In laying down this new design — Kalamari — I decided to try and go with a fluid-width layout for once. Traditionally I haven’t held it in particularly high regard; but I experiemented with it for a few hours, and ended up somehow finding it a natural fit alongside the ‘book-like’ typography.
Tag Archive for 'interface design'
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It’s true, I did. And this is where I would cue the dissonant choral music that builds to the crescendo of civilization taking a step up the ladder; which, by the way, had Rikke trying so very hard to suppress her laughter at its pompousness… Foiled, again!
These things are hard to gauge, and even perhaps overly self-centered, at least by Danish standards. But between Kubrick, through various endeavors, like the Latest Comments plugin and Live Archives (and its successor) and up to K2, I hope my time in the world of blogging has left a mark of some kind; an echo of sorts, for low-level interaction designers, like myself, to not merely lemming their way through the craft, even if it’s on a hobby-level.
Spent half an hour recording the first in an impromptu series of screencasts about interface design. This episode takes a look at the WordPress dashboard and why it ought to be discarded immediately. There’s also a short look at the WordPress widget system and why that isn’t entirely up to snuff either.
You can comment on the Viddler page or download the fullsize 374mb quicktime file, if you’re so inclined.
PS: With a face for radio and a voice for TV, I should’ve probably just written it; but hey…
I love your work. Love it! Between Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar and Google Code, I find the majority of my digital existence in your capable hands. And I honestly don’t see that changing any time soon.
The update of Gmail that is currently being rolled out is also pretty cool. Chat in Safari? Cool. That’ll come in handy at some point, I’m sure.
But, I’m wondering if any of your team members use Safari on a daily basis? Probably not, as it seems some of the more basic features have been left behind. No longer does Gmail auto-suggest the full names and addresses when you type in the ‘To:’ field.
This is, horrendous!
I would trade you back the chat feature in the blink of an eye if it would bring back the name-suggest. It’s the single most used feature when sending mail, and it’s broken…
The alternative is going to ‘Contacts’ and looking up the person manually. A temporarily viable alternative, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Contacts page is even more broken! And you think it can’t get any worse, right? Then you resize the page.
Seriously Google? You couldn’t wait a week or two and get these things under control?
Thoughtfully, you included the means of using an older version which works as advertised. None too pleased, I guess I’ll have to stick with that for now, even if it doesn’t save my choice in a cookie for future use.
Have you seen the recently redesigned Google Images? Apparently in an effort to make it more clean or something, they decided to only show resolution information on mouseover…
What were they thinking? Resolution is what I use the most when I use Google Images! So I figured I’d split it open and see if I couldn’t fix it with a quick CSS file or something…
I have no words. Much like the Matrix, no one can be told what that code resembles… Best you take a look for yourself.
Now I don’t personally use the visual editor in WordPress. I like me some Textile and control. But it is in there, and I think non-tech users are better off overall because of it.
And now with WordPress 2.1, you can even switch between WYSIWYG and code views. Great!
Yeah, well it is great, but what in the hell is going on with those buttons?!
Interesting little ‘feature’ on Flickr. You can’t write all capital letters. Aye, tis be true, try it. It’ll convert it to properly capitalized sentences…
Impotent in the workings of Javascript, PHP and SQL as I am, I rely entirely on coaxing others to do my work for me. Such is also the case with the newly implemented Live Archives, brought into creation by Jonas Rabbe from my plans, drawn up almost 6 months ago. Remarkable, as Jonas is only 4 days into WordPress!
Oh, you want them too? Run along over to Jonas for your fix then.
My friend Rasmus told me about this ‘little’ deficiency in OS X a while ago, when something similar happened to his parents Mac. And it is perhaps the stupidest thing I have ever come across in an OS.
Now hold on to your hats:
In my local WordPress 1.3 folder, where I’m currently working on 4, I obviously have a wp-content folder, inside which all my theme files reside. After asking on the WP hackers mailing list about a new function, I figured I’d give the latest nightly a run for its money, and so I downloaded and extracted it, opened the folder, selected all the files and dragged them into my local WP13 folder.
What do you think will happen?
I’ll tell what’ll happen, and what just happened. In OS X, the new wp-content folder will replace the old wp-content folder completely, throwing out everything inside of it, replacing it with the content of the new folder, keeping nothing from the old folder. And while you can undo the action, moving the new folder back where it came from, that won’t undo the deletion of the old folder!
