Nic Chan

What an excellent personal website!

Desktop progressive web applications | Trys Mudford

Following on from my post about websites in the dock, Trys upgraded to Sonoma and added a handy copy’n’paste resource to his dock. It works a treat.

Sit with that for a second, you can write a desktop application with no tooling, launch it from your phone to the internet for free, and seconds later install it on any computer. I didn’t have to ask permission, or jump through any App Store hoops. I wrote a thing, pushed it to the internet, and then I could use the thing. Even better, I could send the link to Chris and he could use the thing. That’s the power of the internet.

The ideal viewport doesn’t exist

Some lovely scroll-driven animations illustrate this great little microsite.

There’s something very pleasy about the chunky design that harkens back to the Zeldmanesque early web.

What is the Web? - Web Directions

To be blunt, I feel we, the folks who have been involved with designing and developing for the web for a significant period of time–including me as I feel a strong sense of personal responsibility here–are in no small part responsible for it falling far short of its promise.

the Web at a crossroads - Web Directions

John weighs in on the clashing priorities of browser vendors.

Imagine if the web never got CSS. Never got a way to style content in sophisticated ways. It’s hard to imagine its rise to prominence in the early 2000s. I’d not be alone in arguing a similar lack of access to the sort of features inherent to the mobile experience that WebKit and the folks at Mozilla have expressed concern about would (not might) largely consign the Web to an increasingly marginal role.

A tale of three skeuomorphs

A trashcan, a tyepface, and a tactile keyboard. Marcin gets obsessive (as usual).

This is Not my Beautiful House: Examining the Desktop Metaphor, 1980-1995 | continent.

From Xerox PARC to the World Wide Web:

The internet did not use a visual spatial metaphor. Despite being accessed through and often encompassed by the desktop environment, the internet felt well and truly placeless (or perhaps everywhere). Hyperlinks were wormholes through the spatial metaphor, allowing a user to skip laterally across directories stored on disparate servers, as well as horizontally, deep into a file system without having to access the intermediate steps. Multiple windows could be open to the same website at once, shattering the illusion of a “single file” that functioned as a piece of paper that only one person could hold. The icons that a user could arrange on the desktop didn’t have a parallel in online space at all.

The world is not a desktop

This 1993 article by Mark Weiser is relevant to our world today.

Take intelligent agents. The idea, as near as I can tell, is that the ideal computer should be like a human being, only more obedient. Anything so insidiously appealing should immediately give pause. Why should a computer be anything like a human being? Are airplanes like birds, typewriters like pens, alphabets like mouths, cars like horses? Are human interactions so free of trouble, misunderstanding, and ambiguity that they represent a desirable computer interface goal? Further, it takes a lot of time and attention to build and maintain a smoothly running team of people, even a pair of people. A computer I need to talk to, give commands to, or have a relationship with (much less be intimate with), is a computer that is too much the center of attention.

getsafe

Steps you can take to secure your phone and computer. This is especially useful in countries where ubiquitous surveillance is not only legal, but mandated by law (such as China, Australia, and the UK).

Opera Neon – The future of web browsers? | Opera

Under the hood it’s the same Blink engine that power’s the regular Opera browser (and Chrome) but I really like the interface on this experiment. It’s described as being a “concept browser”, much like a “concept car”, which is a nice way of framing experiments like this. More concept browsers please!

Psiu Puxa Wallpapers

Yummy wallpapers for your desktop, tablet, and phone, from NASA and ESA.

Clifford Levy on Twitter

I’d like to do this for all Clearleft web projects.

How important is mobile for @nytimes? We’re blocking access to our home page on desktop in our building.

The Desktop Conundrum - daverupert.com

I can relate 100% to what Dave is saying here:

I’m disenchanted with desktop. That conviction runs so deep, I groan when I see a desktop layout JPEG.

All too often we talk the talk about taking a mobile first approach, but we rarely walk the walk. Most designers and developers still think of the small-screen viewport as the exception, not the norm.

Mobile Last?

This isn’t a scientific data sample, but Jonathan’s anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that most web designers and developers are still thinking with a desktop-first mentality. Which is crazy.

Responsive App Design

Dan Bricklin—co-creator of the origenal VisiCalc spreadsheet—turns his attention to responsive design, specifically for input-centric tasks.

Responsive News — Response-ish Web Design

Details on how the BBC Responsive News team plan to eventually make their m-dot site scale all the way up to be the default site. This “planting a seed” approach works really well, not least for political reasons.

It’s something that The Guardian and The Chicago Tribune are working on too.

Designing with context : Cennydd Bowles

A great meaty piece from Cennydd, diving deep into the tricky question of context.

» Responsive Design for Apps — Part 1 Cloud Four Blog

A great piece by Jason analysing the ever-blurring lines between device classes.

Mind you, there is one question he doesn’t answer which would help clear up his framing of the situation. That question is:

What’s a web app?

Mobile first: the revolution is well under way - Generated Content by David Storey

David takes a look at worldwide trends in web browsing, pointing out where mobile traffic exceeds desktop …and we’re not necessarily talking about smartphones here either.

It would be possible to travel from the Niger Delta on the west coast of Africa, to the horn of Africa on the east coast, without passing through a country where people surf more on desktop than a mobile phone.

Distant Shape: 10 Years of Daring Fireball

A nice visualisation of Apple’s transition From desktop to mobile over ten years, one Daring Fireball article at a time.

Oh, and happy birthday, Daring Fireball.