I should wish any remaining readers of this blog a Happy New Year! 2008 was a strange year for me in many respects, but I hope to be more active in 2009.

I'm typing this post in the Window Live Writer beta and must say that the program has improved geometrically since my last experience of it some 8 months ago.

I'm using a beta of Windows Se7en (something I have in common with half the planet it seems from visiting various desktop threads this month). I must say, without considering the UI too carefully, I've been very impressed thus far. Speed and performance are already superior to Vista, even on the very old hardware on which I have installed the beta.

Eyecandy aside, I'm not sure that the Superbar really represents much of and improvement over the old taskbar, if indeed it represents any at all.

I'm currently working on a theme for Se7en. I'm hopeful this one will even be released at some point, and I'll update this blog with a shot of it sometime in the coming week.

That's really it, but I'm hoping to post at least two or three days in the early part of this year. I'm working on designs for a prominent media player and for a calendar application, and once I have submitted them, I hope that the clients will permit me to show them here. I'm also preparing a concept for Firefox 3.1/4.0, unrequested I should add, that I'm quite excited about and I will probably be able to show the early design here shortly.

Firefox is one of my favourite applications, from its marketing to its feature set, and while I believe the current UI is satisfactory, I'm not alone in considering that it could benefit from significant refinement.

Until next time, then.