Gruber’s “plain English” translation of Yahoo’s “Ack! Microsoft!” memo is funny stuff.
Archive for the ‘Link’ Category
Coding Horror’s plea to programmers: Don’t pollute user space. I totally agree with this one. Microsoft and Palm, in particular, need to get their ugly mitts off my Documents folder!
Just a quick plug for a coworker’s incredibly nerdy, usually profane math comics. Let the advanced nerdery commence! Huzzah!
The Sapir-WIMP hypothesis: The more easily you can talk about a user interface, the more easily you can understand how to manipulate it.
We used to use a very similar principle here: If you can’t document it in a way that makes sense, the interface doesn’t make sense. I say “used to” only because I have no clue if it’s still in play. I think it fell by the wayside when we had to write documentation describing how to set things up in other products.1
- Products designed by developers who clearly didn’t follow this principle. [↩]
I consider Stacks the very worst feature Apple’s ever added to Mac OS X (or Mac OS before it). Even QuickTime auto-play could be turned off! So I was very pleased to see a report that 10.5.2 fixes stacks (in the same way people fix their dogs). Hooray! (via Daring Fireball.)
Best of Craigslist: fRee eyboaRd.
In today’s Sheldon, Sheldon meets the embodiment of all Wikipedia knowledge. Very astute. Wikipedia’s strength is definitely trivia from any Sci-Fi TV show.
aria2, a command line utility to download a file from multiple mirrors simultaneously. For Unix, Win32 and Mac OS X.
Mac OS X Hints describes how to make Leopard’s menu bar opaque. Much easier on the eyes.
Disk Inventory X, like KDirStat for Mac OS X.