ifacethoughts

Posts in asides Category

Probems Or Symptoms?

It has often happened with me that what I considered was a problem was only a symptom of the real one. For the user, the symptom is usually the problem itself. That is why it is all the more important for a problem solver to sift through the symptoms and arrive at the underlying problem. [Continue]

Psychology in Design

Jeremy Keith has great inputs on designing with psychology in mind. Though he talks primarily about Web designers, it holds true for most of the software application designers as well, or anyone who gets a chance to create an environment. A lot of times designers limit their exercises to observing and studying their users and design accordingly. [Continue]

Web2.0 Is Now English

The one millionth word in English dictionary is Web2.0, defined as “the next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you”. The unfortunate part is soon that next generation is soon going to move on to something else, and continue further. The phrase Web 2.0 itself has been confusing. [Continue]

Case For C++

C++ has been at the receiving end in recent times about neither being a good low-level language nor being an effective high-level one. It is said that there is no case for C++ in today’s programming world. I agree that with evolution of programming languages, applicability of C++ is narrowing down, but it has still not vanished. [Continue]

Universal IE6 CSS

Andy Clarke has a new solution for dealing with IE6 incompatibilities - Universal IE 6 CSS. The idea is to serve simple design with great typography for IE 6, without layout. The Web developer community is trying various approaches to get rid of IE6. [Continue]

Microformats Get Flexible With Value Class Pattern

Microformats has introduced a new pattern - the value-class pattern to tackle accessibility and localization problems. The value-class pattern lets you two things - break value of a microformat property into multiple sub-values, and mark specific relevant data using a special class name value. So, now you have multiple options to design your markup for datetime values and keep it accessible and machine readable, as Jeremy Keith illustrates.

img Or background-image?

How do you decide whether an image should be included as a img element or a background image? As Chris Heilmann explains, if the image is content, it better be part of the markup with img and alternative text. With background images, you have to ensure something else - that a corresponding background colour is seen when images are disabled, otherwise the site is rendered unreadable.

Why 160 Characters

I have always wondered about the reasons behind the length limitation of SMSs, that has been inherited by numerous applications that use it. Mark Milian has an interesting story of how the length came out to be 160 characters. The story highlights that the research conducted to deduce the number, that was sufficient to convey messages, was driven by usability and effectiveness than technology limitations. [Continue]

This is the weblog of Abhijit Nadgouda where he writes down his thoughts on software development and related topics. You are invited to subscribe to the feed to stay updated or check out more subscription options. Or you can choose to browse by one of the topics.