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Design

Stop Hitting Yourself, Twitter

Twitter has 99 problems and UX is one of them. The roles of Advanced Search, Analytics and Moments in its ecosystem are uncertain. Therefore, using them is complicated and confusing. In this blog post I am looking at each feature, its malfunctions and how they can be improved. Feel free to join the discussion.

I am not sure whether it is worth anything to complain about Twitter. At this point, it seems like talking to a brick wall (not that wall). The company's financial results are as disappointing as is the average engagement. Yet, little has been done to overturn this.

Jan Rezab, the founder of Socialbakers, suggests pre-filtered feeds for sports, news, etc (this is something Facebook has been contemplating over the last year under the name 'Trending Topics'). He is also against the notion the company should sell - because there's so much room for improvement. And indeed, there is.

Keep reading Stop Hitting Yourself, Twitter

Intelligent Defaults vs TeamworkPM’s Management of Message Subscriptions

Our main project management tool is Teamwork as you may know. Teamwork is a great tool with all kinds of advanced functionality. Alas often the basics don't work. In this case Message subscription management.

I've written to TeamworkPM about five or six times about their incompetent management of message subscriptions. In the bad old days (pre-thrashing by Foliovision), TeamworkPM tried to make everyone subscribe to every message. It was hell. Clients emailed our entire team (up to 35 people at a time) for the smallest issue. We couldn't get any work done.

Keep reading Intelligent Defaults vs TeamworkPM's Management of Message Subscriptions

Approaching Responsive Design

This presentation was originally given at WordCamp Slovakia 2013 in Slovak Technical University on 20 April.

Responsive web design - or "RWD" - is a web design approach focused on creating optimal viewing experience across both desktop and mobile platforms. Responsive design is mostly defined by 3 key components: flexible grids, flexible images and media queries.

Keep reading Approaching Responsive Design

Seven reasons creative designers should seek technical excellence

We hire lots of designers, many of them from the local technical university. I’m always surprised at how many of them have really crappy technical skills. It seems to go with the underlying meme in society that computers are for guys. Invariably, these designers are very concerned with doing creative work and being seen as creative.


Rodin The Thinker by Brian Hillegas CC

Here’s how bad it can get. Our latest hire (with a Master’s Degree in technical design!) could not even do a scan properly. She handed back jaggy 700 px x 1000 px scans of 12 x 18 photos with bad black and white points.

Wake up ladies. Design is a craft. There is no more excuse for you not having first rate technical skills than for a carpenter not to be able to use a lathe properly.

Perhaps they could make the argument that they are more sculptors than wood workers. Did Rodin have to know how to use a lathe (actually Rodin worked mainly in bronze)?

Keep reading Seven reasons creative designers should seek technical excellence

37signals offices very practical but not very attractive

What would it be like to have an almost unlimited budget for your new offices and to start from scratch? Goal: to have great space for work space for sixteen to thirty two employees with on premises presentation facilities.

37signals had that opportunity and went to their architect Brad Lynch with a clear concept. A large open space surrounding a core of private space (sound proof phone booths, multiple conference rooms). This bathes the whole group in natural light from massive windows in their loft space. The traditional approach is to put all the important people in private offices along the windows. Here founder Jason Fried successfully turned things upside down and ended up with a space in which more people would be happy.


37signals office central island for private functions

Keep reading 37signals offices very practical but not very attractive

ImageMagick vs GD vs Photoshop

We want to have nice pictures in our posts. So do You. Good composition, colors and focus are by all means necessary. But there's at least one more step between picture in your camera and picture on your web - resizing. Either on your computer in your own image editor, or on the server using image processor designed for that purpose, or on both.

In this article we will look at the quality of the server-side processing of the pictures when they are being resized. There are two tools for image handling running under php. First is build-in php image processor called GD. Second tool is ImageMagick which needs to be additionally installed on the server.

Focus on Details

If you want really nice pictures, details matter. Details are the magic that makes the picture look extraordinary good. We examined how GD and ImageMagick behave when it comes to details. With GD we don't have many ways how to affect the result, but with ImageMagick we have the choice of filters and sharpening options. Look at the following portrait and notice the difference. You can see that the GD picture looks somehow blurry while the ImageMagick looks more sharp and preserves details.


GD, 32kB
ImageMagick, 63kB

Photoshop, 58kB

Keep reading ImageMagick vs GD vs Photoshop

How to resize a text logo correctly in Photoshop

A lot of logos on the web look like they were run over by a truck. Blurry, jagged, hideous. Here's how to make your resized logos gorgeous and sharp.

The first point is to always save your graphics and logos as either a GIF or a PNG. Saving solid colour graphics and logos as a jpeg is a catastrophe and inevitably results in nasty digital noise. This sound elementary but I have had three trained graphic designers do this wrong, including a graduate of the Art Institute of California. The only one who knew the right answer (in what format to save a text logo) was our lead programmer, Peter.

For an example, one doesn't have to go further than the website of Royal Bank of Canada.


RBC logo: jpeg text buzz in action

Even billions of dollars won't save you from jpeg text buzz on your logos. Here are the jpeg jaggies in closeup:

Keep reading How to resize a text logo correctly in Photoshop

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