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Web developers know it well: multilingual websites are more often than not a nightmare when it comes to adding and sustaining a new language. Some of the encountering issues are: adding entries and categories, creating navigation and translating words and phrases here and there.
Such issues run all Content Management Systems and have to do with any language. Expression Engine, the CMS of my choice, was no exception.
Several weeks ago I discovered Transcribe for Expression Engine, a module developed by EE Harbor and I was tempted to give it a try. Transcribe costs $150 per site and since I’m very skeptical with all similar modules I couldn’t pay this amount just to test it. So I asked the good guys at EE Harbor to provide me a copy of the module only for testing purposes. To my surprise they did offer it to me.
Now I can testify: Transcribe is a wonderful module. It provides a sophisticated yet elegant way to add more languages to an Expression Engine installation.
To install Transcribe is quite simple and it won’t take you more than 30" to do so. After that you need to add one language or more and to prepare your system in order to take the most of Transcribe. This step requires some attention but if you follow the clear and concise instructions it won’t bother you. After all, multilingual websites do need some work in order to run smoothly.
By the moment your system is set, creating entries, categories or adding even more languages is a piece of cake. I won’t go into details since — yes I’ve got to say it again— the documentation is great. By the time you do so, you will easily detect the elegance of Transcribe.
Transcibe handles URLs beautifully, plays well with custom fields and other 3rd party modules, such as Matrix. Exporting and importing the database of the installation is as easy as it gets. Last but not least, to learn how to use the module doesn’t take more than a few minutes. What’s more to ask?
How about the price? Each copy of the module comes at $150. I know it sounds a lot. However I think it’s not. Everyone who has tried to develop multilingual systems has felt the pain. If a module works the way it promises and remains stable, it certainly deserves that price. I think it all comes down to professionalism. Do you care about providing a decent solution to your clients? If yes, look no further. Transcribe is for you.
To conclude, I do recommend Transcribe for Expression Engine and I’m looking forward to using it in real projects. I’m very thankful to Tom Jaeger and the whole team of EE Harbor who provided me this free copy and gave me the opportunity to discover the beauty of their work. You guys made Expression Engine even more attractive and graceful. Thank you!
Well, I want to give away an invitation on Dribbble. And I’m asking for a tiny payback. In fact I’m looking for a happy accident—some call it serendipity.
Here’s my invitation. More after the break.
(This beautiful illustration with the man on the bicycle can be found on Graphichive and you can have it for free too.)
I don’t want you to create/draw/design/you-name-it anything at all in order to take this invitation. (However, if someone feels so, please go on.) All I want you to do is to add a comment below with a link to an article or a book or a video or anything you find precious. Something useful for all the people who will read this post. In other words, let’s spread the knowledge.
Your link should be about design, typography, art, science or writing.
My criteria are absolutely subjective but honest and decent. In the end I will give away this invitation anyway. Let’s go.
You must have heard the famous “Haters gonna hate” moto. Lately, I’ve been thinking about it. And I wonder what do haters hate? Do they hate the idea/product/method or the people behind it?
I think it’s the latter. At least for most of them. To hate an idea is easier but it doesn’t fit the anger. You need a face to detest.
Let’s see a couple of examples.
People don’t hate Apple as much as they hate fanboiz. You can’t easily argue against these products. It’s much more fulfilling to turn against Apple supporters. And if you hate enough these people it’s more convenient to move on to products or ideas or tactics developed by Apple.
In my profession I see people express their resentfulness of responsive design, because it’s hot, not because it’s a bad method of creating websites. You can’t turn down the value of responsive design. And since you can’t punch a technique, you punch (anonymously of course) people.
People can’t live without enemies. Choosing carefully who you hate makes you a bit wiser. Hating less is better anyway.
Small repeated tasks or new easy ones save the day. We need them because they make us feel productive and capable of doing more. We need them because they pay the bills.
However they’re not enough. Actually, the series of such tasks is the reason we get stuck. One day we open our eyes and discover we’ve left behind.
In all my life I got better when I had to accomplish a tough task. Something hard to achieve, or something under pressure, or both.
So this is a note to self, a quite simple to do: add a difficult task, a real expedition to uknown waters every now and then.
Do you want to make a difference? I guess so. I can’t find an easier or more convienient way than the one I said before. Or as the old men say: “No pain, no gain”.
Our industry, just like every industry, needs good people, who work hard to evolve and to provide better services. We, web workers, define the future and a medium that changed everything and above all proved to be the most democratic platform of all times. Let’s not forget this.
