A rather geeky/technical weblog, est. 2001, by Bramus
Those who believe that the floppy cannot represent saving a document because nobody uses real floppy disks anymore miss an important point: while symbols initially piggyback on the meaning we assigned to a material object in order to stand in for something more abstract, once a symbol is used often enough, the symbol itself is …
Continue reading “In Defence of the Floppy Disk Save Symbol”
Say hello to the Head-Up Display, or HUD, which will ultimately replace menus in Unity applications. Here’s what we hope you’ll see in 12.04 when you invoke the HUD from any standard Ubuntu app that supports the global menu. To me, this seems: good to keyboarders like me (I’m a fan of QuickSilver/Alfred, shortcuts, etc.) …
Although starting a prototype on a computer is sometimes easier, it’s not the best way to visually problem-solve. When you need to ideate website layouts or mobile applications or to storyboard workflows and context scenarios, sketching is much more efficient. It keeps you from getting caught up in the technology, and instead focuses you on …
Two years ago I wrote about Fitts’ Law vs. iTunes/Safari describing the lack of the upperleft and upperright pixels in the Windows distribution of Safari. The lack of those two pixels resulted in some really odd behavior (the upper right corner for example didn’t trigger the close button, as you clicked *through it*, hitting the …
Continue reading “Fitts’ Law vs. Apple on Windows, continued, again”