ModulaBlog | Modula

The condescending user interface

Eero — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:00:39 +0000

These graphics are writing checks this interface can’t cash

Paul Miller has some advice for user interface designers: Don’t be condescending. “The Ribbon in Microsoft Office products,” complains Miller, “is constantly talking down to me, assuming I don’t know how to use a menu, a key command, or an honest-to-goodness toolbar.”

Miller’s got some harsh words for Apple, too: “And of course, there is the transgression of the century: Apple’s downward spiral into overt 1:1 metaphors. The physical bookshelf, the leather desk calendar (complete with a torn page), the false-paginated address book… these new tricks are horrible and offensive.”

Why do corporations die?

Eero — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:50:46 +0000

Rob Paterson writes Why do corporation die so soon and cities don’t? Corporations are Machines and Cities are Networks.

There’s no place like home?

Eero — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:28:17 +0000

Now that you can buy any top-level domain, I’ll buy “.1″ and create a host called “127.0.0″ under it. Lets see what breaks.
Lend me $185000.

— @mikkohypponen

Approaching data, a UX perspective

Eero — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 18:20:16 +0000

UX designer and journalist, Hunter Whitney, describes a good mindset as you start digging into data, with the end target of visualization.

“Why might you want to collect data about something and are you sure you know what you really need? … How are the data stored? … How are they summarized (statistically) and modified? … How are the charts displayed, formatted, and presented in the context of the full interface?”

The creative adult

Eero — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:27:58 +0000

The creative adult is the child who survived.
— U. LeGuin

Commenting was down.

Eero — Mon, 02 May 2011 06:21:39 +0000

A few days ago, Hugo Ferreira notified me that our commenting system was down.

It seems that during a recent system upgrade something went awfully wrong. Thanks to Mr. Ferreira, everything should now be fixed and up and running.

Pure type

Eero — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:40:16 +0000

This week, Nokia announced a new typeface and a new look for promotional materials. This new typeface is called Nokia Pure and it’s actually rather beautiful:

If you want to test how it renders, Nokia is already using the new font on their blog.

For me, the next step is to try it on my trusted N900…

Martini theme now on GitHub

Eero — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 08:51:25 +0000

As said before, we are no longer keeping our existing Redmine themes up to date.

Yesterday, Bevan Rudge kindly created a GitHub repository for Modula Martini Redmine skin.

For now on, we encourage the theme community to collaborate on updates and bug fixes using this repository: https://github.com/bevanr/martini.

Paul Graham on simplicity

Eero — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 10:40:01 +0000

When you’re forced to be simple, you’re forced to face the real problem. When you can’t deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance. — Paul Graham

Via Swissmiss. Photo by Niall Kennedy.

Something obsolete and something new

Eero — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 16:07:20 +0000

During last few years, we have released several free WordPress and Redmine themes—spin-offs from our other projects. Due to lack of time and resources, these themes have rarely been updated to maintain compatibility with latest versions of WP and RM.

To keep things fresh, our free WordPress themes will be taken out of the pool. Say, in a week from now. We’ll keep the Redmine skins for a while longer.

But… don’t sweat it, we have a completely new and improved Redmine theme in the pipeline and It’s going to be even nicer than our hugely popular Mojito :) Naturally, you will be informed of its progress.

Feel free to comment.