With the recent Mozilla/Metalab shakedown in mind, I’ve been thinking a lot about stealing vs. borrowing in terms of web design. Both happen, both can be good, and both are easy to define. Stealing without giving credit is a bad idea. Stealing as a starting point for further exploration gives us new ideas and built-in reference points to compare and assess. Perhaps evolution is a better word.

Case in point: the bookmarklet pages for Tumblr and Posterous. I use and like both services, but prefer Posterous for my main blog because it allows me the freedom to control autoposting to other services. It doesn’t have the visual customization options that Tumblr does, but it has been improving rapidly. I believe that Tumblr did this “look up in your bookmark bar” arrow first, but here’s Posterous stealing and modifying the idea. Tumblr’s design is more successful because it comes off of the page with the drop shadow and actually points up to the bookmark bar. Posterous’s version stays on the page (and even disappears somewhat behind the “Manage” text) and points off to the left somewhere.

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