August 2012
16 posts
3 tags
The Forecast is iCloudy
I understand the benefits of storing documents in iCloud; I really do. So, I understand why Apple wants to push this behavior. However, it’s not something that’s particularly useful to me at this time. The documents that I’m creating in Pages really only need to reside on one computer. I can’t think of any reason I would need to get to them from my phone. You’ll understand, then, why I’m finding...
8 tags
It’s Away!
There are only a couple days left until the deadline for Interaction 13 submissions. I just got mine in. In addition to my talk, “Working with Developers for Fun and Profit”, I achieved my goal of submitting a workshop. In fact, I submitted two. Hopefully, one or the other will be selected. With my teaching experience, I do believe that conference workshops would be an excellent fit for me.
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In the Details: Share
As part of the Mountain Lion refinements and the unification of Mac OS and iOS, Safari received a new “Share” button, just to the left of the address field. It displays a menu of options, including Twitter, Message (the desktop version of iMessage), and Email this Page. Those all make sense, as they are all methods by which a webpage may be shared with other people.
I first discovered this button...
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The Power of “What if…?”
I’ve occasionally been encountering the new features introduced in OS X Mountain Lion. Late last week, I noticed that when I hovered over the sender’s name in an email message, the light-gray outline of a star appeared. I assumed this must be a mechanism by which to mark a person as a favorite and was immediately intrigued to find out how favorites would manifest across the application. As soon as...
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Never Enough
Yes, that crazy IxDA LinkedIn thread, Do Designers need to be able to code?, is still running. It took a short breather a few months back, but then somebody resurrected it. Most recently, Jessie Nunez asked, “Will the deep skill set that we took most of our lifetimes to develop, hone, and enhance ever be enough?”
No. No, it will not. You see, Jessie, Interaction Design is very, very young. I was...
4 tags
Charging for a Bug
Do you remember my complaints last month about Apple’s Podcasts app chewing through my wife’s data allowance and costing me $15? Well, that’s not the half of it. I’ve been trying to track down the culprit that has been causing my wife and I both to significantly exceed our data plan limits in July and August. At first, based on AT&T’s reports, I thought something was causing enormous cellular...
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I know it’s been a good night when…
Tonight was the first class of the Fall semester. One of the indicators of a good class session is that during my drive home, I only half-hear the podcast I’m listening to. My mind is too occupied with the evening’s events. I critique my performance, consider the responses of my students, mull over all the possibilities the semester holds, and begin making plans for the next week.
We kicked...
3 tags
The Car as an Accessory
I’m coming up on five years of owning my Nissan Cube, and while I hope to get another five years out of it, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I will want in my next car. There are certain features that I want to keep, like the continuously variable transmission. I’ll probably want at least a hybrid, if not a full electric, by then. But what appeals to me most is not the typical automotive...
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In the Details: Mondo Tabs
Apple made a significant change to the tab bar in the latest version of Safari. Previously, a tab was as wide as it needed to be to display the page title. Once the page titles exceeded the width of the window, they would truncate evenly. This resulted in an empty space in the bar when there were only a few tabs with short titles. A plus (+) icon on the far right side would create a new tab, but I...
1 tag
Sharing Data
Some months back, I was looking for places to save money and figured out that I could cut back the data plans on our phones from the original unlimited plans to the lowest-tier, 200 MB per month plans. Looking at our data usage, I determined that we were almost always on WiFi when we used our phones for anything significant. It wasn’t long after that my company decided to forbid personal...
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Contextual Creativity
In past trips to the beach, when I spent time looking for shells, I was looking for whole shells with interesting shapes. I didn’t want broken pieces, and I wasn’t interested in common shapes. The more spikes and spirals, the better. When I spent time looking for shells with my daughters last week, however, we had a completely different approach.
We happened to be in a gallery that was hosting a...
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Why I Love the Web
Many years ago, when my wife and I purchased our first set of furniture for the first apartment we would share as a couple, we spent days driving to every furniture store we could find around Pittsburgh. In one store, we found a sofa that we liked. In another store, we found a coffee table. Here we would find a lamp, and there we found a bookcase. I was satisfied, knowing that I got the pieces...
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This is How Design Works
Wells Riley loves startups and design. He wants them to be best friends forever. So, he built a web guide for non-designers titled Startups, this is how design works.
It’s great for startups. It’s also great for anyone that wants to know more about what design is, how it is perceived in industry, and how you can get some for yourself. The page is chock full of delicious design tidbits, like...
4 tags
In the Details: Pop-ups
In Luke Wroblewski’s book, Web Form Design, I explain the use of contextual pop-ups in complex forms. By only displaying the data, rather than the form input widgets, within the form itself, more information can be displayed on a page, and it is easier to read. Editing the data opens a pop-up containing as much UI as is necessary or helpful.
Apple gets a lot of guff about the design of iCal. I...
