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Selfish reasons for building accessible UIs
All web developers know, at some level, that accessibility is important. But when push comes to shove, it can be hard to prioritize it above a bazillion other…
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Knowing CSS is mastery to front end development
There are countless articles why developers should not focus on Frameworks too much and instead learn to understand the underlying languages. But I think rarely we can find good reasons except that Frameworks come and go. To me, the main reason is different: You won’t be a master at frontend development if you don’t…
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Past and Present Futures of User Interface Design
In 1968, Douglas Engelbart demonstrated a computer system called the oN-Line System, or NLS. The NLS is the source of a lot of computer firsts. Among other things, Engelbart showed video conferencing, collaborative text editing, embedded graphics, copying and pasting, and hypertext - all of it accessible through a…
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Technicalities of Homeworld 2 Backgrounds
Just kidding. Of course, I have something to say about this. In the company, we look at the art of Homeworld from time to time and bow to the creators of this masterpiece. Once, we talked about how great the background look and how interesting this sketched style is. There is something…some details seem…special to us:
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The UI future is colourful and dimensional
On the return of texture, depth, and expressiveness in UI.
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Simplify, then add delightness: On designing for children
I’ve been building Kidz Fun Art (web, iPad & Windows) since 2021, so 4 years at time of writing. It’s a tablet optimized application intended to be used by children of all ages R…
97
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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Should we design for iffy internet?
Around 97% of US households have internet access, but bandwidth and latency are likely worse than you expect.
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The National Design Studio is a scam
Joe Gebbia has no business designing government services.
100
My favourite fonts to use with LaTeX (2022)
TeX and related systems are often associated with their default fonts, Donald Knuth’s Computer Modern (CM) typefaces. While these fonts are excellent, they have become so ubiquitous in the scientific community that many LaTeX users have sought alternative fonts for their documents. As a result, a plethora of font…
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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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Blue Prince is a roguelike puzzle masterpiece
Craft a mansion and uncover mysteries in this exceptional marriage of storytelling and roguelike mechanics.
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Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300
Cataphracts commanders: there is no actionable intelligence in this post. Read on. About two months ago, I reread several series on military
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How Apple designs a virtual knob (2012)
💡 Author's note: This unpublished post was originally written in May 2012, and refreshed for publication in November 2022.
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The elegance of movement in Silksong
Pain never felt this good
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Visualizing data is an art
The case for less rigor and more nuance.
108
Classic 8×8-pixel B&W Mac patterns
TL;DR: I made a website for the original classic Mac patterns I was working on something and thought it would be fun to use one of the classic Mac black-and-white patterns in the project. I'm talking about the original 8×8-pixel ones that were in the...
109
Which colours dominate movie posters and why?
I analysed 58,687 movie posters from the past century to see which colours dominate, how their use has shifted over time and what each hue signals to audiences.
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Font-size-adjust Is Useful
In this article, I will describe a recent addition to CSS, the font-size-adjust property. I am also making a bold claim that everyone in the world misunderstands the usefulness of this property, including Google, MDN, and CSS Specification itself. (Just to clarify, no, I am not a web designer and I have no idea what I…
111
Pebble Time 2* Design Reveal
It's real and it's magnificent
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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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Frank Lloyd Wright's mile high skyscraper proposal (2021)
Frank Lloyd Wright was an outspoken advocate for low-density cities without skyscrapers. With this in mind, it’s hard to believe the tower design pictured above came from Wright. It’s called The Illinois , and it was planned to be a mile (1,609 meters, or 5,280 feet) in height. That’s more than fou
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Cross Views
Your camera has the ability to take three dimensional photos. Your screen has the ability to display three dimensional photos. You’ve probably never used either.
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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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Dithering in Colour
Inspired by multiple posts on dithering, I set out to create a correct implementation of Atkinson dithering with support for RGB colour palettes. The post also outlines implementing linearising the colour-space and correcting for human perception.
117
Configuration files are user interfaces
We have all been there. Your software keeps growing and you feel the need to make it customizable. It is too soon for a full-blown UI with all the bells and whistles, so your pragmatic instinct suggests a text-based configuration file. Yes, that’s exactly it! You rejoice knowing the software’s configuration will be…
118
Quality-of-Life in Tetris Games
Last weekend, we participated in the Ludum Dare game jam for the 10th time. It's a worldwide event
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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...
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Pixels in Islamic Art: Square Kufic Calligraphy (2020)
When I was a little kid whenever we drove by mosques, I would be intrigued by the complex motifs they’re decorated by. I always tried to figure out the pattern; to me it was just a pattern, I never…