Skeumorphism and storytelling
It is often said that design should be invisible. More importantly, design should empower. An interface that is not only easy to use, but fun to use, engages the user and creates an experience where obstacles are easier to overcome, and thus an experience where the product is easier and more effortless to use. Done right, skeumorphism can retain the simplicity and ease of use of an interface while empowering users to act.
TimeAgo helper for CakePHP
I’ve written a CakePHP helper that converts a time into a relative, natural language string such as “10 minutes ago”.
Just include the helper “Ago” in your controller and call it in your view.
echo $this->Ago->timeAgo($dateCreated);?>
Available as a Gist on GitHub.
Designing touch apps as “Augmented Paper”
For me, software experiences that feel like Augmented Paper are those that second-guess our (developers’) natural tendency to put functionality first, or to think of our apps as software. Apps are only incidentally software; software is an implementation detail. Instead, apps are experiences.
10.7: Remove the Dock’s display delay
To remove the delay, open Terminal, type or copy and paste the following line and hit return:
defaults write com.apple.Dock autohide-delay -float 0 && killall Dock
Nazis. In space. Awesome.
This looks awesomely bad. I can’t wait.