Posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 7:07pm by Rob Wilkerson
Granted, I’m a Mac user, at least at home, but I like to think I’m not a total fanboy. When I moved to Linux at work and began customizing my machine, I saw countless recipes with instructions for skinning Linux to look like a Mac (or maybe there’s just one and everyone in the free world is linking to it). I don’t get that. Linux isn’t a Mac. A penguin in a tux is still a penguin, right? The fact is, I like my operating systems to look like what they are and, besides, I’ve never had much luck with Linux themes. There’s always something that gets left out and kind of ruins the whole effect.
The honest truth is, I kind of like the Linux aesthetic. Most of it, anyway. I’m not, however, a fan of the default fonts and I thought that installing Mac fonts might be just the thing to dress up the penguin without overdoing it. Turns out that they are.
Try it. Here are my settings:
linux, ubuntu, intrepid ibex, user interface, configuration
Posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 10:00am by Rob Wilkerson
And, just to be fair in my critique, it looks like Windows 7 might also fix one of my long, long, long, long time annoyances with Windows itself – its system tray.
By default, new tray icons are hidden and invisible; the icons are only displayed if explicitly enabled.
I’ve moved off of Windows as a day-to-day platform and don’t plan to return, but these are big steps toward a decent user experience. Kudos to Microsoft for really considering that aspect and working to improve it.
mac, windows, user interface
Posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 7:42am by Rob Wilkerson
Remember that call for design help? Well, never mind. Due to an underwhelming response of a massive nature and the hatred I was feeling for my previous look, I just went ahead and pushed the new look live. It may not be good, but it’s almost certain to be better. To be fair, I did get one promise of design feedback in the near future (thanks, Javie), but I just couldn’t wait any longer. Fret not designer-types, the offer is still open. I (like to) think I have a decent feel for layout and composition, but a lot of the details – to my eye, specifically around color and its application – are lost on me. I’m sure there’s still a lot of room for improvement and I’d be happy to learn where I can improve the design and appearance of this space.
I also want to thank Alex Suraci again. I’ve been working with new code from the Chryp repository rather than the downloadable release candidate and, in the move to production, had a few problems. Some of those were fairly serious and impacted the ability to navigate around the site. I started the push last night around 7pm hoping things would go smoothly, but I should have known better. The push uncovered bugs that could’ve been devastating to the availability and accessibility of robwilkerson.org except that I was able to reach Alex in the #Chyrp room on IRC. He managed to fix the bugs (or point out workarounds) and push them up to the master repository from which I could then pull and update my own code. Without his help and quick response, it would have been a late night indeed. Instead, I was relaxing in front of the TV by 9:30pm or so.
That’s not to say everything’s perfect. It’s not. I know of a few bugs that I need to fix or at least track down, but I could use your help, too. Please let me know if you see anything that doesn’t look or feel quite right. No detail is too small.
chyrp, design, user interface
Posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 7:22am by Rob Wilkerson
This morning I was reading the second article in Smashing Magazine’s series on Web Form Design Patterns and I was surprised to read that the author(s) believe that “[…]it makes more sense to use a clear visual distinction between primary action buttons and secondary action buttons and introduce a significant amount of space to clearly separate them.” What makes sense to them feels counter-intuitive to me.
In my experience, “a clear visual distinction” usually takes the form of the primary buttons being dominant and the secondary being more, and usually too, subtle. It seems like the recent trend is to render the primary action buttons as, well, buttons and the secondary action buttons as text. I can’t be precise about how often I’ve accidentally clicked the dominant button (for no other reason than because it’s just so…dominant) when I meant to click the other, but suffice to say that it’s a big number. One day I almost spent an extra $100 for up to 2” of extra legroom while checking in for a flight online simply because of the “primary button” issue.
What? You think the airline planned that? How cynical of you.
Anyway, that’s been my experience. I can’t imagine I’m alone in that. I’d argue that if a distinction is considered necessary then care should be taken to ensure that the distinction itself is subtle. Making the primary action buttons significantly larger or “hiding” the secondary action buttons is very much the opposite of subtle.
user interface, usability
Posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 1:09pm by Rob Wilkerson
From Joel Spolsky’s post with the same name:
Don’t do this. Users see the disabled menu item that they want to click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are supposed to do to get the menu item to work.
I’m going to have to beg to differ with Joel on this. Or at least with his seemingly all-or-nothing stand on it. Of the myriad of problems that exist in all of the user interfaces that are so prevalent in our world, I don’t think this problem is really a problem. I’m not arguing that disabling menu items is right, necessarily, but maybe that it’s not bad. And certainly that it’s not so bad that we should “outlaw” it. A minor distinction, perhaps, but I don’t think it’s simply splitting hairs.
Read More »
usability, user interface