So you’re up shitcreek without a paddle, hands tied behind your back.
This has got to be the most fucked up braindead ‘look at me, I’m a moron’ way of doing things I have ever come across. User data is sacred you fat fuck of an OS! How the hell did this ever make it past the desk of whoever decided that it would be a good idea? And how in the world did he keep his job?
Luckily I had 5 – 6 files open in my editor and a backup on the server, but I’ll wager I’ve lost at least a days work…
You are in charge of the order form on your web-based store. And you’re wondering why I’m screaming and shouting, flipping you the bird and throwing feces in your general direction.
Here’s why: In Denmark, and I’ll go out on a limb and say, in large parts of Europe and probably the rest of the world, sans the US, we do not have ‘states’ or ‘provinces’!
So stop forcing me in to filling out it out with something as redundant as NA. It’s easy, here’s how you do it: If I pick Denmark or any other non-state/provincial country from the dropdown, make the state/province input field non-required.
You’ve got dynamic pages and everything, it’s not that hard.
In an effort to truly celebrate the release of Firefox 1.0 next month, the Mozilla organization is taking out a full page ad in the New York Times. Their initial goal was to have 2500 people donate $30 in 10 days, to raise the money that such an ad costs.
It’s on day two, and over 2800 people have already donated, some with a lot more than $30 I’d wager. Being A Champion of the Internet, I decided to put my money where my mouth was. Between this and my super-sized t-shirt (which Rikke uses as a nightgown… Yes, I do realize how lucky I am!), I feel pretty good about this:
Would you please take a closer look at OS X soon? Work a little with the Camino guys if you have to. I think it’s worth considering that while Windows may hold a considerably larger market share, the OS X crowd are notoriously Internet minded…
Now I dont’ have my panties in a bunch on this one, there are luckily plenty of good browsers on OS X, but at least this gives me a place to collect the many small annoyancy issues. So just to sum up:
- Doesn’t respect the dock. When new windows are opened, their bottom will drop underneath the dock, unlike for instance Safari.
- Hidden window still shows up in Exposé!
- No native widgets.
- Cmd-M doesn’t minimize, but starts a new mail.
- Input field keyboard navigation isn’t true to OS X.
- Ctrl-Tab to change tabs is nice and all, but on OS X you’d be better off with the Safari standard: Cmd-Shift-Arrow, or simply Cmd-Arrow, like Adium
- Doesn’t use proper OS X dialoges (sheets), relying instead on Windows like independent windows.
- Close button should be on each tab, not at the end of the tab row… It’s confusing and prone to error.
Either way, I’ll have to find a place that carries The New York Times here in Copenhagen so that I can get a look at that ad myself. Pin it on my office wall, right next to this.
It’s been some time since I last wrote in you, for that I am sorry, but I seem to be so busy with various other things. You’ll be happy to know, that one of these things is a new cover for your now half-dingy pages (sorry, but it’s true…).
Anyway, today I managed to finally catch up to an inbox crowded with week old mails. I sure hope I managed to get around everyone who was kind enough to write me, even if I did use short to-the-point sentences.
Yesterday I started playing Fable. It’s looking good so far I think. Though some people have critiqued it for not being what Peter said it would be. My only suggestion is that they try developing games themselves, that would be the end of that.
I expect to finish my copy of If Chins Could Kill tomorrow on the bus. Great book by the way, Bruce Campbell is a really honest guy.
About the bus; I biked to work the entire summer, but I must confess that I enjoy taking the bus, since it allows me to read for about an hour a day. Something which I otherwise never seem to be able to find the time to do. But of course, if I never take the time, how can I have it?
Another book I recently finished, was The Humane Interface, written by the guy who designed the original Mac. I borrowed it from Brian. What an eye opener! This book should really be mandatory for any kind of interface designer. Finally I got my hatred for the caps lock key and the behavior of the alt key in Windows justified. Moded interfaces are a grave injustice to human kind!
Saw Ladykillers and ate flapjacks / pancakes yesterday. The pancakes were better then the movie. Though it wasn’t bad. Nor particularly good… Not the best Coen movie out there, but worth your time I think.
I borrowed Troll and Troll 2 from Thor, with a promise of absolutely horrible waste of time and possible outbreak of cholera.
That’s all for now. Have fun.