Mar

23

HTML5 Goodness – Enhance Anchors jQuery plugin

HTML5

Back in the day, when web pages tended to be walls of text, a nifty navigation concept was born – Anchor links, which looked something like this “somesite.com#article1“, and when clicked would skip down to said location. However they quickly fell out of fashion as web evolved. Now, as single page apps are all the rage anchor tags are making a comeback, but not as anchor links but as javascript animations: Click a link and the page will actually scroll.

It’s all fancy but there is one downside – Accessability. Have a browser that does not run javascript or just want to send a link to said position? You’re out of luck. Anchor links would solve this issue by not relying on javascript and changing the URL as you clicked the link but they are not sexy. Also, the problem with anchor links is that.. well, they suck at usability as well – When you are warped to a different position in the article you lose the mental context of the page structure; you might as well be on a different page altogether.

So, let’s bring back the sexy to anchor tags!

Enhance Anchors is a simple jQuery plugin, which when loaded, will enhance simple anchor tags (ie. “somesite.com#article2“) with smooth javascript scrolling transitions while retaining the good parts of a anchor link. It even supports back button (where possible)! And it’s as easy as just loading the plugin and you’re done.

 

Check it out at:
https://github.com/zonear/jquery.enhanceanchors

 

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Maa

14

Why Windows 8 will change the world

HTML5 / windows8 / Yleinen

Windows 8. Hate it or love it, there is certain something in the air when talking about it.

HTML5 as native language

Native applications for Windows 8 Metro are written in standard HTML5 instead of, for example C# – A language usually heavily endorsed by Microsoft. Why then JavaScript over C#, or anything else for that matter? It turns out that this is actually the most pivotal thing in future of Windows and it just might end up powering the next era of PC. Let me explain.

Personal Computer

PC stands for Personal Computer – A computer that one can tailor for their needs. This was the catalyst that fueled the computer revolution, as it made cheaper computers possible, thus commodificating  the computer itself, which in turn fueled the internet revolution and so forth. While Apple likes to rant about post-PC world, where PC becomes irrelevant, I suspect Microsoft has other ideas.

The very essence of PC are the countless different hardware configurations – Something that was the thorn in Microsoft side for the longest time: It turns out it’s quite hard to make something run rock-steady in 100 gazillion different computers. What this also means is that there are thousands of different display sizes and setups out there. Windows used to work around this problem by having toolbars and, well, application windows. Metro will have none of that – The applications run full screen, end of story. To up the ante, Microsoft even demoed Windows 8 running on 82-inch touch display. How the hell do you work around that?

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Maa

06

Dissection of Windows 8 Metro UI – 8 features

ui/ux / windows8
Metro UI

So, Windows 8 Consumer Preview is out. We already know that Windows 8 plays nicely with touchscreens, hardly surprising as it was designed from the day 1 to be touchscreen driven, but how about the good ol’ mouse & keyboard?

As it’s Windows 8, 8 features seems appropriate. So, without further ado – Dissection of Windows 8 Metro UI.

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Lok

07

Some articles recovered. Yay! \o/

Yleinen

Managed to recover few articles through WaybackMachine. <3

Decided to release them all, unedited and raw… (thus, there is “slight” possibility for typos and the likes)

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Lok

03

HTML5 Goodness, Part II – Symbolistic

HTML5 / webapp
Symbolistic

This here is a HTML5 game, made by yours truly. I originally made in few hours for 10k competition (Game entry on 10k), and decided to publish it on Mintusability as well. Specially, as it turned out 10k doesn’t allow Google Web Fonts, and instead forces everyone to use Typekit, so I was forced to release a Arial version of the game (yuck). Personally, I find this limitation rather weird, as Typekit allows only one domain (which should be the 10k domain) or you end up shelling cash-money to them, whereas Google Web Fonts allows them fonts to be used where-ever you feel like. Sounds like win for me.

Anyways, Symbolistic is a simple shape matching game, where you have to match the shape with two separate symbols, that when joined, create the shape in question.  There is a catch though, as the clock is running down and only way to turn it back for few seconds is to match another set of shapes, which in turn brings more symbols to the table. So be quick, survive and proceed to brag your scores to your friends! Tech-wise, Symbolistic does not use any external libraries, goes well under 10k even when unpacked and is even fully offline capable.

The game can be found from http://mintusability.com/symbolistic

More pictures after the break.

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Lok

03

HTML5 Goodness, Part I – Sinstream

HTML5 / webapp
Sinstream

As pretty much everyone of my close friends know, Sinfest is by far my favorite web-comic. Ever. Actually, let me try that again… One of my favorite comics. Ever. It’s right there with Donald Duck’s by Don Rosa and The Far Side (by Gary Larson).

Well, what would every self-respecting geek do when they miss a bunch of dailies and have to click them all through? Build their own reader, of course! Thus, I present: Sinstream!

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Syy

25

Hello interwebs

Yleinen

Decided to bring back the blog, so here we are and here we go. Downside? I realized ALL of my old blogposts went to the way of the dodo when I changed service providers… :/

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Hel

10

Killing the mouse. And no, it’s not touchscreens.

Yleinen

For some time now people (analysts?) have been predicting the death of a computer mouse, by touchscreen and lately by multi-touch. I’m, however, going to claim that both of those technologies are absolutely outgunned by a simple Logitech. And as a cherry on the top, I’m going to give my take on the computer mouse killer.

Why touch-technology has lost already

The statement that simple touch technology is going to be replacing the mouse is just simply dimwitted. Why? Simply because they are used in two completely different context: Whereas touch-screen rock the handheld world, computer mouse reigns as the sole emperor of the desktop computing. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love touchscreens and even multi-touch, however, neither of them have the power or the ergonomics of even the simplest 5€ mouse, when it comes to desktop computing. Just think of the time you use your computer daily; 2 hours? 4 hours? For me it would be something like 8-10 hours. Now, keep your hand pointed to the screen, as you would be clicking a button on it, and see how long you can go. Now, do the same test with the mouse. See the difference? On continuous use, mouse wins hands down. Sure, touchscreens are intuitive but when it comes to desktop use, they just suck. Unless. And this is big if, unless the whole paradigm of desktop computing changes to something drastically different.

Then what?

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Kes

24

How to generate free buzz for your open source project

Yleinen

Youre probably smart enough to figure out what in my opinion is a great way for generating that magic buzz around your open source commitment. Yeap, I claim that it has something to do with user interfaces. (Well, isn’t that news)

Three years ago I happened to stumble upon interesting project called ReactOS; a “free version” of Microsoft Windows – open source (blackboxing Windows components) and able to run Windows applications out of the box. Sounds sweet BUT… There’s always a catch. The thing that struck my eyes was the user interface, not because it just was so sweet, far from it. It struck my eyes because it was far from attractive, which in my eyes, was doing good job of destroying the appeal of the whole software. Hence, I decided I wanted to pitch in.

Now, years later I stumbled upon the same project and I even found mockups I made for the project from my harddrive. This provoked some thougths.

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Kes

16

Posture guided gaming

gaming
Lean left - Lean right

I originally started to write this article about six months ago, far beyond the blog ever even existed. Just knew I had to get things out from my head, to get them organized. Then I saw a video which bummed me, since it presented pretty much the same thing and I scrapped the whole article. However, later on I’ve realized that the execution in the video (sadly, I can’t seem to locate this) was a bit saggy and not even about the thing I was about to write. So, here we go; posture input and games.’

More after the jump

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