Ryan Tomayko

Introducing: Readability 1.5 —

The Arc90 guys have a nice little Readability update. Two new styles with beautiful Typekit faces and more size and margin options.

This is cool too:

Beyond the “wow, this makes reading so much easier” comments is a whole slew of emails from the elderly, people with vision or cognitive difficulties and users that rely on screen readers. It’s incredibly gratifying to see Readability make a difference for so many people.

For the record, I’m rocking the Athelas style (type info) with Large type and Medium margins.

Dive into history, 2009 edition —

Mark Pilgrim: “Anyway, I now realize that there were some hidden assumptions behind my design decisions in 2000. Some of those assumptions turned out to be wrong, or at least not-completely-right. Sure, a lot of people downloaded dip, but it still pales in comparison to the number of visitors I got from search traffic. In 2000, I fretted about my ‘home page’ and my ‘navigation aids.’ Nobody cares about any of that anymore, and I have nine years of access logs to prove it.”

I don’t think most people realize how little site navigation matters anymore. Your site’s navigation is google, topic sites, blogs, and feeds. The “website” is dead. Long live the individual useful resource.

Things I hate about kitchen user interfaces —

For real. The best microwave is one that has a single timer dial that moves as time elapses. No one ever uses all those buttons. I use exactly one button on my current microwave: “Quick Minute” (hitting it as many times as needed) but I’d prefer a dial.

Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind —

“When the Texas Education Agency evaluated its Technology Immersion Pilot, a $14-million program to install wireless tools in middle schools, the conclusion was unequivocal: ‘There were no statistically significant effects of immersion in the first year on either reading or mathematics achievement.’”

The Rise of Contextual User Interfaces —

Interesting look at evolution of UI and the semi-recent trend of adopting the web’s content oriented interface. Definitely overlaps with the fundamentals of “admin debris” and related ideas.

Why your Flash website sucks —

Spot on.

Provide us with the email address we should not contact. —

Makes sense to me.

Submit a Twitter Bug —

Gets my vote in Best Bug Reporting Screen.

Less sucky multiple-select lists —

Another interesting take on multi-select lists that uses checkboxes with labels and colors.

Web Pages That Suck presents the biggest web design mistakes in 2004 learn usability and good Web design by looking at bad Web design —

A perfect article.