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ebf

184 karma · joined October 18, 2011

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ebf··on Is Microsoft Metro Undesigned?
"Design is about making choices and Metro makes none. Of course excessive skeuomorphism is bad but it is design because it makes a statement and presents no choice. What Microsoft shows in “balls” to make changes it’s lacking in making choices. The lack of depth and uniqueness of the Metro interface reminds me of design work when empty of inspiration and avoiding a carbon copy from another design: flat geometric objects with simple colors. You may criticise Apple’s, at times excessive, skeuomorphism or even Google’s “engineered look”, but those are choices. With Metro, Microsoft is undesigning the UI because they’re seemingly out of ideas and refusing to make choices."

Does anyone actually agree with this? There are a lack of examples and evidence in his post. It seems to me the author just doesn't like the Metro design language.

"Good design is as little design as possible" - Dieter Rams

ebf··on HTC wins swipe to unlock patent dispute against Apple
The slide to unlock feature is a skeuomorphic design. The sliding lock is a very common lock on doors. I would consider it obvious for that reason alone.
ebf··on Facebook To Buy Opera? Maybe.
"When searching online I find it vaguely insulting that my presumed default state is one of not already knowing what I'm looking for, and furthermore the question I'm asking is the same question everybody else is asking."

Often when I search, I have a keyword in mind, but not necessarily the wording. The autocomplete is great for helping me refine my query. I'm not really sure why Google suggesting common searches would be insulting?

ebf··on Kleiner Perkins Partner Ellen Pao Sues Firm for Gender Discrimination
If the company allowed the discrimination and harassment to occur even after several complaints, why shouldn't they be held liable?
ebf··on Life Below 600 Pixels
It seems to me the 37 signals website puts the most important bits above the fold.
ebf··on Windows 8 devices to have retina display
They list 2560x1440 on a 10" screen as a common display size for Windows 8. That puts it at 291 DPI compared to the new iPad's 264 DPI.
ebf··on OMGPOP’s Sale to Zynga Is One of Y Combinator’s Biggest Exits To Date
My whole dorm played their games when they were iminlikewithyou.com. My friends never thought the name was childish, and it went with their cute art direction.
ebf··on We’re hiring a Lead Visual Designer
I never run my browser at full width.
ebf··on We’re hiring a Lead Visual Designer
Great pitch, but some feedback:

On my Macbook Air, I didn't even realize there was something below the fold. I was scrolling side to side and clicking on the icon, trying to figure out what to do (partly the fault of Lion's disappearing scrollbars). The min-width of 1280px seems unnecessarily wide. Scanning right to left and back again to read what your company does is not the most pleasant experience.

ebf··on Why This Is What Samsung Is Calling Ice Cream Sandwich
I would say your example is not analogous. To upgrade from XP to Vista, the user has to purchase Vista and go through the install process. To upgrade from 3.x to ICS, the user simply downloads an OTA update.

The upgrade to ICS can be done by casual users, who may not even know that they are upgrading to ICS, whereas the XP user is clearly making the decision to upgrade to a new OS.

ebf··on Help Reddit build a recommender
I've noticed this problem lately. Last night, I saw that a large percentage of my front-page was from 1 subreddit. I'm also subscribed to over 200 subreddits. Some of these subreddits never hit my frontpage, and I tend to visit only 10-20 subreddits. This results in the majority of my subreddit subscriptions being useless.

I think there could be some interesting UI solutions to this problem. If more people treated the Reddit API like the Twitter API, there could be applications that aren't necessarily supposed to replace the traditional Reddit browsing experience, but to make whole new experiences (e.g. Flipboard).

ebf··on Diablo III coming May 15
Only one of my friends played D2 on LAN. I never understood why anyone would want to play like that. Playing online was incredibly more fun to me.
ebf··on TV is broken
Spongebob Squarepants, at least early on, had terrific writing.
ebf··on The Ultimate Steve Jobs Collection
I'm pretty disappointed in the direction Chill has gone. Social video is an incredibly interesting area. Chill, however, didn't iterate too much on the idea of Turntable for videos, and now they've pivoted to a Pinterest for videos.
ebf··on Show HN: An iPad app to teach kids how to program
I really enjoyed learning Logo in my 5th grade gifted program. I'm pretty sure that most of the class enjoyed it as well.
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