Acts of Volition

Today I watched footage of a fatal plane crash and all I could think was, “Did YouTube redesign their search box?”

Our beloved little web development company, silverorange, was incorporated ten years ago today (August 11, 1999).  •  I’m looking forward to the next ten years.

A quick tip for those designing web interfaces with an “X” icon for a “Close” element. Rather than the letter “x” (or capital “X”), use the multiplication (U+2715) or heavy multiplication (U+2715) symbols.  •  There’s no semantic advantage as neither the letter X nor the ✕ symbol have the …

Another great comic from XKCD:

John Gruber suggests that the common Linux desktop interfaces of Gnome and KDE fall into the uncanny valley - similar enough to Windows for you to expect similar behaviour, but different enough to be problematic:  •  “By establishing a conceptual framework that mimicks Windows, they can never …

Twitter  •  If Twitter were a phone company, you could only call people who used the same phone company as you.  •  iPhone  •  If the iPhone were a desktop computer, you could only install applications approved by Microsoft (or Apple).  •  DVD  •  If DVDs were books, you couldn’t read a book from …

A rule of thumb I try to use when looking for visual metaphors for actions or elements in an interface:  •  “If an element does not have an obvious visual metaphor, then it should not have an icon.”  •  I'm also working on a law that governs how to name laws after oneself, but I don't have a good …

As with every major release of Firefox since 1.0, I’ve had the privilege of working with Mozilla on their website updates for the new Firefox 3.5 release.  •  If you care about web browsers, you already know why it’s awesome, and if you don't care about web browsers, all you need to know is that …

I’ve written before about the boring but delightful benefits of standards. Another such standard is emerging in Europe this month. Most major mobile phone manufacturers have signed on to support a standard phone charger for mobile phones in the European Union. Such a grand display of common-sense …