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Making Software

makingsoftware.com

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Re: Making Software

#41

Post by croemer »

dimal wrote: post #29
Apfel wrote: post #6

Stunningly beautiful landing page. I would never normally comment on the aesthetics of anything in the dev sphere but that completely blew me away. I'll preorder for sure. I'd echo the other comment mentioning that a coffee-table version of this would be great.

Agreed, it's aesthetically beautiful. It should be a coffee table book. But for the web, it has terrible usability. Really, really terrible in multiple ways. My comments will be harsh, but since the creator is obviously very skilled, he should know better. Why multicolumn text? So it looks like an old printed manual? At first view, it's not clear where the first column ends. This is not something we see on the web (b…

On mobile there's far too much white space between sections, there are almost entire screens of nothing.

Re: Making Software

#42

Post by croemer »

WillAdams wrote: post #20

Which chapters are done? I was very excited to go to (and link/reference) Chapter 2: Fonts and Vectors but it doesn't seem to be done yet? The progress indicator shows that this is only just begun?

No chapters are done - it's a bit weird that this fact is buried deep down in the FAQs. I would have expected the fact it's an announcement to be mentioned above the fold.

Re: Making Software

#43

Post by dimal »

salomonk_mur wrote: post #40
dimal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it's aesthetically beautiful. It should be a coffee table book. But for the web, it has terrible usability. Really, really terrible in multiple ways. My comments will be harsh, but since the creator is obviously very skilled, he should know better. Why multicolumn text? So it looks like an old printed manual? At first view, it's not clear where the first column ends. This is not something we see on the web (b…

Disagree on the animations. They are both beautiful and detailed, clearly illustrating the point. Your other criticism I agree with.

I agree that they are beautiful and detailed, clearly illustrating the point. I really, really love them. I'd love to have them on my wall.

That's not my problem. My problem is that they never stop animating. For me and many other people, when something is moving in our visual field, it is very, very difficult to read the text next to it.

Full disclosure: I'm autistic. I was wondering whether I should mention that. All the issues that I mentioned exclude me from using this resource. So maybe we could call these accessibility issues instead of usability issues. When I disclose that I'm autistic, it tends to evoke two types of responses:

1) Oh, sorry, we'll make it accessible. But they do it out of shame, which I don't like. I'd rather it's out of empathy.

2) You're too small of a segment to care about.

But I'm beginning to think that the only difference between usability and accessibility is the size of the population that's being excluded by the design. I chose to keep my autisticness separate to see how people responded when I presented this as a usability issue instead of an accessibility issue.

I'm only asking that designers have empathy for all possible users of their media. That's all. That's what good design is supposed to do.

Re: Making Software

#44

Post by joshbaptiste »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #15

Commendable effort, i would also like to recommend some topics/chapters/lessons whatever you want to call it - How microprocessors and microcontrollers work - Types of storage => RAM / ssd/ hdd / flash drives and storage formats NTFS, FAT32 - OS stuff (theading, multiprocessing, coroutines, scheduling, paging, priority) - Some data structures stuff (trees, stacks, queues, graphs etc)

CoreDumpped https://www.youtube.com/@CoreDumpped on YT is also a great animated reference or refresher on such topics..

Re: Making Software

#45

Post by bsoles »

wavemode wrote: post #32
dsego wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Justified text is bad on the web. Is there any reason why justified is okay printed but not on the web.

Beause in print you would typically use your publishing software to adjust various things, like where hypenated word breaks should happen. This is much trickier in digital media, and usually just isn't done, resulting in ugly word spacing.

> Justified text is bad on the web. ...so right ragged text is always more readable.

I disagree. I like justified text on the web as well as in print. To me, jagged right hand side of the text column is more disturbing than uneven spaces between words. So, you cannot universally declare that justified text is an accessibility issue.

Re: Making Software

#47

Post by layer8 »

bsoles wrote: post #45
wavemode wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beause in print you would typically use your publishing software to adjust various things, like where hypenated word breaks should happen. This is much trickier in digital media, and usually just isn't done, resulting in ugly word spacing.

> Justified text is bad on the web. ...so right ragged text is always more readable. I disagree. I like justified text on the web as well as in print. To me, jagged right hand side of the text column is more disturbing than uneven spaces between words. So, you cannot universally declare that justified text is an accessibility issue.

Accessibility issue doesn’t imply universality. Ideally, this should be a user preference setting.

Re: Making Software

#48

Post by layer8 »

dimal wrote: post #43
salomonk_mur wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree on the animations. They are both beautiful and detailed, clearly illustrating the point. Your other criticism I agree with.

I agree that they are beautiful and detailed, clearly illustrating the point. I really, really love them. I'd love to have them on my wall. That's not my problem. My problem is that they never stop animating. For me and many other people, when something is moving in our visual field, it is very, very difficult to read the text next to it. Full disclosure: I'm autistic. I was wondering whether I should mention that. A…

I’m not autistic and I agree that nonstop animations are distracting and detrimental.

Re: Making Software

#50

Post by skadamat »

falcor84 wrote: post #18
croemer wrote: post #17

I'm confused, I can't find the content anywhere. I clicked on the TOC items but that just underlined the words. Is this just an announcement?

Yes, just an announcement. There's an FAQ at the bottom: >When will it launch? > I'm not entirely sure yet. I'd love to get it out before the European summer this year. It's a lot of work to illustrate everything so you might need to have some patience.

There seems to be some content previews here: https://typefully.com/DanHollick
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