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The Flat Sink

sachagreif.com

41–50 of 153 posts

Re: The Flat Sink

#41
I would say the best practical reason to move over to a flat design is performance increases. It has been shown that CSS properties such as background-image gradients and border-radii are among the worst offenders for decreased front-end performance. With websites approaching 2MB in size it is no surprise to me that flatter design makes for smaller files (less CSS prefixes, less JS repainting) and less browser rendering. This was precisely why our company moved over to a flat design as we've increased the number of users rapidly over the past year.

Re: The Flat Sink

#42

I would say the best practical reason to move over to a flat design is performance increases. It has been shown that CSS properties such as background-image gradients and border-radii are among the worst offenders for decreased front-end performance. With websites approaching 2MB in size it is no surprise to me that flatter design makes for smaller files (less CSS prefixes, less JS repainting) and less browser render…

You're falling into the trap of thinking everything is HTML. This doesn't apply to native code. There's very little penalty for using rounded rects, drop shadows (which are part of most drawing primitives), and gradients.

Re: The Flat Sink

#43
post #5
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flat (edit: okay, flat ish ) kitchen sinks, as opposed to bathroom sinks, are ubiquitous in North America too. In the kitchen, the flat sink is useful for dish-stacking.

kitchen sinks are deeper too, so splashes are minimized. Also, my kitchen sink is actually slightly slanted towards the sink hole.

Don't people just use wash buckets inside their kitchen sinks anyway? It would cost me too much otherwise on a water metre in the UK.

Re: The Flat Sink

#44
post #9

I'm not going to comment on the message as a whole, since this whole flat aesthetic thing has been argued up and down on HN over the last few months. But there was one line that stuck out to me as being a little off: > Get rid of all texture, and you might end up with cold, sterile designs that scare users away. I'm on board with the usability argument, but I don't think that removing gradients and drop shadows neces…

but I don't think that removing gradients and drop shadows necessarily results in designs that "scare users away."

Try using Office 2013. It's white and flat (even flatter in Win8 over Win7, you lose refrence to what the 'tools' part and the data part is. It is not inviting at all, unless you dig in to the options and try to put some slightly different colors/textures on it.

Re: The Flat Sink

#45
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kitchen sinks are a bit different. They are deeper, you don't shave in them, and they are typically sloped a bit so that they don't get small pools of standing water. These new bathroom sinks are pretty bad. They are really trendy in hotels along with the water found style sinks and the ones that look like a bowl sitting on top of the counter top. Every one is a regression in usability solely for the sake of aestheti…

Yes! And those bowl-shaped ones don't even have a ledge to put your toothbrush holder on!

God I hate those. The counter is either at your knees or the bowl is in your face. There's no where to put anything and simple tasks just end up being a mess. What a stupid idea!

Re: The Flat Sink

#46
He misses the most obvious problem of all, which is that you can't clean easily in the corners of many sharp-edged flat sinks.

Re: The Flat Sink

#47
The parabolic sinks that started popping up all over Seattle around a decade ago are great. If I owned my own place, I'd rip out all the existing sinks and put in parabolic sinks.

Re: The Flat Sink

#48

I stayed with a friend in a then-new building designed by Philippe Starck, in New York. The bathroom sink faucet handles were very cool -- just smooth steel cylinders sticking out, that you rotated. Until I tried turning them with my now-soapy hands... and discovered that they were impossible to turn, because there was nothing to grab onto! His stylish cylinders turned out to be completely useless. Turns out knobby h…

Still, someone will eventually call this a feature, because it might force you to dry your hands before turning the knob - keeping it cleaner/dry.

Designers will always find a way to justify their crap.

Re: The Flat Sink

#50

I stayed with a friend in a then-new building designed by Philippe Starck, in New York. The bathroom sink faucet handles were very cool -- just smooth steel cylinders sticking out, that you rotated. Until I tried turning them with my now-soapy hands... and discovered that they were impossible to turn, because there was nothing to grab onto! His stylish cylinders turned out to be completely useless. Turns out knobby h…

I never understood why people put soap on their hands before turning the water on. Why do you do this? Am I missing something here?
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