Experiments in typographic alternate history have produced Елброкан (Ælbrocan), an excellent Cyrillic Fraktur by Guifa (inspired by the discussion about my very own Shark, wow) and Калоян (Kaloyan), an awesome Cyrillic Uncial. Move over, boring old Устав (Ustav).
Cyrillic gone wild! or at least gone all speculative-fiction.
I wish XML were becoming obsolete faster
XML sucks at (almost) everything it’s used for. Google has open-sourced Protocol Buffer, a typed, backwards compatible, compact, binary data-interchange format. Combined with YAML for configuration and data-persistence files that need to be human readable, there’s even less reason to use XML for any data-serialization.
XML, in the form of (x)HTML, is ok for is markup, and the XML-based (x)HTML templating in Genshi is the best templating language I’ve ever used (and I’ve used XSLT, Mako, Mighty, PHP, and a few others). I wonder if the reason that HTML (and XML) templating is so difficult, and templating language code is often so ugly, is because XML is actually a poor solution for markup too. HTML is obviously here to stay, but it would be an interesting thought experiment to design a successor markup language that is not strictly hierarchical, more human-readable, and designed with templating in mind.
San Francisco Walkability and other infographics
This map of San Francisco’s “Walkability” by Lee Byron uses a similar blobby algorithm to The Neighborhood Project.
I want one of his Centerclocks for my wall. He’s also got a nifty Rivers of the World map, and he’s the guy behind the NY Times’ Olympic Medals Cartogram and Presidential Polling graphic (which thankfully shows Obama in the lead in a majority of the polls).
Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization
Punk rock heralded the decline. Then hipsters come along and Adbusters nails them for what they are: the dead end of western civilization.
Calling out Jakob Nielsen’s site design
Hank Williams busts out the brutal honesty: UI Guru Jakob Nielsen’s site is unreadable. And John Gruber concurs. Every time I end up there, I wonder idly why I’ve never gotten around to reading through what looks like great content. And after a few moments I close the window because the colors are so awful.
And why doesn’t his 10 Best Application UIs of 2008 awards announcement actually link to the winner’s sites? Seven of them are web applications, but if I want to know about any of them, I have to copy the product name, open a new tab, and look it up in Google. There’s a reason it was called “hypertext,” and the ability to have yellow and teal backgrounds isn’t it.
What reading Tufte won’t teach you: Interface design guidelines
Edward Tufte’s books do a beautiful job of illustrating how to present huge amounts of information clearly and simply. Well presented information is critical to good interface design, but it’s not the whole story. Guidelines on how to present complex functionality clearly and simply are harder to find.
I’ve just spent two months carrying a terrible, ancient cellular phone and a mediocre non-Apple music player around the planet, and interacting almost exclusively with Windows XP terminals at internet cafes and hostels. As my frustration with these poor interfaces grew, I started a rough list of interface design guidelines. Here they are:
MVC Web Apps
Adam Wulf, of the modestly named welcome.totheinter.net, has drunk the Browser-side MVC kool-aid! You too can drink this flavorful kool-aid here, here and here.
I drink it up. Two different ways.
I’ve found two nifty “I drink your milkshake” t-shirts. This one is the best:
And this one deserves an honorable mention.
While you’re at it, buying this shirt will go towards saving the historic Hill Valley Clocktower.
Plus, this is a particularly nice execution of angels having the phone box.
Zed Shaw on Linux feedreaders
Zed Shaw disses on every Linux feedreader you’ve ever heard of and some you haven’t, and then finds his holy grail in Newsbeuter. I’ll have to try it.
Update 2008-08-12: I’ve tried it. It seems good, but it doesn’t seem to automatically update my feeds.
