April 2011
16 posts
Text Areas in iOS
The HTML textarea tag is used to include multiple line text input areas on webpages.
This is a text area.
The Problem
Text areas are tricky to use on iOS, particularly on the iPhone or iPod Touch. If there is too much text to fit in the box, you need to use two fingers to scroll around. Pushing with one finger just scrolls the whole page.
Text areas could be more usable. I don’t have a...
“The added reporting has not yet been rolled out to the public, but it is a great...”
– Shawn Blanc
Air in the Box
I bought this big box of Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut, but it was too tall to fit on my shelf. So I cut the top off, ensuring all the cereal still fits within the bounds of the box. This really highlighted how redundantly large the box is.
I reduced the height from about 330 mm to 240 mm: making the box just three-quarters of its original size.
Lorries are driving around carrying cereal boxes that...
Sony takes on Apple in tablet war →
from BBC News
Sales of tablet PCs have been booming globally, led by the success of Apple’s iPad.
This must be frustrating for Apple. Both that their beautiful iPad is referred to as a “PC” and that, as Marco Arment says, ‘There really isn’t much of a “tablet” market’. It’s basically just the iPad.
The whole article is a bit ridiculous.
Just wanted to use Instapaper’s new Zoom Image feature while in Mail.
SCIgen →
An Automatic CS Paper Generator
SCIgen is a program that generates random Computer Science research papers, including graphs, figures, and citations. It uses a hand-written context-free grammar to form all elements of the papers. Our aim here is to maximize amusement, rather than coherence.
The authors of the programme gave talks based on randomly generated papers. (Update: the talks didn’t...
Interactive Exposé
I just tricked Exposé into letting me interact with the miniaturised windows! I could select things, scroll, do searches and more. So awesome, but I can’t work out how to do it again.
Here is a screen shot with the top right Preview window selected:
Then I switched to the Finder window, selected a file and did a full screen QuickLook (⌥-space). See how the QuickLook is behind the windows....
AppSuration and Unique Traits →
by Ben Brooks on The Brooks Review
An unusual critique of Tweetbot by Ben. He seems fixated on features, and I thought this whole Apple thing was about more than that.
I feel the whole piece is dodges the key point that Ben simply disagrees with those who love Tweetbot’s user experience.
World of Goo
In the post ‘Analysis: World of Goo’s iPad Launch’ on the 2D Boy blog, which I quoted from previously, Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel stated a belief that World of Goo for iPad was “the Definitive Version”. Obviously, I’m far less informed about the game than it’s developers; I have only played the game on the Wii. That said, I believe the Wii version has a unique advantage.
The iPad is primarily a...
“The higher revenue at the lower price point brought about a realization about...”
– 2D Boy blog
Is Android Taking Over? →
Great piece by Jon-Erik Storm at Pug Junk. Balanced and forwards thinking.
The fourth assumption is that smartphones will matter for an indefinite amount of time. […] I’ll put it this way: imagine the Zune had won as much marketshare as Android is now. Would that have mattered much after the iPhone came along?
(via Daring Fireball)
iPad Homescreen →
I am in awe of Hugh Sissling’s iPad home screen, which he posted at Woooster:
I opted for no apps or folders on the homescreen at all.
Such focus is impressive. Sissling knows what he uses his iPad for.
Also, this layout completely abolishes the problem of the iPad home screen icons moving around when the device is rotated. (See iPad Springboard Breaks Spatiality by Lukas Mathis.)
...
Notational Velocity 2.0 β5
An update to Notational Velocity came out yesterday.
The top item in the release notes caught my eye:
“Edit With” menu for editing in WriteRoom, TextMate, etc., for all DB storage options
This makes Jesse Grosjean’s QuickCursor redundant for me; Notational Velocity and WriteRoom now talk directly to each other. Having fewer tools makes me happier.
