301–310 of 440 posts
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Speaking of, "In defense of the floppy disk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kylikelQBqg Surprising and excellent talk.
I was surprised about the two big carpets on stage. I wonder why they did that (or conversely no one else does that).
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> should the icons represent something "iconic" or something that most people use? I don't know what you mean by "iconic". If you mean "abstract and without independently-identifiable meaning", then I think in general, no. Icons should be immediately identifiable when possible. The overlapping rainbow paint chips that make up the current photos icon seems utterly meaningless. The camera was meaningful. A stack of pho…
By iconic I meant represented by an object associated with an activity that has the most meaning. (I have some difficulty phrasing this) For example, in the current world maybe 10% of the people are taking pictures with actual cameras but we still represent the camera as a "box with a huge lens". Few people use land lines but the phone icon is still a banana. To send and e-mail in general we use an envelope but we se…
So you either use something "iconic", or every icon is just a small screenshot, or I guess you make something up that is meaningless.
This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
Even 'digital natives' live in the physical world. We start learning how it works before we ever touch a computer, and even the most dedicated nerd spends more time interacting with physical objects than with digital interfaces. It doesn't take additional learning to know that an object casting a shadow on another is in front of that other, for example. Failing to leverage that existing knowledge is tantamount to shutting down whole swathes of users' brains.
Read more: http://blog.tobiasandtobias.com/post/37179466962/in-defense-...
This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
I like the minimalistic UI of El Capitan. It gets out of the way, and puts in focus what I really want to look at: the content, Web pages, my code, my photos. My computer is a tool, it's not an artwork I turn on to look at. Buttons still look pushable, input fields still look editable. The Dock didn't lose any functionality whatsoever by having the 3D effect removed. In my opinion, the El Cap UI requires just as much…
> My computer is a tool, it's not an artwork I turn on to look at Things looking better actually has a positive effect on usability.
This essay is nothing more than the authors opinion (which there is nothing wrong with) presented as fact (completely take umbrage with this). Looking at the authors website, the current design of Apple's UI elements are not to their taste. An example would be this; http://www.nicholaswindsorhoward.com/blog-directory/2016/1/2... The odd idea is interesting, but it's massively regressive.
This article doesn't make any sense. The use of metaphors worked when people didn't know what a computer was, and the only way to make its UI make sense was to mimic real-world objects. Now, this is no longer necessary. It's been 40 years. While I agree that new macOS icons aren't great (see the Game Center icon), the old ones were silly. I'm 35 and I have probably seen an actual contact book only once when I was lit…
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> Now that guy is complaining that the photos app icon doesn't look like a Point And Shoot camera, when fewer and fewer people use those. The old icon also had a photo on it though which made it clear it was the Photo's app, even if you don't know what the other thing is in the icon at all.
I know a few people who still print photos, but most of my friends never do. So a photo on a screen would maybe be a better metaphor if you need one. It's a really difficult problem. So many of the things we do today are done on a rectangle with a screen. That doesn't make a good icon. Maybe icons are obsolete altogether?
And yet, people do grow up knowing that the green banana button means "phone" and the notched rectangle means "save", and often never even question "is there a real world analog for this icon?". It isn't that icons are obsolete: it is that we are graduating from a language of pictograms to a language of ideograms, yet for some reason we have large numbers of people telling us that that is somehow a horrible thing to do.
This is not surprising, because our sense of beauty comes from the physical world.
So what is the problem with skeuomorphism?
Tech enthusiasts would like their phones to look like something from the future, not something from the past. But ordinary everyday people prefer for it to look like things they are already familiar with, or can relate to.
Tech enthusiasts worry that the skeuomorphism was getting totally out of hand, particularly where the UI metaphor started limiting functionality (e.g. an address database that's limited to what a Rolodex can do, rather than exploiting what is possible with a computer). But this is not really true. For example, iBooks has instant search, something only possible with a computer.
Some people point out that many skeuomorphic elements reference things that a large part of Apple's audience hasn't used in a long time, if ever. True, but here's the thing: It doesn't matter whether the user has ever seen a reel-to-reel tape. What matters is whether the visuals depict a physical object that the user can model in his mind. If it is too abstract (that's the opposite of physical) then non-tech-enthusiast users will find it hard to intuit.
Some people say skeuomorphism looks tacky. This is partly true. Skeuomorphism is hard to do. When done poorly it does look tacky. But when done well it looks very beautiful.
By removing all skeuomorphism Apple is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.