Dubroy.com blogDubroy.com blogA blog about programming, usability, and human-computer interaction. Articles
This is my brain on Twitter
2008-05-07 20:45:00 In case you just can’t get enough of me on this blog, I’m pleased to announce the following: Since all my other plans fell through, I decided to show up to the Twitter party (fashionably late, of course). You can get your Dubroy fix in bite-sized chunks at http://twitter.com/dubroy. Hope to see you there! And from time ... More About: Brain
If this is Object Calisthenics, I think I?ll stay on the couch
2008-05-06 16:56:00 Via Raganwald, I saw this post by Andrew Birnstock: Perfecting OO's Small Classes and Short Methods. The post is a summary of an essay by Jeff Bay called Object Calisthenics, from the new Pragmatic Programmers book The ThoughtWorks Anthology. "Object Calisthenics" is supposedly an exercise to get you to write better object-oriented code. Reading through the suggestions, I couldn't decide if the article was serious or not. More About: Couch , Stay
Firefox?s awesome bar: a command-line for web apps
2008-04-23 21:31:00 One of the cooler features of Firefox 3 (which is currently in beta) is the awesomebar, which is the nickname for the URL bar and its new autocomplete features. Madhava, one of Mozilla's talented interacticians, noticed something neat: this means that the URL bar can be used as a shortcut to perform certain commands in web apps like Google Docs. More About: Awesome , Line , Command
What I?ve been up to: freehand drawing on the OLPC laptop
2008-04-17 21:57:00 Some of you might remember my post from January where I talked about the innovative interface of the OLPC laptop. I wrote that post after talking to Mike Fletcher about doing an OLPC-related project for a course I was taking with Greg Wilson. It turned out to be a really fun and cool project, and ... More About: Laptop , Drawing
What I?ve been up to: freehand drawing on the OLPC laptop
2008-04-17 21:57:00 Some of you might remember my post from January where I talked about the innovative interface of the OLPC laptop. I wrote that post after talking to Mike Fletcher about doing an OLPC-related project for a course I was taking with Greg Wilson. It turned out to be a really fun and cool project, and ... More About: Laptop , Drawing
On wiki markup languages
2008-04-11 06:43:00 In the past few days, I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing in three different wikis: the One Laptop per Child wiki the DrProject wiki for a class I’m taking with Greg Wilson random notes that I keep on a Jottit page I’ve become pretty finely attuned to the difference between their markup languages. The OLPC wiki runs ... More About: Languages , Wiki , Markup
The *real* reason you want a multiple monitor setup
2008-03-28 19:02:00 Despite the fact that there is little evidence that using multiple monitors will make a programmer substantially more productive, many coders will subjectively claim that they can't live without a second display. Why do people feel so strongly about the issue? And is it possible that the perception of efficiency is just as important as real efficiency? More About: Setup , Monitor , Reason , Real
Spring Fever: Links for March 14, 2008
2008-03-14 20:07:00 It’s finally feeling like spring in Toronto; 6° and sunny today. Here are some links to help you procrastinate on a sunny Friday afternoon: Thank god for Spotlight: A Mac user decides to experiment with saving EVERYTHING to the desktop and relying on Spotlight to find things again. Looks like the computer equivalent of compulsive hording. ... More About: Links , Spring , March , Fever , 2008
If you can?t say anything nice?
2008-03-11 04:24:00 Apparently someone from Rogers Wireless remembered the old adage “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” I was taking a look at the phones they offer for prepaid, and got a laugh out of the description for the Motorola W370: The features for the Nokia 6080: “Great value!”, “Pocket sized”, “Sleek design”, ... More About: Nice
Design Transformations
2008-03-03 21:30:00 My friend (and recent DGP graduate) Gerry Chu has started a cool blog on interaction design called Design Transformations. It looks at how existing designs can be transformed into new ideas by applying certain “design transformations.” For example, his first post is about how a mouse is just a trackball turned upside down. Eventually, the ...
A Hierarchy of Needs for Code
2008-02-28 01:44:00 A couple weeks ago, I trekked through another Toronto snowstorm all the way up to the Canadian Film Centre. Normally I’m a downtown snob and don’t go north of Bloor, but I made an exception this time because my friend Geneviève was demoing a project at the CFC Media Lab. A Hierarchy of Needs for Design While ... More About: Code
Scribd?s iPaper and the fragile web
2008-02-22 18:21:00 I’ve been taking a break from my RSS reader for the last couple of weeks, so I didn’t hear about Scribd’s iPaper until yesterday. If you also need to be filled in: Scribd is a Y Combinator startup who writes software “that makes it easy to share documents online.” They want to be the YouTube ... More About: Fragile
Why desktop search will give way to personal information search
2008-02-07 15:00:00 A few years ago, we were told that desktop search applications were going to change the face personal information management. Google Desktop was released in late 2004, only a few months before Apple introduced Spotlight as a key feature of the new version of OS X. When Windows Vista finally shipped, it included a similar feature called Instant Search . As Google brings order to the billions of pages on the web, desktop search was supposed to bring order to your files, emails, and photos. Now, more than 3 years later, have things really changed? More About: Personal , Information , Give
Designed for the Canadian Winter
2008-01-28 20:12:00 Over at Pie Palace, the esteemed Erigami Scholey-Fuller asks why we don’t have more things designed for the realities of the Canadian climate: Winter plays a huge part of our identity. Canadians snowshow, snowboard, ski, skate, and skidoo. We invented hockey. We dominate the sport of curling. We essentially invented the modern ...
