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When square pixels aren't square
When you want to get the dimensions of a video file, you probably want the display aspect ratio. Using the dimensions of a stored frame may result in a stretched or squashed video.
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 153 posts.
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Exploring Dithering on Spectra 6-color E-Ink Displays
I have tested the XIAO ePaper DIY Kit (ESP32-S3) – EE04 from Seeed Studio in depth. While its 6-color Spectra 6 display is impressive out of the box, I wanted to see if software could overcome hardware limitations. In this post, I’ll share how I’ve pushed this hardware to its limits by using dithering techniques to…
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Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts
A less romantic truth is that aesthetic standards rarely travel alone; power tends to follow in their wake. An episode at the U.S. State Department this month makes exactly this point.
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You can't design software you don't work on
Only the engineers who work on a large software system can meaningfully participate in the design process. That’s because you cannot do good software design…
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Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)
Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst explores different hierarchal visualizations by visualizing file system or disk space.
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A brief history of Times New Roman
Typography for Lawyers
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An SVG is all you need
SVGs are pretty cool - vector graphics in a simple XML format. They are supported on just about every device and platform, are crisp on every display, and can have embedded scripts in to make them interactive. They're way more capable than many people realise, and I think we can capitalise on some of that unrealised…
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Craft software that makes people feel something
Recently, people have been asking me why I’m pausing Boo to work on a programming language. I think it would actually be cool to write down how I feel.
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Icons in Menus Everywhere – Send Help
I complained about this on the socials , but I didn’t get it all out of my system. So now I write a blog post. I’ve never liked the philosophy of “put an icon…
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Building a Toast Component
How I built Sonner, an opinionated toast library for React used by milions.
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New layouts with CSS Subgrid
Subgrid allows us to extend a grid template down through the DOM tree, so that deeply-nested elements can participate in the same grid layout. At first glance, I thought this would be a helpful convenience, but it turns out that it’s so much more. Subgrid unlocks exciting new layout possibilities, stuff we couldn’t do…
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Shaders: How to draw high fidelity graphics with just x and y coordinates
How to draw high fidelity graphics when all you have is an x and y coordinate.
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Pixel Art Tips for Programmers
Programmers are known to not have a strong suit for art related disciplines, pixel art is no exception.
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Monotype font licencing shake-down
tl;dr Don’t try to shake-down a typography nerd with your dubious, automated claims about his employer using unlicensed fonts. How it started It started with a LinkedIn InMail message (sanitised to protect privacy): Subject: [Urgent] Font Software Licensing Review Hi Ameel I hope you
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Game design is simple
So, let’s just walk through the whole thing, end to end. Here’s a twelve-step program for understanding game design.
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Just use a button
One of the weirdest “debates” I seem to perpetually have with framework-enthusiastic developers is whether or not a <div> is “just as good” as a <button>. Spoiler: it’s not. Let’s dig in. The problem Among the React crowd, and also among people who seem to enjoy HTMX, I see a lot this… <div onclick="showSignIn()">…
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Dithering – Part 1
Understanding how dithering works, visually.
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Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste
Why tinkering matters as a lifelong learning tool.
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Springs and bounces in native CSS
The “linear()” timing function is a game-changer; it allows us to model physics-based motion right in vanilla CSS! That said, there are some limitations and quirks to be aware of. I’ve been experimenting with this API for a while now, and in this post, I’ll share all of the tips and tricks I’ve learned for using it…
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FlightAware Map Design (2024)
Designing new map styles for FlightAware
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Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s
Discover the wild world of Ghanaian and Nigerian hand-painted movie posters. Created by local artists in the 1980s and 1990s, these bold, surreal artworks turned Hollywood films into folk art masterpieces that are so bad they’re brilliant.
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What happened to Apple's legendary attention to detail?
A long rant about Apple's design choices.
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Designing software for things that rot
Building an iOS fermentation tracker with HACCP-style decision trees for home charcuterie, salami curing, and fermented foods - food safety without internet strangers.
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Where's the AI design Renaissance?
AI design is currently overhyped · Will AI take design jobs? · What should designers focus on in light of rapidly changing AI tools?
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Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable
Acrobat is intrusive, slow and non-customizable. Of course there are alternatives, specifically bad ones...
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Recreating the Canon Cat document interface
Exploring the emergence of user conventions in a minimal system.
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Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel (2020)
No newsletter next week Running the TLA+ workshop. No way I'm gonna have any brainpower after that. Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel...
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How to tame a user interface using a spreadsheet
Many years ago, while working at Apple and running a lab at WWDC, I met a guy who was using a piece of Apple software designed for creating interactive ads t...