11.07.13 |
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iOS App designer/developer Jared Sinclair:
What makes something touchable?
For things that scroll or zoom, touchability means that the content under your finger moves with your touch, without any lag or jitters…
…For buttons, touchability requires something different. Touchable buttons need borders. By “borders” I don’t mean outlines, (although outlines are included in my usage of the word). I mean borders in a broader sense. A button is a tappable area, clearly delineated from the un-tappable content around it by an obvious border.
Native app design isn’t my background, but the switch in iOS 7 from clearly defined buttons with borders and gradients to raw text labels always rubbed me the wrong way. Jared makes a strong argument why. (via Jeffrey Zeldman).
11.06.13 |
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Screenshots can be a tricky thing; in my day job I take a lot for sharing with coworkers. The default Mac OS X behavior of dropping screenshots on the desktop is poor and leads to a lot of unnecessary cruft. I’m not super crazy about Dropbox’s implementation either, as their default file references include a Dropbox web UI around the image itself (I prefer the image raw.)
Naturally, this workflow for keyboard launcher Alfred fit my particular screenshot needs very well. I currently have two keyboard shortcuts set up; one allows me to select part of the screen, which then copies to a Dropbox folder and pastes the link to the raw image in my clipboard, the other just copies the image direct to clipboard for screenshots I know I won’t have to reference later.
11.05.13 |
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Podcasts are a big part of my daily workflow; they are always a part of my outdoor runs and often part of my workday, running in the background. I’ve got my favorites (e.g. Giant Bombcast, The Slashfilmcast, ShopTalk), but I’ve always found the discoverability of new podcasts pretty limited. That’s why Podcast Thing works so well; you get short interviews with various personalities where they talk about their favorite podcasts. Highly recommended, especially for podcast newbies.
11.04.13 |
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Designer Jim Silverman:
Native mobile apps are a temporary solution. We’re just over 4 years into the Appstore era and this has already become apparent. Open web technologies are catching up to the point that the vast majority of web apps no longer need a native counterpart.
Don’t try to tell me native apps are faster or allude to them having a “better experience.” That simply is no longer true.
Jim’s argument might be a tad simplistic, but I agree with his points. We’re getting glutted with so many unnecessary native apps that should just be well thought out, responsive web apps.
11.01.13 |
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Director Wong Kar-Wai shot Chungking Express in an unusually brief (by Wong standards) two month period while taking a production break from another film. The Dissolve‘s Keith Phipps writes about the movie’s history, plot, cinematography and more:
Though necessitated by circumstance, shooting faster and looser seems to have opened Wong up to new ideas. Yet, just as in the world of the film, there’s order within the chaos. Though made in an urgent heat, it’s a deeply considered, beautifully constructed film that captures the feel of a particular place at a particular time—and of characters of a particular age, specifically the age when it first becomes apparent that time only runs one way, even if the world seems to be eternally repeating itself.
10.31.13 |
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I’ve been a big fan of Safari for a while; generally it’s my browser of choice in my free time. But for work, I never found it came close to the quality of Chrome, almost entirely due to its poor web inspector.
With Safari 7 out the door as part of OS X 10.9, things are very different. Safari took a huge step forward with their inspector; it’s the first that I’ve used for more than a few minutes without immediately closing the page in question and switching to Chrome Dev Tools. This post details all the changes, the most notable being CodeMirror, an all in one solution for making permanent CSS and JS edits right in Safari. Cool.
10.30.13 |
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Gradients and colors inspired by iOS7, generated by designer Tom Oude Egberink. The clean design fits very well with Apple’s aesthetic.
10.30.13 |
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Game critic Tevis Thompson, writing a very long rant on how broken the state of video game criticism is:
The very outlandishness of my numbers points to how ingrained our pitiful review scale remains. It speaks to how easily we submit to the tyranny of the perceived majority. It’s the same kind of thinking that leads to the many ridiculous sacrosanct positions held by the gaming community. To say you consider Ocarina of Time not a great Zelda or find Half-Life 2 overrated or prefer Metroid to Super Metroid, as I do, demands an explanation. It invites skepticism of not only your opinions but of your very motives. What’s your deal? You’re just trolling for clicks. And why should I listen to you anyway? You didn’t design the game. You don’t represent the average gamer. You’re just some vocal minority.
Overall I can’t say I agree with Tevis. If anything, when I read criticism from Giant Bomb to Polygon and Tom Bissell on Grantland, we’re getting better criticism recently, not worse. You just have to know where to read. It doesn’t help either that Tevis uses inflammatory language frequently (e.g. “thin-skinned boys”, “straight middle class white gamer”).
But there are some good points made, especially with regard to the general uniformity in game scores for select AAA games (including Bioshock Infinite). If you dig gaming, read reviews, and especially if games journalism matters to you, it’s worth your time.
10.29.13 |
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There’s a lot of designers and developers who love the design of Apple’s new product pages. But I’m not one of them and it’s almost entirely due to its very forced input methods. Designer Trent Walton explains it perfectly.
10.28.13 |
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There’s been many, many articles written since Gravity debuted on the cinematography and CGI involved in its production. But this extended feature over at FXGuide, with six videos and plenty of photographs, goes into more depth than I’ve seen elsewhere. I’m still amazed on how much they pulled off successfully in this film.