Multiple-Monitor Productivity: Fact or Fiction?
2008-01-25 19:50:00 It seems to be accepted wisdom, especially in programming circles, that more screen real estate makes you more productive. I’ve heard claims that you can increase your productivity by up to 50% just by adding a second display. After four months of using a big-ass LCD for development, I recently switched back to a 14″ ... More About: Fiction , Productivity , Fact , Monitor
What interaction programming is, and why it matters
2008-01-18 20:56:00 I’ve just started reading Harold Thimbleby’s Press On: Principles of Interact ion Programming , kindly lent to me by Greg Wilson. I’ve just finished reading the introduction, but one thing stands out to me already. Maybe you noticed it already: the subtitle of the book is Principles of Interaction Programming. What the hell is Interaction Programming? I don’t know ... More About: Matters
Links for January 15th
2008-01-15 17:04:00 UI Design Patterns - Chris Messina’s excellent collection of Flickr albums showing user interface design patterns. Reuse, recycle, but don?t reinvent the wheel unless necessary. 1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple’s Future (Gizmodo) - Shows many similarities between Apple products designed by Jonathan Ive, and Braun products from the 60s designed by Dieter Rams. ... More About: Links , January
The innovative interface of the OLPC laptop
2008-01-10 18:14:00 Last night I had the chance to see the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) laptop in person for the first time. Everybody has their opinions about the project; but putting aside the political discussion, OLPC laptop (aka the XO) is undeniably cool from a technology standpoint. The hardware design is impressive — and I can ... More About: Interface , Innovative
5 ways to radically change computers (for the better)
2008-01-01 01:07:00 In his seminal paper No Silver Bullet, Fred Brooks draws a distinction between “essential complexity”, which is complexity that is directly caused by the problem we are trying to solve, and “accidental complexity”, which is just part of a particular solution. I’ve noticed that a lot of the usability problems I run into are caused ... More About: Computers , Change
Links for December 4th
2007-12-04 17:18:00 Building shaped like a brain - The International Neuroscience Institute in Hannover, Germany is shaped like a brain. Brilliant. Would this ever happen in North America? Software development: The Vast and Endless Sea - If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, ... More About: Links , December
Design *for* our brains, not *like* our brains
2007-11-29 21:54:00 A few days ago, I came across an article called The Second Coming ? A Manifesto by David Gelernter. Gelernter is famous for being a co-inventor of LifeStreams, which was a really cool PIM system based on time-order streams of documents. In The Second Coming, written in 2000, Gelernter writes about a coming revolution in ... More About: Design , Brains
More downloading difficulties
2007-11-23 20:23:00 Sometimes it amazes me how difficult it is to do simple things on my computer. In the last couple weeks, I’ve mentioned a few times the usability problems associated with downloading from the web (Uploading and downloading are seams in the web experience and Usability problems downloading from web apps). That’s exactly the same problem I ... More About: Diff , Loading
Firefox 3 Beta 1: Usability impressions
2007-11-20 23:18:00 My posts have been pretty Mozilla-centric for the last couple of weeks, and with Firefox 3 Beta 1 having dropped today, I see no reason to change that. I’ve been running it for a couple of hours now, and here are some of my first impressions of the UI changes. For a more thorough review, check ... More About: Firefox 3 , Usability , Impressions
Usability problems downloading from web apps
2007-11-07 20:43:00 My post yesterday on the upcoming changes in the Firefox download manager reminded me of a little story I wanted to tell. A few weeks ago, I said that uploading and downloading are seams in the web experience, and this story provides a good example of what I mean by that. A few weeks ago, I ... More About: Usability , Problems , Sabi , Loading
Firefox 3 Awesomeness
2007-11-06 18:52:00 Via Mike Beltzner, I see that there are some cool new UI enhancements in the upcoming beta of Firefox 3. First, the download manager has been completely re-written. A few weeks ago, I complained that uploading and downloading are seams in the web experience. One of the things I suggested was that the download window should ... More About: Firefox 3
Mozilla Prism and the future of application development
2007-10-26 20:10:00 The tube-o-sphere is aflutter today with the news of Mozilla Prism. Prism is a rebranding of WebRunner, which I mentioned a few weeks ago. It’s basically a platform that allows you to take web applications like GMail and give them their own separate window and icon on the desktop. Alex Faaborg has a great post ... More About: Future , Development , The Future , Application
There are no little boxes: Everything is deeply intertwingled
2007-10-24 00:38:00 The post yesterday on Information R/evolution reminded me of a concept that I ran across not too long ago. Ted Nelson, who coined the word hypertext (among other things), introduced the concept of intertwingularity in his 1974 book “Computer Lib/Machine Dreams”: EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no “subjects” at ...
Information Revolution
2007-10-22 15:39:00 Anand pointed me to another cool video from Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Kansas State University. It’s a short video called Information R/evolution that explores the consequences of the shift from paper-based information to digital information, with nods to Clay Shirky’s Ontology is Overrated and David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous. ... More About: Revolution |
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