A simple app isn’t simple by virtue of having fewer options, a simple app is simple because of usability. The fewer the options an app has, the more complicated it can actually become to use
Great tips that I want to keep in mind with the new Wardrobe Admin area.
I’ve had a few people ask me how I designed the blog post images in my rebuilding Wardrobe series and in this post I wanted to outline the simple process I use for doing it. Continue reading “Creating Notebook Style Post Images”
A great graphic via mashable to keep in mind for building new iOS apps and for optimizing your mobile sites. I haven’t seen a plus in person yet, but being a short person this seems worrisome. The pictures I’ve seen make it look like an iPad mini mini.
Not only does Apple provide an API for interacting with the operating system and install apps, but they also provide an Objective-C bridge to work directly with native libraries such as Cocoa. This is HUGE.
That’s why the fact that Apple is now offering JavaScript for task automation is so compelling. It’s not that developers have been dying to write more task automations, it’s that we have all long been searching for a universal language for building applications. The fragmentation in mobile has agitated this to nearly a tipping point. Nobody wants to install different IDEs, learn different SDKs, and maintain separate code bases. It’s simply not sustainable. Cross-compilation is appealing for this reason, but results in enormously bloated apps and a level of complexity between the developer and the operating system that they cannot control. If there is one thing developers hate, it’s a black box.
I totally missed this announcement but indeed it’s very exciting and could be a huge step for bringing web developers into true app development. Hopefully, it gets integrated beyond just Automator.
This update cannot be installed because it requires at least 6.9 GB of storage. You can make more storage available by deleting items in Usage Settings.
— iOS 8
EVERY iOS UPGRADE, EVER!
This might be old news to you, but new to me:
In order to solve this problem, we decided to try to understand pages by executing JavaScript. It’s hard to do that at the scale of the current web, but we decided that it’s worth it. We have been gradually improving how we do this for some time. In the past few months, our indexing system has been rendering a substantial number of web pages more like an average user’s browser with JavaScript turned on.
I just ran into indexing of JavaScript that was embedded inside an iFrame. I figured no way they could index that, I was wrong.
Lessons walk through specific topics or methods in the practice of typography, with a clear objective or takeaway skill that can be immediately applied to design work.
A great resource for typography, one of things in web development that I struggle to get exactly right.
As a developer I am constantly taking notes while reading, planning features, and attending conferences. Conferences are the hardest for me because of how fast the talks go. If I’m writing then I have to be quick and my notes end up being illegible. Continue reading “The Sketchnote Workbook”
The latest Bootstrapped.fm podcast had myself and the rest of the UserScape developers on as guests.
In this episode, we sit down with the developers of Userscape; Eric Barnes, Chris Fidao, and Taylor Otwell, to talk about weird dreams, Eric’s, Chris’ and Taylor’s backgrounds and how they got started at Userscape, supporting open source, Forge, newsletters, servers, building Scribbleton for Linux, content-based products, deploying desktop apps, and TV shows
A comment on Reddit (by raygundan) points out an interesting technique Apple uses on their iOS platform:
when you switch apps, the device saves a screenshot of what the last screen looks like for that app so that when you switch back again, that saved screenshot is the first thing you see. This is done to buy time for the app to fully load. Instead of showing you a blank screen or a loading screen, the device shows you a screenshot of the app. This technique works because the time it takes to load the rest of the app isn’t very long anyway, so a second of showing a screenshot that the user cannot interact with doesn’t cause confusion. What it does do is make it looks as if the app has loaded instantly, which results in a very good experience for the user.
I think this is a brilliant idea. It seems we live in a world full of loading gifs and I appreciate fine details like this. The fine details that you don’t see is the difference between mediocre and extraordinary.
Eric L. Barnes 