Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
572 posts total
Gregory

What do I read to gain a better understanding of old-school properly-desktop UI design? By "properly-desktop" I mean multiple windows, primarily oriented at mice and keyboards. With power users in mind, pretty much the opposite of the modern "clean" stuff.

I'm good at copying things and picking up patterns from other people's work, but I'd like to get better at designing my own desktop UIs from scratch.

Show previous comments
⚛️Revertron

@grishka Just take the best UI for all times - Win9x :)

I'm copying this already in my UI for #Rust :)

Oleg Evseev

@grishka “About Face” by Alan Cooper maybe? Haven't read it personally (remember it being referenced in a UI/UX course I took back in the days though) but the older editions seem to fit the bill, the 3rd one is from 2007:
amazon.com/About-Face-Essentia

sam henri gold

@grishka kinda late to this but check out older versions of the Macintosh interface guidelines. Here's one from 1995 interface.free.fr/Archives/App

but even some of the later ones are solid. apple.stackexchange.com/a/1894

Gregory

Thinking of it, there isn't a single case when I'd want automatic video quality switching.

Uriel Castro

It never works for me, when I have unlimited WIFI it always switch to 480p quality, but when I have limited mobile connection it switch to the highest quality

Gregory

Decreasing the number of sidekiq processes somewhat helped it. But only somewhat.

Gregory

Can't wait for that part of The Twitter Files™ where they reveal the internal communications about blocking everything related to Mastodon.

Gregory

I just completed "Calorie Counting" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2022/day/1

Gregory

#Smithereen 0.4.4 is out!

Walls are good, but you know what often appears on them IRL? Graffiti! Now you can draw things on people's walls. Meticulously ported to JS/HTML5 from VK's original Flash graffiti editor. Desktop only.

This release also includes extensive internal changes that make the codebase more resilient to bugs.

#activitypub #mastodev

Gregory

"A/B testing" is a misnomer. It should really be called "gaslighting your users".

Gregory

#Smithereen 0.4.3 is out with grouped news feed entries ("John added 5 friends" instead of 5x "John added Jane as a friend") and some bug fixes.

#activitypub #mastodev

Gregory

Why are all (two) federated instant messaging protocols so complex?

Gregory

I also REALLY hate how both of them want servers to expose the lists of users' connected clients to the outside world. Matrix does it supposedly for e2e encryption. XMPP does it for no good reason.

Gregory

I like how the XMPP spec uses 3 screens of text to basically tell you "you gotta send this XML tag with the '=' character in it to authenticate your server".

Gregory

I've never used Facebook much — it never gained any traction in Russia besides some Moscow hipsters — but daamn its desktop layout used to be so much more sensible 10 years ago!

(stumbled upon this screenshot while researching the mobile newsfeed/timeline layout for #Smithereen)

Moved to cawfee.club

@grishka Even with the surface level improvements most big tech platforms provide, it really does feel like they're getting worse in terms of their core functions, probably because they've instead aimed to just make profit off the user. It really is surprising how good alternative tech websites, like here right now, along with Odysee and Brave, are in many aspects, especially since they're still so small as platforms.

Halcek

@grishka When I am forced to use FB nowadays because of school communication, it's layout is always very confusing.

There are notification icons flashing for you to look at as if they were the things from your friends, or updates you missed, but instead it's just some random feed of short videos way out of my interest zone.

Gregory

#Smithereen 0.4.2 is out!

New features include a revamped invitation system and a new signup more with manual approval by server staff.

#activitypub #mastodev

Gregory

I recovered the data from one of the two HDDs from my PC I used around 2008-2012. On the upside, there's a shitload of screenshots of the old VK layout, including from pre-microblog era, which are hard to come by in decent quality — those are invaluable for #Smithereen development. On the downside, however, some of them are so cringy I have no words. Was I really like that 12 years ago?

Gregory

There's also this cute video of someone drawing a VK graffiti as a kind of music video for his crush/girlfriend. I don't know why I downloaded it.

Gregory

#Smithereen 0.4.1 is out. It adds the option for the instance admin to require new accounts to confirm their email addresses.

#activitypub #mastodev

Gregory

Now that the entire iPod line is discontinued, Apple should finally rename iOS to phoneOS and iPadOS to padOS so they're in line with macOS, tvOS, and watchOS.

#WWDC #WWDC22

Gregory

I wrote enough of an XMPP server to send a message to my account on another server. It's fun to see how differently network protocols were designed before HTTP(S) became as popular as it is now.

Gregory

#Smithereen 0.4 is out!

There's quite a lot of changes, but notable additions are all about groups.
- Groups can now be "closed" or "private". Closed groups require approval by moderators. Private groups are invite-only. Speaking of which,
- Group invites. Pretty self-explanatory really.
- Improved sync for remote actors — it's likely that once you add someone as a friend, their profile will always be up to date.
- More bug fixes than I care to count

#activitypub #mastodev

#Smithereen 0.4 is out!

There's quite a lot of changes, but notable additions are all about groups.
- Groups can now be "closed" or "private". Closed groups require approval by moderators. Private groups are invite-only. Speaking of which,
- Group invites. Pretty self-explanatory really.
- Improved sync for remote actors — it's likely that once you add someone as a friend, their profile will always be up to date.
- More bug fixes than I care to count

Gregory

If you'd like to translate Smithereen into your language, there's now a Crowdin project: crowdin.com/project/smithereen

d(jack’o la)ngo 🎃

@grishka are your groups all based on the post-to-wall/collection FEP?

Gregory

#Smithereen update: collection sync, something no one has done before, again. Collections are fetched automatically on first follow, and there also are admin buttons to force fetch them at any time.

Yes, you can now see mutual friends for Mastodon users!

#activitypub #mastodev

Курьер Мохавского Эспрессо

@grishka выглядит так, будто Дуров стену вернул.

Gregory

#Smithereen update. (there aren't many of these lately as I'm also working on the Mastodon Android app)

- Added a "collection query" endpoint to actors. This allows asking an actor "do you have this object in your collection?". Simple form-data post request, up to 100 object ids at a time.
- Add{Person} and Add{Group} make use of this. If the other party confirms that this actor is, in fact, a friend/member, that relationship gets stored in the DB right away.

#mastodev #activitypub

#Smithereen update. (there aren't many of these lately as I'm also working on the Mastodon Android app)

- Added a "collection query" endpoint to actors. This allows asking an actor "do you have this object in your collection?". Simple form-data post request, up to 100 object ids at a time.
- Add{Person} and Add{Group} make use of this. If the other party confirms that this actor is, in fact, a friend/member, that relationship gets stored in the DB right away.

Gregory

Remaining things to do before the 0.4 release:

- Fetch friends/members and probably wall posts collections when you receive a friend request or join a group, especially a non-public group
- Support including links in i18n strings because Crowdin is really not liking how I split strings into multiple keys ("before_something" and "after_something")
- Send Update{Question} periodically upon receiving a poll vote so Smithereen-to-Smithereen poll results stay in sync

Go Up