Want to move fast? Just do this • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#21

Post by glasner » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 3:24 AM UTC

simplify wrote: post #8

Relating to Haml/Sass, you may have heard of the ruby gem StaticMatic. It's a great tool that lets you use Haml/Sass to building quick, static prototypes. In fact, I loved the concept so much that I began improving upon it myself[1], adding support for CoffeeScript and Amazon S3. For anyone who might find it useful, any testing or feedback would be greatly appreciated. [1] https://github.com/mindeavor/staticmatic2

I used Staticmatic, but I never liked having to move all my HAML/SASS over to my app. I recently replaced it with the showoff plugin [1], which is basically Staticmatic inside a Rails app.

[1] https://github.com/adamlogic/showoff

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#22

Post by proexploit » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 4:20 AM UTC

sniW wrote: post #10

using pure black as the text color is a mistake Why is this?

It actually isn't a mistake so I can understand your confusion. #111 or #222 can often be used without losing readability but this doesn't mean black is a mistake. When's the last time you went to a website and said "This text is just too dark!". Hopefully I don't come off too rude, the idea that black as a text color is a mistake is almost offensive to me. Different perspectives.

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#23

Post by proexploit » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 4:27 AM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #7

This is a good article, if for nothing else besides that button gem which I somehow haven't heard of before. The downside is, there will be a bunch of sites that look the same, so folks will want to do some real work and find their own components.

The article is very specifically geared towards producing a prototype quickly, not producing a great design. Therefore, similar looking sites don't really factor into the issue being addressed.

You might also enjoy: https://github.com/mbriggs/zurb-awesome-buttons [demo: http://www.zurb.com/blog_uploads/0000/0617/buttons-03.html] - can be installed using bundler and is cleaner than the button gem.

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#24

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 7:40 AM UTC

jat850 wrote: post #20

rimantas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the uglier CSS box-model hacks Wait, does someone still develop for IE5? Otherwise there is no need for any box-model hacks.

There are still a number of DTD headers which can throw IE6 into quirks mode, where the bug still exists.

Right, so the choice is, find a DTD that keeps IE6 in standards mode, or spend countless hours debugging hundreds of tiny layout issues that exist nowhere else.

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#25

Post by simplify » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 8:07 AM UTC

glasner wrote: post #21

simplify wrote: post #8

Relating to Haml/Sass, you may have heard of the ruby gem StaticMatic. It's a great tool that lets you use Haml/Sass to building quick, static prototypes. In fact, I loved the concept so much that I began improving upon it myself[1], adding support for CoffeeScript and Amazon S3. For anyone who might find it useful, any testing or feedback would be greatly appreciated. [1] https://github.com/mindeavor/staticmatic2

I used Staticmatic, but I never liked having to move all my HAML/SASS over to my app. I recently replaced it with the showoff plugin [1], which is basically Staticmatic inside a Rails app. [1] https://github.com/adamlogic/showoff

Interesting, thanks, I'll consider using that next time I'm building a prototype that will eventually become a Rails app. But who knows, I might write a rails-app-exporter for StaticMatic just for fun :D

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#26

Post by Nick_C » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 8:15 AM UTC

proexploit wrote: post #22

sniW wrote: post #10

using pure black as the text color is a mistake Why is this?

It actually isn't a mistake so I can understand your confusion. #111 or #222 can often be used without losing readability but this doesn't mean black is a mistake. When's the last time you went to a website and said "This text is just too dark!". Hopefully I don't come off too rude, the idea that black as a text color is a mistake is almost offensive to me. Different perspectives.

Well, there are plenty of studies that show high contrast makes for readability issues. For example, I get faint after-images that flick around the page when reading black text on white. It's very distracting.

I get your point about different perspectives, but for web pages we want everyone to read, we should be designing for the lowest common denominator.

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#27

Post by squarepeg » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 11:03 AM UTC

proexploit wrote: post #23

tomkarlo wrote: post #7

This is a good article, if for nothing else besides that button gem which I somehow haven't heard of before. The downside is, there will be a bunch of sites that look the same, so folks will want to do some real work and find their own components.

The article is very specifically geared towards producing a prototype quickly, not producing a great design. Therefore, similar looking sites don't really factor into the issue being addressed. You might also enjoy: https://github.com/mbriggs/zurb-awesome-buttons [demo: http://www.zurb.com/blog_uploads/0000/0617/buttons-03.html ] - can be installed using bundler and is cleaner than the button gem.

there's also my buttons mixin based on css3-buttons:

https://gist.github.com/856243

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#28

Post by ZoFreX » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 11:45 AM UTC

sniW wrote: post #10

using pure black as the text color is a mistake Why is this?

One reason I avoid using pure black or pure white these days is I blend text towards whatever is behind it. Text tends to look a lot heavier on the screen than it does in Photoshop (especially if the designer likes to use lighter font weights which generally don't work for the web), and you can really mitigate how heavy the text feels, and reduce the contrast (which mimicks the superior rasterisation going on in Photoshop) by moving the color of the text towards the colour of its background. If you have black text on brown, make the black text slightly brown, for example.

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#29

Post by thibaut_barrere » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

tomkarlo wrote: post #15

notahacker wrote: post #4

This is excellent, very practical advice. The one caveat I would add which the author glosses over is Test in IE as a high priority unless you have a very tech-savvy audience. Compass/Blueprint abstract away most of the uglier CSS box-model hacks and I agree that IE users can live without gradients and rounded corners. But if the site looks awkward without the CSS3 tricks that don't work on the browser that >60% of y…

>60%??? I haven't worked on a site in a while that had more than 45% IE users... most of mine are now below 1/3.

I do maintain a website that still has 65% of IE users (this month statistics).

Re: Want to move fast? Just do this

#30

Post by count » Sat, Mar 12, 2011, 7:55 PM UTC

cabalamat wrote: post #13

theoj wrote: post #5

Does green convert better than red? Performable seems to like red over green. http://blog.performable.com/631526233/

I wonder whether orange would perform better than red. Orange is a striking color, and doesn't have the same connotation of "stop".

Orange has 'warning' and 'slow down' associated with it here in the US though (think of every traffic warning/construction sign and highway equipment you've seen).

It couldn't hurt to A/B test though!