I started GUIdebook in 2003, and last updated it exactly twenty years ago. It’s an interesting time capsule itself now, incompatible with mobile reading and sporting an aged design. I have kept it up because it’s apparently used as a reference in various user interface courses, and if you haven’t seen it, it could...

Speaking of string interpolation, I loved this recurring gag in BoJack Horseman: #humor

The (un)installation bug from the previous post was an overeager directory delete, but a more common problem I’ve seen is this one. Here’s an example from iTunes 2.0: The installer tries to erase a previous version of iTunes using (with root privileges) the rm -rf command. However it doesn’t take into account that...

On the morning of December 28, 1998, the day before the game Myth II: Soulblighter was supposed to hit the store shelves, the publisher received a phone call: […] one of Bungie’s overseas publishers called to say that a woman had played the game and then tried to uninstall it. The game software had uninstalled Myth...

I recently rewatched two reviews of AI companion devices from Marques Brownlee (a.k.a. MKBHD), which both came out in April 2024 – the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1: Brownlee is a charismatic reviewer, and I won’t lie – there’s a certain amount of delicious schadenfreude seeing two products announced with so much...

Writing the recent post about A:B testing reminded me of a screengrab I saw Cabel Sasser share some months ago: The Temu app will be studied for generations. I opened the app. Here’s my unedited, nearly two-minute launch sequence. Just watch it. One way to read this is “phew, whatever I’m working on is nowhere near...

I mentioned David J. Ross’s work more abstractly before, but here’s a great example of a good font announcement: Slight Chance Stencil. It’s interesting, teaches you new things, clearly talks about and shows its inspirations, and is free of the sort of bloviating, pretentious, nutrition-free language that often...

Marques Brownlee published a video commenting on YouTube’s just announced A:B testing feature. In short, for some creators, it will be possible to publish a slightly different version of the video on launch to part of their audience, if that version is deemed “close enough” to the original. Brownlee digs into how...

1. One day, as I was reading an essay on Medium, I saw an automatically inserted subscribe block: But as I was exactly on top of it, a new thing popped in my view, an interruption on top of interruption, both saying the exact same thing: 2. For a while now, whenever I try to follow a link to a site that no longer...

Continuing the theme of software fixes for hardware problems, here’s an essay I wrote in 2016 about a broken computer display that I “fixed” as a teenager, just because I wanted to play Civilization. It remains one of my favourite things I’ve ever written.#hacks #marcin wichary

In my recent visits to German and Polish museums, I noticed a recurring theme: modular industrial dashboards, which I imagine have by now been all replaced by software. I don’t know much about these – please write me if you do – but I wanted to share them anyway, perhaps for context, or amusement, or inspiration....

★★★★☆ A new confession: I struggle with a lot of accessibility writing. I am not necessarily saying this to blame people writing in this space, whose work I respect even if it’s not resonating with me. I think it’s more of a recognition of how difficult it is to talk about accessibility and disability. Advocacy is...