As programmers, it’s vitally important for us to understand what our code should be doing. This knowledge starts with knowing the people using our product. While we’re deep in the code, […]
A programmer’s introduction to user portraits
The User
Thinking that programming is about programmers is the worst mistake you can make. The single most important aspect of programming is the user. Keep this in mind through all the discussions we […]
Fitting an image to its element frame
Images require various sizing modes to fit in a responsive layout. Here we’ll look at the relationship between the element and visual and the basic sizing options. I’ll also look at […]
What is a “box model”? (UI Element layout)
A box model describes how to measure an element for layout. It defines what size is and how it relates to the content, margin and padding. It may seem trivial, but clear […]
UI Engine Layout: Additive, Partitioned and Layered
Layout determines how children are positioned and sized within their parent element. There are three approaches to placing child elements within a parent: Additive: The children combine to define the size […]
UI Layout: Natural versus dependent size
Elements have either a natural size, a dependent size, or combination of the two. The size of an element influences its placement. The user and creator of a UI layout system must […]
Yummy UI food with keyframe animations
When I saw the below demo I thought “neat, how’d they do that”? That may sound surprising if you knew that I wrote the API for this. In this article I’ll describe […]
How blaming the user leads to tragedy
On 9 February human error resulted in 11 deaths and 80 further casualties in tragic wreck near Bad Aibling, Germany. Despite a supposedly robust safety system, a lone operator was capable of […]
No new language will stop your program from crashing
New languages try to improve the lives of programmers by simplifying some aspect of programming. Many make bold claims about eliminating certain types of errors, yet in the end none of them […]
The Cost – Programming Performance and Efficiency
As high level languages become more abstract, and offer more convenience features, it is easy to lose track of what the computer is actually doing. While this may be a great boon […]
Rules for Framework Development
Each time I start a new project I find myself looking at the latest batch of frameworks. Lately those are web frameworks, such as CakePHP, RubyOnRails, perhaps JQuery, or any other of […]
