There’s a category of “plain text” or “ASCII” diagramming and UI design tools: Mockdown – works immediately on the web, even on mobile Wiretext – works on the web, but desktop only Monodraw – a Mac app I believe these are used by people who prefer intentionally limited visual choices, for low-key diagramming to put...

If there was one go-to example of an impenetrable error message in the 1980s, it must have been this – popping up, for example, if your disk drive was dirty: On some technical level, the options made sense: “Abort” would stop whatever you were doing, “Retry” would try to repeat the action, and “Ignore” would proceed...

An interesting 10-minute video from gruz about Super Mario Bros. Remastered, a modern Super Mario fan remake with surprising depth that puts Nintendo’s own efforts to shame: What I liked about it is that it’s wrestling with the idea “How do you improve on something considered perfect?” and touches upon the important...

An interesting flavour of a molly guard that can only happen in onscreen interfaces is “occasionally moving things out of the way to mess with the user.” The messing-with-the-user part is, ostensibly, for their benefit. Making something not appear in the usual position, or not behave the usual way, becomes a speed...

I am a huge fan of all sorts of “recent” features in software; I think they’re extremely helpful in removing tedium, and thoroughly undervalued. A lot of our work is repetitive, even if it’s sad to admit. I shared one example previously, and here’s five more. 1. My bank’s website not only shows me the last payment I...

I can finally update my ancient WarGames reference – turns out the computers on the TV show The Pitt are also preprogrammed to show the right things on the screen regardless of what the actors are actually typing. But you still need to flail your fingers in vaguely realistic ways, so the actors in this...

I want to tell you about something that might seem oddly specific and perhaps too technical, but a) at the end of it you will have a useful phrase somewhere in your brain that will pay off one day, and b) I swear I will make it worth your while. Have you ever seen this problem? The screenshot on the left is fine....

I moved Keyboard Maestro app to a different folder as it was running. I gather there must be some technical reason for the app to have to be power cycled, so I appreciated this warning, and the thoughtful bit of copywriting: “Continue” is caveated with “not recommended” so that you feel more comfortable choosing...

I have been working on an essay about how to gently get started and have fun with keyboard customization. I am finding myself surrounded by programmable keypads… …and I am going out of my way to try various new shortcuts and automations, big and small, just so I can write a helpful article. In Photoshop, one of the...

A good post by John Gruber on Daring Fireball investigating why apps pester you with the annoying “enjoying this app?” windows and attendant semi-shady practices (choose 5 stars and you get sent to App Store, but choose anything less, and your review will get redirected to Mr. Dev Null). The answer? They don’t...

A fun blog post from Alice Pellerin – if you can color code source code, why not try that for hex data? This pairs nicely with a previous post on Unsung in that it too actively investigates what makes for useful, not just “pretty” color coding.#coding #colors

Among many genuinely useful deeplinks you can use to control Raycast from afar in a simple way, I just spotted an interesting one: raycast://confetti This is what it does: Despite it being a confetti cannon and nothing more, I think it goes deeper than stuff like e.g. Asana’s “celebration creatures”, and it deserves...