Startups, This Is How Design Works – by Wells Riley RE: [flexcoders] Connection pools in the FlashPlayer and forcing a close The Player uses the browser's network layer so it's all about whether the browser will return control, and I believe it's up to the browser to decide whether it's a keep-alive or not. I'll see if I can find anything else out though. Matt ________________________________ From: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of erikabair Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 1:03 PM To: flexcoders@yahoogroups.com Subject: [flexcoders] Connection pools in the FlashPlayer and forcing a close of an URLLoader/Stream Hello, I'm running into an issue with URLLoader::close (and URLStream::close) not actually doing a low-level close of the underlying TCP connection. Navigate to other messages within this thread
Design for Hackers: Why Monet Never Used Black, & Why You Shouldn’t Either Monet’s paintings evoke a sense of energy and life, they leap off the canvas with color and contrast, but Monet somehow managed to avoid using the color black for nearly his entire painting career. By avoiding black in your own designs, you can replicate some of this dynamism. Monet and Other Impressionists Explored Their Medium Even when creating dramatic shadows, Monet avoided black, and instead manipulated the powerful relationships between colors Monet, and other impressionists, experimented obsessively with their medium: paint, some brushes, and a canvas. In the course of this experimentation, impressionists had to experiment with color to create the desired effects. The Impressionists Became Masters of Color This effect was experimented with further until it became the major focus of some impressionist painters as a technique called pointillism – which involves painting dots of color next to each other to create the effect of a different overall color. Tints Pop, Shades Recede
Lock Down a Paid Subscriber On Visit #1 | DollarShaveClub's Mancave UX Clubhouse) Lock Down a Paid Subscriber On Visit #1 | DollarShaveClub’s Mancave UX Clubhouse Like millions of other people this week, I found out about DollarShaveClub through its undeniably hilarious viral intro video, “Our Blades Are F****** Great”. I will leave it to someone else to pick apart how incredibly brilliant the video itself is (insofar as any form of advertising can be considered “brilliant”). But here’s what gets me: I signed up for a paid subscription service. I never sign up for subscription services. So, how did the Dollar Shave Club win me over and make me a subscriber without ever needing to retarget, track, or otherwise win me back on a return visit? (See the Hacker News discussion for more) 1. 2. Zoomed in - Consider the counter-situation: no default play. 3. Also note how the button points forward. Observe how short and to the point “A great shave for a few bucks” is. 4. The UI makes the $1, $6, and $9 prices VERY clear and this breakdown is repeated throughout. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
Jennifer Preece - Interaction Design Interaction Design: Beyond Human Computer Interactionby Jennifer Preece Preece, J., Rogers, Y., & Sharp, H.. (2002). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. A typical undergraduate level textbook to introduce you to the field, including both scientific background and usability design methods. One of the few that adequately addresses affective measures. [DS & DN] Jump To: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Table of Contents: Preece's Summary of the Chapters: Remember, usability is of utmost importance to Interaction Design, while user-experience follows (see graph on p. 19 of book) usability goals: at center of Interaction Design user-experience goals: outer ring of diagram (secondary to usability goals) Chapter 1: What is Interaction Design? The Goals of Interaction Design: Usability Goals & User Experience Goals (top) Chapter 2: Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction Chapter 3: Understanding Users
On Being an Illegible Person I’ve been drifting slowly through California for the past three weeks at about 100 miles/week, and several times I’ve been asked an apparently simple question that has become nearly impossible for me to answer: “What are you here for?” Unlike regular travelers, I am not here for anything. I am just here, like area residents. The only difference is that I’ll drift on out of the Bay Area in a week. The true answer is “I am nomadic for the time being. My temporary nomadic state is just one aspect of a broader fog of illegibility that is starting to descend on my social identity. Since my particular variety of nomadism has me couchsurfing through readers’ homes, they sometimes have to explain my visit to others. Nomadism is the sine qua non of this general phenomenon of individual illegibility. Nomad is a concept that rooted-living people think they understand but don’t. Now I’ve come to realize that’s not really it. This is not really as strangely backwards as it might seem. Vegas Vegas?
The UI Guide | Part 1: Buttons » Galpin Industries - Pixels Straight From Canada I should begin by explaining why I’m doing this guide in the first place. I believe that every designer has a right to know what many of us have learned via trial-and-error and word-of-mouth teachings. I’m quite aware that this is not the first UI guide that has ever been published, nor do I expect it to be the last. Probably the most crucial thing to understand is that simply knowing how to make and style these elements does not make one a designer. I’ll be covering several different types of elements, and each post will be continually updated as I receive more suggestions for content and as I get more time to develop the article. General Photoshop Tips Global Light: Make sure your Global Light is set to 90 degrees, rather than the default 120 degrees. Button Styles There are many, many different ways of styling buttons but I am going to focus on a few that I think are quite effective and useful to have in one’s toolkit. Glossy Ah yes, the old standby. Glossy with glow Textured Simple Mr.
Early Quora Design Notes - The Artypapers Weblog - Artypapers January 21st, 2010 Recently the startup I've been working at for 6 or so months launched its first product. Quora is a continually improving collection of questions and answers -- a place where you can find the best source for a wide range of information online; from local hotspots to esoteric Harry Potter trivia, it's all there. A lot of thought went into the Quora product design and even at this early stage many details have been revisited multiple times. So, I thought I'd share a few of the decisions and principles that went into the first major version of the beta product. Key Product Design Decisions Really early on I decided to focus only on the product design and would forgo any time spent on things like visual design and, to some extent, branding. As a consequence of that strategy, color is largely used for signaling hierarchy or interactions. Another interesting change from focusing singularly on the product was how that impacted my choice in tools. Old Quora Header Notifications
Web Design Elements: Examples And Best Practices - Smashing Magazine Fifty Essential Topics on Economics Economic is an essential topic for life. If you are working, understanding economics will help you understanding how are the products and services of your company relate to the markets and consumers. Why some products can mark the price so high and still there are demands on purchase? How services and products decrease its value? Arnold Kling has done a set of note pages for economics. Growth Theory Saving, Finance, and Social Security Markets (Microeconomics) Macroeconomics Information Economics The Best of Economics – [Arnold Kling]
shadow performance Update: I've added some comments about the -[CALayer shadowPath] approach that I missed before. I've just pushed a new sample to the OmniGroup? source on github which shows several drop shadow approaches, with an eye towards performance, particularly while the shadow casting object's frame is being animated. One of these is a pair of functions vended by OmniUI, OUIViewAddShadowEdges? Opening up OmniGroup/Frameworks/OmniUI/iPad/Examples/DropShadowOptions? Animation Type Resize: The size of the object changes, possibly leading to it being redrawn. Animation Driver One-time change: Some one-time programatic change is being made to the object that has a starting and ending state. Shadow Options CoreGraphics, resampled: This renders the shadow into the view's content area with normal CoreGraphics calls. Performance Running this app under Instruments with the Core Animation tool, we can check out the relative advantages of each approach. Conclusions