January 2011
1 post
Native CSS Variables == Yes →
This is only a good thing. There is absolutely nothing bad about this. While many designers may not be programmers, CSS is code. After writing enough of it, even a “non-programmer” will understand that the benefits—succinctness and flexibility—far outweigh the cost of learning additional syntax.
I believe the verbosity of the proposed syntax is there by necessity. CSS must be...
November 2010
1 post
AIGA talk by Jonathan Harris: Cold : Bold →
Harris thinks that working intimately with code depletes your ability to be intimate with humanity. The reason: filling your brain with a complete understanding of complex digital systems decreases the amount of space available for understanding the complexities of personal relationships. In other words, either you can be a good programmer or you can be an emotional human being, not both.
...
October 2010
2 posts
For some people, work is personal. →
Ben Pieratt’s post “In Praise of Quitting Your Job” is full of honesty and clarity. I especially like this bit:
As a creative person, you’ve been given the ability to build things from nothing by way of hard work over long periods of time. Creation is a deeply personal and rewarding activity, which means that your Work should also be deeply personal and rewarding.
I ask...
August 2010
1 post
HTML5 Boilerplate hooks you the eff up
It’s been a while since I’ve made a regular ‘ol website. Every once in a while I get this nagging feeling that I’m out of the loop: tricks and techniques are discovered, best practices are replaced with bester ones, frameworks are adopted and abandoned. All this has been passing me by while I toil away in Sorta-Java Land (albeit a happy toiling). Just how far and how...
July 2010
1 post
May 2010
5 posts
Features, not Applications
I recently had a discussion about document-centric computing with my good buddy Jeremy. He proposed the concepts and I tried my darndest to poke holes in his thesis, arguing that the current application-centric model results in a better user experience. John Nack of Adobe posted about this in 2009 when he asked for feedback on a unified “Adobe App” interface. In his post he gave a...
Whitelines stationary →
While preparing to leave for India with my beautiful girlfriend, I came across my pad of Whitelines grid paper. The name explains its ingenious design. If you do any serious paper sketching, you owe it to yourself to use this stuff. From their website:
Why would you not choose to use paper without distracting lines, if you could? It’s nicer to write on and easier to read from. The lines don’t...
Marco.org: Feature removal →
Making a product better often requires removing features.
This came up at work today. We have a feature in our app that really benefits our users… except those using Internet Explorer. In IE the feature performs so poorly that we’ve decided to remove it.
We probably should have realized it was so bad before releasing, but still!
How to get that perfect shave →
Definitive, eye-opening MSNBC article (I know, right? Who even reads MSNBC?) on the right way for men to shave. If you were born in the last two or three decades, you are almost certainly shaving incorrectly. This is not about preferences, this is about respecting hundreds of years of shaving history. After reading this article you will want to buy all the products Corey Greenberg recommends. I...