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I regret my website redesign
Mistakes I made working with my first design agency.
Most cited
Posts that commenters keep linking to, ranked by how many different people have cited them in Hacker News comments. 324 posts.
152
Old CSS, New CSS
I first got into web design/development in the late 90s, and only as I type this sentence do I realize how long ago that was. And boy, it was horrendous. I mean, being able to make stuff and put it online where other people could see it was pretty slick, but we did not have very much to work with. I’ve been taking for…
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In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds have not improved
In spite of an increase in Internet speed, webpage speeds have not improved over time.
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Naval Architecture
Interactive article explaining how ships float and maintain their stability.
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Pure UI
The growing convergence of the designer and programmer roles by way of React
157
How Booking.com manipulates users
Many websites and applications these days are designed to trick you into doing things that their creators want. Here are some examples from timewellspent.io:
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Why do so many brands change their logos and look like everyone else?
Tech and fashion logos are becoming increasingly similar, all of them using sans serif fonts. Why do they do that? And why it doesn't make sense.
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The <select> element can now be customized with CSS
All the same interfaces, sweet new looks.
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Crossing the uncanny valley of conversational voice
Voice is our most intimate medium as humans. At Sesame, we are creating conversational partners that achieve voice presence—the quality that makes spoken interactions feel real, understood, and valued.
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The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)
We reverse all of the core design principles behind the Macintosh human interface guidelines to arrive at the characteristics of the Internet desktop.
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Design of This Website (2021)
Meta page describing Gwern.net, the self-documenting website’s implementation and experiments for better ‘semantic zoom’ of hypertext; technical decisions using Markdown and static hosting.
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Blender: Beyond Mouse and Keyboard
Get ready for blending on-the-go.
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Darktable: Crashing into the wall in slow-motion
What happens when a gang of amateur photographers, turned into amateur developers, joined by a bunch of back-end developers who develop libraries for …
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The Anti-Mac User Interface
We reverse all of the core design principles behind the Macintosh human interface guidelines to arrive at the characteristics of the Internet desktop.
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TreeMaker: Origami Design Software
In 1989, I wrote an article for the magazine Engineering & Science about the state of technical folding, which, even then, seemed to be progressing by leaps and bounds due to an infusion of scientific and mathematical principles. In recounting some of the connections between origami, math, and technology, I wrote:
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An Ill-Advised Personal Note about "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable"
The talk I released today is called " Media for Thinking the Unthinkable ". It's the most personal talk I've given, in that it was driven by my own motivations as opposed to someone else's.
173
How Bad Is Your Colormap? (2014)
What this function does is to give you a lumninance-correct grayscale version of any matplotlib colormap. I've found this useful for quickly checking how my plots might appear if printed in black and white, but I think it's probably even more useful for stoking the flame of the internet's general rant against jet .
174
Close Tab Behaviour in Google Chrome
Tabs, tabs, tabs. The specialist subject of UI experts everywhere. Should tabs just rearrange horizontally or also detach? How much vertical scroll buffer should a tab have before it detaches? Under what circumstances should it detach? What about reattaching?
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Slide Design for Developers
Written pieces, talks, and other bits by Zach Holman.
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Golden Ratio for Readable Web Typography
This is the original introductory article to Golden Ratio Typography (GRT). The basic concepts you’ll find on this page are important for understanding GRT, but much of the math is now outdated (and has been replaced by updated formulae). For a more current and comprehensive look at all things GRT, check out the Golden
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Is Design Dead? (2004)
The rise of agile methods (particularly XP) makes some people wonder if there's any role left for software design. I argue that this change shifts from planned to evolutionary design.
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The Geometry of Color Perception
The previous pages have explained three very different methods for defining a color: (1) the measurement of the color stimulus as a spectral emittance or reflectance curve in colorimetry ; (2) the proportional responses to the stimulus by the L , M and S cones, represented as a chromaticity diagram ; and (3) the…
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The struggle of resizing windows on macOS Tahoe
A lot has already been said about the absurdly large corner radius of windows on macOS Tahoe. People are calling the way it looks comical, like a child’s toy, or downright insane.
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Let’s fix font size
What happens when you set fontSize: 32 in your favorite editor