as a design principle. Whether it’s a website, an application or product packaging, it should fulfill its purpose in the simplest possible fashion. This means removing elements that do not support the core functionality, as well as reducing users’ mental workloads by providing a clear interface to access this functionality.
This is why I’m now writing in a brand new tumblelog from Tumblr, instead of a traditional blog, based on software like Wordpress. There are no sidebars, no blogrolls, no plugins. There is just content.
“But Wordpress has custom themes,” you might say. “Why not just make a simple theme?” One reason: 210 lines of (mostly) HTML. That’s how long the entire theme for this blog is. I’m pretty sure that you can read 210 introductions to Wordpress and still not know how to make the theme you want.In the spirit of simplicity, I plan to post short to medium form content. Insightful but not pretentious, to the point but not boring - that’s my goal. Just to give you an idea, here are some thought that may or may not accumulate to a post:
- Design principles of Twitter clients.
- Pinging of blog services is no better than email spam.
- Why Balsamiq Mockups makes you happy and creative.
You can also expect screenshots and some photos that don’t make it into my Flickr feed. Hope you’ll enjoy it!
