> The other thing that drove me nuts is lack of care for low-res (aka full HD) displays, where rounding and thin borders leads to visible artifacts in common controls. A designer who uses high-end mac devices will never see these things. UI/UC Design isn’t meant for museums, it needs to be built in dialog with the real world application.
I can't quite picture what you're describing, but I'm curious. Do you have any references to this somewhere?
> The standard of human interaction will either be meeting IRL or signing communications biometrically.
From a convenience standpoint, it seems like we've gotten so technologically advanced that we are starting to move backwards. Is there a name for this type of phenomenon?
The physical world is what we are fully integrated into as embodied beings along dimensions we do not yet and may never understand. It is the only space that has an inherently scarce quality, which seems to be something we need as humans. IMO technology should enable us to deepen our connection in the "real world," not isolate us in piss poor representations built on the belief that we are merely mind-bearing mechanical vessels to be manipulated.
AI is going to drive us back to fully-embodied living, and that's good.
I just had to do this in React, and you're correct in that it makes you write logic around the lifecycles in ways that feels like I'm abusing their lifecycle methods. It's a lot of the reason Framer Motion and React Transition Group exist.
However, seeing the way Svelte does it sounds like a dream. I wish that could've been all I reasoned about last week.
These are precisely the type of "ahas" I hope to experience, too, when I begin studying computer science. I've been taking introductory college math courses at my community college to fulfill some prerequisites, and a way for me to stay disciplined in my studies is knowing that concepts like the ones you mentioned are coming. Thank you for sharing!
You'll have many of these moments! One of the best and worst thing about computer science is how many layers of abstraction there are.
On one hand, they help you get things done. On the other, it can be _so_ hard to understand how things really work. Most programmers don't peel back too many layers, but that's okay.
I’m wondering too. I remember when I was in HS, one of my teachers said that they could easily spot if anyone was cheating with their calculators because almost all of the students that were not cheating would be focused on reading and writing by hand most of the time, and only occasionally reach for their calculator to calculate something with it. If someone was paying an abnormal amount of attention to their calculator, it could indicate that they had for example put notes on the calculator, or had some extra programs that had features outside of the allowed ones. So then the teacher might sneak up behind the student and have a glance at what they were doing on the calculator.
Also, to try and combat those kinds of things my school always had us show them the list of programs on our TI-84 Plus calculators before a test started, and we had to delete anything outside of what was allowed. That being said I think the calculator can be modded with custom things that could be hidden. So probably the best way of preventing people from cheating was by paying attention to who was using the calculator too much.
In my HS we had to reset our calculators before exams. I wrote a program that displayed the reset screen. I didn’t have anything exam relevant stored on my calculator but didn’t want to lose my copy of the ‘Penguins’ game.
You must have gone to an excellent high school. I’d be fairly surprised if any classmates of mine had ever installed programs on their calculators, my teacher was pretty surprised when I was showing everyone the game I’d put on mine.
I was majoring in CS in one collage and doing Business Management in another collage. Both had class that required us to memorise tons of lexical knowledge. For example I had two semesters of Corporate Finances. Lot of formulas (100+) had to be remembered to calculate different KPIs a corporation. I had all these formulas in a notes uploaded to the calculator. If a test questions required one to use, I opened up my notes, looked up the formula and used it. TI-89 was able to use variables, solve equations for different variables and convert units. Using the right shortcuts I just plugged in the numbers. Of course I understood how to apply these formulas, I just didn't have the patience to memorise them. Another class was Psychology. Had to memorise a complete book. No way I would do that. Instead collected notes from friends, organised them, digitised them, created well structured Table of Contents (all took about two days), uploaded to the calculator and used it during tests. You might ask why it was allowed to use a calculator during a Psychology final test? Answer is easy. At those times no teacher could image that notes could be stored in a calculator. TI-89 was just released, hardy available in the EU. So if they saw me playing with the calculator they thought probably the kiddo doesn't know anything and just pushes buttons to spend time.
