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.
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
Can't wait for that part of The Twitter Files™ where they reveal the internal communications about blocking everything related to Mastodon.
Poolitzer
@grishka here I had the same thought, after reading this tweet: https://nitter.kavin.rocks/kyliebytes/status/1603571571473281025#m
Gregory
I just completed "Calorie Counting" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2022 #AdventOfCode https://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. 
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.
Show previous comments
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.  
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.
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.
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
If you'd like to translate Smithereen into your language, there's now a Crowdin project: https://crowdin.com/project/smithereen
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! 
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 |
Gregory's Server
@grishka Just take the best UI for all times - Win9x :)
I'm copying this already in my UI for #Rust :)
@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:
https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111
@grishka kinda late to this but check out older versions of the Macintosh interface guidelines. Here's one from 1995 http://interface.free.fr/Archives/Apple_HIGuidelines.pdf
but even some of the later ones are solid. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/189487