Also, let’s not forget our humanism. Because behind those efficient but cold systems there’s always one or more human hearts that make this miracle active.
Dear readers, for 2012 I’m wishing you the best: to be healthy and open. To have a wandering mind. And tons of love.
What’s new in this version? First of all more HTML5 love. Now the layout uses native HTML5 tags as the main containers of content. To do so I had to add some JavaScript in order not to break it in older browsers. Speaking of browsers, I left Internet Explorer 6 and 7 behind. For good.
This fresh design is better defined on the screen and it focuses on the projects which were stupidly neglected. Once again, this new approach takes readability very seriously. I think now there are more reasons to stay here, see more pages and enjoy them.
Regarding responsiveness, yes, this is a responsive design. I created 5 different layouts according to various screen resolutions. Responsive designs work better when you start from the content out.
The platform wich fuels this website is Expression Engine of course. It’s a very simple installation with only one add-on.
Last but not least, this new version, has more content, better written and edited.
I have many times thought I shouldn’t write anything about iA Writer, because everything has been already told. On the other hand I’m unique, just like everyone is, so I’m eligible to add a word or two.
Now that the new Lion version has been released, there are more reasons to do so.
And I have to fight the notion “tools don’t make the pro/designer/writer/whoever”, which is right. But once in a while… boom! Something happens and you get a tool that makes everything easier. And better. And more intuitive. The more experienced (some say “older”) you become the less possible is to meet such happy accidents. Serendipity. But serendipity isn’t only accidental, it happens to the people who seek for it. Anyway, iA Writer is one of that tools.
Yes, it’s another app that takes your screen up and lets you write without any distractions. You get an off-white background, a dark color for your text and a font. And a blue cursor? So what?
Not exactly, because this isn’t any background, any color and any font. The application is wisely designed, so wisely that the people behind it dared to provide us no preferences. That’s it. Take it or leave it. I took it.
Of course iA Writer isn’t for anyone. You need to take writing seriously in order to get the most of it. I personally have worked for months with Writeroom and Byword and they’re really decent apps. So iA Writer needed to overcome some great competitors. I think it’s better, I think it’s excellent.
Some people talk about the price of it. They say it’s not cheap. What is cheap and what’s expensive has to do with so many parameters, it’s a relative notion. In a word it all has to do with what it gives you back. I find the price fine.
Now, the new edition of iA Writer supports Greek. As a Greek I do welcome it. However, I need to mention that not all Greek glyphs are perfect, there’s room for progress. Kerning also needs some work. You see, dear iA Writer, you spoiled us. The typography part of you is perfect and you made us seek for perfection everywhere inside you.
If there’s one extra I’d like to ask from the app, this would have to do with the wise Markdown language: while it supports it very well, I need the “Select all and copy Markdown” function. It’s hardly a feature, it’s a hurdle less.
Last but not least, I got to say that I was a happy beta tester of iA Writer, Lion edition. So I had the opportunity to contact the nice people of Information Architects. This is what they are: nice. And polite. And down to earth. Not to mention their expertise and they way they treat customers.
All in all iA Writer is the guy you can trust if you want to write things on a computer. It’s highly recommended. And of course, this piece is written in there.
At last! Hyphens are here. It’s a small step for the CSS3 specification and a huge step for typography.
As the blog of Fontdeck tells us, Safari 5 and Firefox 6 already support hyphens. And it’s quite simple:
p {
-webkit-hyphens: auto;
-moz-hyphens: auto;
hyphens: auto;
}
Until now the best solution was hyphenator.js, which brings Javascript to the game. A JavaScript approach for such issues is not a priority as long as it concerns me. Now, with CSS3, we can reach a more delightful destination. Actually, I enabled hyphens in this website and it looks cool.
Illiterate people still aim to justify text. Which is not good of course because full justification forces words to reach the end of a line. This way words change their inner distance and the so called “rivers” begin to emerge and make text hard to read.
In this example when a paragraph comes right after an h1 it is red.
By extending the example above we can declare this:
h1+h2+p{
color: red
}
Now the paragraph turns to red only when it follows an h2 which comes right after an h1.
The technique works in Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox and its validity has been confirmed by Eric Meyer. Adjacent sibling combinators work for Internet Explorer 7+ too, but I have not tested my discovery there yet.
If you know any relevant reference or want to comment this, please share it on Twitter.
