Riccardo Mori

One month with Google+

August 9, 2011

After all the chatter and blabbing about Google+, I was interested in hearing some impressions by someone who was actually using it, and I was secretly hoping that that someone would be a competent, tech-savvy journalist. That’s why I enjoyed One month with Google+: why this social network has legs by Jacqui Cheng at Ars Technica.

She writes:

After one month with Google+, it’s clear to me that this—sending updates to certain groups of people and not to others—is the main appeal of the service. I was one of the first people to loudly declare that you can do the same thing on Facebook, but so few people know this that it’s basically a nonexistent feature; that’s the problem with Facebook. With Google+, sending out certain updates to some people and other updates to other people is right at the forefront of the experience. You are always asked to make a conscious decision about your social circles and about which circles get to see which posts.

And here’s a feature I didn’t know about:

There’s also the (wondrous) ability to “mute” posts on Google+. You know how you “Like” a friend’s photo on Facebook, only to get alerts for every single one of that person’s 300 family members when they end up commenting on the picture and arguing over whose body part is in the corner? Imagine if you could simply hit a button to ensure that you never have to hear about that post ever again—even if it’s your own post. We’re not talking about blocking certain users—sometimes you want to keep a person around, but you just don’t want to hear about a topic anymore. That’s a huge bonus to Google+, and those I’ve spoken to agree that it’s one of the better unsung features of the service.

I agree, this is something I’m sure I would resort to if I started using Google+ (unlikely).

Finally, this is another point I agree with:

However, the most important thing for Google to do right now is to retain its current audience and keep the momentum going. Enough people use Google+ and say enough good new things about it that it could establish itself as a legitimate alternative to Facebook, but fickle users can easily be driven away by boredom at this early stage. So long as Google+ keeps improving, it should be okay; if it implements some of the suggestions thrown out by its users, it could be more than okay.

Lion Is a Quitter

August 8, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

For the first time since I’m on Mac OS X, I’m not getting particularly thrilled about the latest version of the operating system. I remember embracing the transition to Mac OS X from Mac OS 9 with enthusiasm, and every time a new version of Mac OS X was out, I immediately upgraded, certain that the benefits always outweighed the compromises. I always trusted Mac OS X to the point that — apart from a manual backup of my most important data — with every upgrade, I just inserted the system discs and updated, without too many paranoid precautions.

You’ll probably think it’s silly, but for me Lion is becoming a really controversial upgrade. It’s the first time a new version of Mac OS X has made me really consider not only a simple backup, but a complete cloning of the contents of my main hard drive and a Snow Leopard/Lion dual-boot configuration. It’s the first time I’ve waited so long before actually upgrading. It’s the first time I’m really giving a lot of thought to that benefits/compromises balance, because for the first time I’ve the feeling that what Lion is giving me barely compensates what it’s making me leave behind. Mind you, these are strictly personal reasons & observations. They’re related to how I’ve been using my main Mac, how I’ve been perfecting my workflow, the applications I’ve come to rely upon, etc. In this regard, as I’ve already said, Lion feels rather disruptive to me. I find many of its new features appealing, but at the same time perhaps I’m just not ready to adjust my habits. In a nutshell: I will upgrade to Lion, but for the first time with a strong safety net and less enthusiasm than before.

I’ve written this long introduction to this great article by Matt Neuburg — Lion Is a Quitter — to make you understand where I’m coming from and why I agree with Matt’s position. His piece is about a so-called feature in Lion, Auto Termination. What does it do? Neuburg quotes the amazing review of Lion by John Siracusa:

Lion will quit your running applications behind your back if it decides it needs the resources, and if you don’t appear to be using them. The heuristic for determining whether an application is “in use” is very conservative: it must not be the active application, it must have no visible, non-minimized windows — and, of course, it must explicitly support Automatic Termination.

This ‘feature’, though, seems to be messing with Neuburg’s workflow:

Yesterday, the same thing happened to me with Preview. I launched Preview because I wanted to open a certain PDF document. So I chose File > Open to summon the Open dialog. At that point, however, I realized that I wanted to make some changes to the folder containing the PDF document I intended to open. So I closed Preview’s Open dialog (and I may also have told Preview to hide) and switched to the Finder. When I was done messing about in the Finder, I tried to use Command-Tab to switch back to Preview to bring up the Open dialog again — but I couldn’t, because in the meantime, Preview had quietly been told to quit, by the system, behind my back, without notifying me.

[…]

As Siracusa goes on to point out, when Automatic Termination occurs, the terminated application may in fact not really be terminated. For example, right now on my machine, TextEdit is listed in Activity Monitor as one of my running processes. It’s using some memory; it has open files. Nevertheless, TextEdit doesn’t appear in the Command-Tab switcher or the Dock. Lion has faked me out twice: it has caused TextEdit to vanish from the GUI’s display of running applications even though I didn’t quit TextEdit, and at the same time, it has kept TextEdit running in the background.

Matt then questions the usefulness of Auto Termination, and in my opinion he makes some good points against it, both from a technical and a user experience standpoint.

I know that this, like the change from Exposé + Spaces to Mission Control, is bound to give me headaches because part of my workflow is having two or three applications in the background and having to move back and forth from one to another to compare, make changes, open files, copy-paste contents, close files, and so on, and it would be hugely annoying for me if the system decided to quit one of these applications behind my back just because I don’t have open documents or windows at a particular moment. That’s why I really sympathise with this bit:

[T]he fact is that when Lion caused Preview to quit automatically yesterday on my machine, I was using Preview. I wasn’t using it actively at that moment in a way that Lion knew about — there were no open Preview windows, and Preview wasn’t frontmost — but I was engaged in some activity involving Preview. I had switched away from Preview only in order to prepare things in the Finder so that the document I intended to open in Preview would be ready. But when I switched back to Preview with Command-Tab, Preview was gone. That’s not helpful or useful; it’s annoying, confusing, and a hindrance. I had to launch Preview explicitly again in order to continue with my task.

Why every website should have Keyboard Navigation

August 7, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

According to Shelby White, keyboard navigation truly should be used on nearly every site because it is a necessary feature for every interactive web experience.

He writes:

When should it be used and why?

The correct answer is always. When you have sites that require you to click and drag to scroll or have pages and pages of content, why not give the user the ability to skip to each pane or project. If instead you require the user to perform a second action of clicking then you’re not making it easier on them. Sure you want the drag to be part of the experience, but keep in mind that the more unnecessary friction you add to each interaction the higher their disinterest meter will go.

Source: WANKEN — The Blog of Shelby White » Why every website should have Keyboard Navigation

Clean Up Your Mess

August 5, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

Since it launched in May, you’ve probably already seen this, but I found it just the other day and I think it’s a very nice & useful website. Created by Daniel Higginbotham, as the tagline summarises, it’s a guide that explains how to achieve a cleaner design, and it does so in a very clear and straightforward way, using simple language and a lot of visual examples. A good starting place.

Enjoy: Clean Up Your Mess — A Guide to Visual Design for Everyone.

Friends of Type

August 5, 2011

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

My thoughts exactly.

From their About page:

Friends of Type features original typographic design and lettering – fresh visual content – practically every day, by the four primary contributors. Posts are meant to log ideas, express ourselves, and inspire each other and our readers. The last week of every month we feature a guest designer, someone we admire and think will elevate our work and the site through their contribution.

This is a sketchbook, an archive, a dialogue. The posts are sketches and ideas on visualized language; a collaborative habit born out of the realtime interactions that made us friends in the first place.

You can buy prints, or hire them if you need their skills.