As a front end developer I find myself tweaking easing functions a lot, especially when I’m fine tuning web UI before launch. There’s no substitution for testing the final product but this easing function cheat sheet gives you a nice starting point. Besides, it’s virtually impossible to remember the animation details between many easing functions like easeOutBounce and easeInOutBounce.
Mikael Cho writing at Medium:
I came across a study by psychologist Kevin Larson. Larson has spent his career researching typefaces and recently conducted a landmark study at MIT about how font and layout affect our emotions.
In the study, 20 volunteers- half men and half women- were separated into two groups. Each group was shown a separate version of The New Yorker- one where the image placement, font, and layout were designed well and one where the layout was designed poorly.
The researchers found that readers felt bad while reading the poorly designed layout.
Good design and good typography are more than just fluff. They make us happier.
I’ve been a fan of Will Smith and the whole Tested crew for a while. And Will tells it exactly like it is from his first day on the CES show floor:
It’s an endemic problem at this show–the vast majority of products being shown here are absolute garbage. I’m talking about products that no one in their right mind could want.
I use Safari as my primary browser with Flash disabled. But occasionally I’ll run into a site with Flash enhancements or video which is better run in Chrome, which has full Flash support. Before Alfred 2 I’d just manually copy my current URL and paste it in Chrome, but this relatively simple workflow makes it a lot easier. Now I just fire up the Alfred launcher and start typing ‘openinchrome’. After a few keystrokes it’s ready to go.
You can also read the original thread on Alfred Forums where there’s several similar workflow alternatives.
I’ve always been a fan of Vimeo, especially their video player, which I’ve found historically more HTML5 friendly and more responsive than Youtube’s. So it’s impressive for them to launch a new player today that’s rebuilt from the ground up. I haven’t spent too much time with it, but so far it feels a lot speedier on startup time. Nice web integration improvements as well as noted in Vimeo’s blog post:
No more toggling into the HTML player — now everyone who has an HTML5-capable browser gets the HTML player. And when you’re in a modern browser, even if we can’t fully use HTML5, there’s a good chance you’ll get HTML controls.
The Dissolve is one of my favorite new web sites from 2013. You’ve got a powerhouse group of film writers, many plucked from the A.V. Club. A classy site design with strong typography, easily digestible articles and clear navigation. So it’s fitting that their list of the top twenty films of 2013 is excellent. I don’t agree with all the selections (I’d rank Upstream Color far lower), but it’s a good place to start for films to catch up on you may have missed from last year.
Federico Viticci over at MacStories knows his iOS apps very well. The guy oversees and has written hundreds of posts for MacStories, so we shouldn’t be surprised given the high quality of writing over there that he’s very well qualified in his opinions.
If you’re looking for some fresh apps to start the new year I can’t think of a better list to start from.
The best take down of “holiday classic” Love Actually ever. Killer work by Lindy West at Jezebel.
Kotaku’s Kirk Hamilton:
The Last of Us didn’t fall short. It accomplished precisely what its creators set out to accomplish. It was about love and companionship in the face of a world-turned-nightmare. It was about the horror of survival, and about the gnawing fear that accompanies scarcity. It was about loss and coping, about why we choose to continue living when all hope is lost. It will remain a noteworthy accomplishment for years to come, not because any one of its accomplishments was all that remarkable on its own, but because together they made it seem possible that blockbuster games this good might one day become regular—though never ordinary—occurrences.
Well said. The Last of Us was a AAA phenomenon who’s story still resonates with me months after its release. It was my favorite game of 2013, and I was glad to see Kotaku shared the same assessment. (Giant Bomb ranked it number one as well.)
I watched The Wolf of Wall Street on Christmas last week and while the movie is far from perfect, I liked it a lot. But I’m troubled by the viewpoint promoted on Twitter and in blog posts on how the movie “glorifies” the endless parties of drugs, booze and sex. Yes, director Martin Scorsese spends very little time on the negative impacts of main character Jordan Belfort’s actions, and some are cheering his behavior. But while the movie was entertaining, I was still repulsed by Belfort and everything he stood for. The late great Roger Ebert put it best in this essay from back in 1992:
The most fundamental mistake you can make with any piece of fiction is to confuse the content with the subject. The content is what is in a movie. The subject is what the movie is about. Word counters like Medved are as offended by a Martin Scorsese picture as by a brainless violent action picture, because they see the same elements in both. But the brainless picture is simply a form of exhibitionism, in which the director is showing you disgusting things on the screen. And the Scorsese picture might be an attempt to deal seriously with guilt and sin, with evil and the possibility of redemption. If you cannot tell one from the other, then you owe it to yourself to learn; life is short, and no fun if you spend it disowning your own intelligence.