> For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones
Recently, I've been wondering why the name "phone" has stuck around for a device that has evolved with many more features than that of a telephone. I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about the history of these technologies, but I just find it fascinating that we've kept this identification to something that really provides so many core utilities. I'm curious to know more about the historical implications you alluded to.
Alternatively (and maybe quite a stretch), could I argue that our smartphones are just providing telecommunications to other services, namely, the APIs that they interact with to serve us things like GPS functionality, audio, etc., hence the name "phone"?
Agreed. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense Apple called it a phone. People already had mobile phones on them so you had nothing to lose with the switch. Had they positioned it as a PDA¹ it might’ve been seen as an extra unnecessary device for business people. They’d need to waste effort assuring people it made calls and sent SMS messages so it could be used instead of the phone. An improvement to your current device is an easier sell than a replacement.
Phones connect us to people. Landline, cellphone or smartphone, they connect us. The underlying technology is not as important, nor the additional features.
You use the phone to talk, chat, post, share, get directions to see other people, take photos of people, etc.
It has to do with how nontechnical people perceived things pre-smartphone.
To technical folks, a computer is a device with a CPU that can process data and make decisions based on that data. So smartphones are computers.
To nontechnical folks before the late 2000s, a computer was a device that ran Windows or macOS with a screen and keyboard, and you use it to do spreadsheets, word processing, and such. A phone was a device that connected you to your social world via voice and later text communications. So when smartphones emerged, to nontechnical folks they looked and behaved more like phones -- social connectors -- than like computers, or information crunchers. So they got called phones.
It's like how the ancient Hebrews called whales and dolphins fish, despite those animals being classified as mammals under modern taxonomy. The Hebrews were going by how the animals looked and behaved and how people related to them, rather than genetic inheritance
> they looked and behaved more like phones -- social connectors -- than like computers, or information crunchers. So they got called phones.
They were marketed as a replacement and upgrade for the non-smart mobile phone you already had in your pocket. People had already adopted wireless devices that could make calls, send texts, play games and even access the internet in limited ways and those devices were called phones.
On this note, contributing to open source was the best "experience" I've ever gotten as it related to my day-to-day job of maintaining a large, but still growing, project.
I'm not the author, but I thought these were nice illustrations showcasing the various pitches used in the sport of baseball. If I wanted to understand a bit more intricacies involved in the game, I would find these helpful.
I'm curious: what do you consider best practices for font-size and line-height, as well as margins between paragraphs? I've recently revamped my website and used an online type scale tool [0] to get my typography, but margins don't seem to be as plug and chug.
If you're absolving an apprenticeship as a (print) media designer you'll learn that line-height for long(er) text should be somewhere between 120% and 160% of the font-size.
This ensures that your eyes/brain can easily distinct between two lines and "hop" along. The upper limit ensures that you won't lose track of the line because two lines are too far away from each other.
Line length limit comes from this, too. It's hard work for the brain to save a line you just read, jump back to the start of the next line and continue. Short (but not too short!) lines help with that, too.
Paragraph margins are historically based on blank lines, so you can adapt that for your digital text, too and use margin-bottom: 1em or sth. like that (better use the line-height value for the margi, so you include that space, too).
Rules like these obviously date back to the print age, as there are several types of reading (more technical "ways to obtain the information") defined and refered to in "design rules".
You'll "read" a large poster different than a dictionary which is why you can/should deviate from these rules, depending on the setting.
Headlines for example don't need a line-height of 160% but will often work very well with 120% or even smaller. There are no strict rules but more guidelines, so you'll have to develop a sense and feel for that.
Other design rules and their implications play a role, too. Contrast of text to background, phenomena of large color areas, stroke-width of the font and lots of more.
For web typo with I am personally using sans-serif fonts with a larger font-size. Even with wider layouts this helps with getting shorter lines, slightly larger typo improves readability, more line-height reduces the "wall of text" effect, paragraph margins help to distinct different parts of text from each other.
There should be good beginners literature available if you find this interesting.
Also: Try fiddling with the etzh.ch page. Set the line-height to 1.2 and the font-size to 1 rem and you'll immediately see how not to do it. :-D
I can't quite picture what you're describing, but I'm curious. Do you have any references to this somewhere?