Developing Upwards

Now we're demonstrating how fun interfaces can be built without the use of Flash. This is a growing importance, as open web technologies like HTML5 and CSS3 become more supported and capable, and as devices like Android phones and Apple iPads are more widespread, where Flash is un- or under-supported and web technologies are increasingly useful for performance. The prototype of Paper Rock Scissors worked, but we need something that actually looks nice. This is what I came up with a couple hours of messy around. It doesn't take much to clean up a web game, though it can take a lot more to make it really polish and appear shiny. That is true of any design. The theme has a few threads that tie it together. Your are represented by a blue glow, on your score and on your selections. The enemy is represented by a red glow, so the progress of the game is clear without overloading it with any textual messages or any heavy graphics. I've notched the selections, like ...

I had some down time today to relax, and in true obsessive fashion I spent it coding for the hell of it. I got something in my head and whipped up a demo of the idea. Do you ever need to let someone select a range of things? Maybe they need to pick which and how many items to show in a search result or which letters of names they want to see from an address book? I wanted to allow selection of both "what" and "how much" in one click. click for demo The range being selected from can be anything: numbers, letters, weeks of the year, etc. Users can click among that like a list of a page numbers, like they would expect. I think this would work well in situations where you don't need the entry to be exact, although it can be used for precise entries. Multiple quick selections would also be easy here, maybe quickly changing the range you're viewing in an analytics app. I'd also like to look at adding a "zoom" feature, so that one selection fills the ...

Yes, this is a screenshot of a screenshot. Stick with me, but I really do has a point to this! I have to admit, publicly, that I clicked the button. The one in the screenshot. The one that isn't a button, just a PNG image. I should be glad it wasn't a pop-up! I realized my mistake at the moment I was clicking on it, but it happened to fast to stop. I had to sit and think for a moment. Why did I do that? It drove me to write this pretty immediately and do a couple mock ups for solutions. I never want to let my users loose information or control over it. That is, we don't want them to OK a message away and neglect to actually read it and we don't want them to click "send" before they're really, really ready to confess their never ending love to Glenn Beck. Those are two distinct safety nets. Information the user missing for being click-happy and actual actions within the application they might have wanted to avoid. Any reversible actions, like closing a dial...

I voted. Being a geek, I took a keen interest on the touchscreen voting machine used in my county. There was a checkbox within the larger label for each option. This kept everyone safe from the common "finger slip" mistake that has plagued the touchscreen voting machines. I also took note of a window along the side, where I could watch my votes being recorded on the paper receipts. I feel pretty confident most voters will completely ignore this physical verification. There were some parallels I drew between this and a recent interest of mine: touch screen interfaces. Voting machines might make us angry every few years, but mobile phones and PDAs annoy us each and every day. We're reaching a critical point in the cheapness of touchscreen displays, making them the inevitable first-class interface. We need to come to some standards and practices that give them the consistancy and expectedness that we get using our common interfaces today. At the same time, I'm glad to se...

This is my dream so don't squash it for sounding trivial. This is my window to the world, the tools of my job, and the outlet of my creativity! I want the Perfect Keyboard and the Perfect Mouse. Operate as NiMH battery chargers when plugged into USB for power Lighted keyboard to type in darker conditions. Must be adjustable Must be configurable to PC and Mac layouts Would be handy to configure to DVORAK layout, as well Retractable USB cables Keyboard functions as USB hub, even wirelessly Scroll ball instead of a scroll wheel . I do love my Mighty Mouse Weights for mouse, with storage in keyboard Trackball (or even a nub) in the keyboard to lean back and browse with Splittable keyboard with locking adjustments I am going to spend the rest of my life replacing perfectly good keyboard and mouse combos if no one solves this simple list of requirements. The adjustable keyboard is probably the hardest part, combined with the other requirements I want fit into it. I'd like to pull th...