dennis_vartan

F.lux (or something similar) is one of those things that should come pre-configured with each operating system. I find it indispensable for coding at night (and I use Photoshop quite a bit, too.) Shame there isn't a way to do this on iOS without jailbreaking.

And even shorter, just @100.5 if what you have is a literal. The parentheses are needed if you're boxing a value, e.g.: @(price + 100.5)

In detail: http://clang.llvm.org/docs/ObjectiveCLiterals.html

Like! Much as I love ObjC, reducing verbosity via better syntax can go a long way to making code more readable.

For example, I ended up putting together some defines like this after building a bunch of UI programmatically.

  #define RGB(r, g, b)     [NSColor colorWithDeviceRed:(r)/255.0 green:(g)/255.0 blue:(b)/255.0 alpha:1]
  #define RGBA(r, g, b, a) [NSColor colorWithDeviceRed:(r)/255.0 green:(g)/255.0 blue:(b)/255.0 alpha:(a)]

RGB(255, 104, 0) may be a bit too C-ish, but it sure beats the long form. Have similar GRAY(x) and GRAYA(x) defines for producing grayscale colors.

Definitely interested to see more projects along these lines.

What about thinking of icons as visual anchors -- something to quickly "catch" your eye as you're looking for an operation? What if it doesn't matter what picture the icon has, as long as the shape is clearly recognizable?

Important to distinguish two types of users here:

(a) Someone unfamiliar with a UI will need more visual cues, textual hints, and so on. "What does this button/icon do?" Without helpful text, they may be stuck.

(b) But, someone who has used a particular piece of UI hundreds of times will simply zero in on an app by its icon's shape/color/position. In this case, it's much better to have many varying icons rather than pretty but similar-looking circles. And in this case, it doesn't actually matter what the icons portray.

The iOS 7 Safari icon, while unsightly, catches my eye every darn time. Is that its purpose? And, again, in iOS 7, is this why the gradients follow opposite directions?

Would love if anyone could point to more "science" in this, as I'm simply speaking from my observations.

Ah, wow, that sounds lousy. Sorry it didn't work out for you. Didn't see this with either of two of mine. Buying Dell (as opposed to a no-name brand) should ensure a higher-quality LCD panel[1], but apparently YMMV...

[1] http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/campaigns/dell-premium-pa...

If you're not tied to Apple, with my Air I use a Dell U2713HM -- an excellent display of the same size and without the annoying glass screen. Also plugs into the Thunderbolt port.

The new picker looks nicer aesthetically, no doubt. But each time when setting an alarm, I find that I have to mentally focus to figure out which number is currently selected. Similar font sizes, similar colors, lack of negative space, and now the selected number and the numbers directly above and below are way too similar for comfort.

Learning Photoshop mechanics and UX concepts isn't sufficient, IMO. One can be proficient in $DRAWING_TOOL and still unable to compose something that looks good. As much as I appreciate sites like Tutsplus, they teach mechanics but rarely answer the "why." Why do we add this 28% opaque drop shadow in step 37? Knowing why something looks good is essential to being able to create new works.

Two books I personally found very useful for "why," both discovered via HN:

   "The Non-Designer's Design Book"
   "Design for Hackers"