Visual Studio is an undisputed king of IDEs in the Microsoft ecosystem. There is virtually nothing even remotely comparable with it on the market. It is so good (for a mainstream product) that it is even used outside of the Microsoft ecosystem, for example in cross-platform game programming, or in embedded development. With already cool …
Category Archives: tech-and-biz
Facebook mobile app
The Facebook mobile app has average of 2 stars in the App Store with 23k ratings, and 3.6 stars in Play Store, including 631k of one-star ratings and 226k of 2-star ratings. There is an interesting break down here. I also don’t like the current Facebook mobile app. The usual discussion happening over and over …
UX of Airport Security Check
What UX disciplines are involved in design of security checks? Interaction design: Developing clear and easy understandable sentences to be used in communication between security staff and passengers. Developing gestures for passengers not speaking any of the supported languages. Ergonomics: Ensuring that the metal detector gate width and the transport belt height are suitable for most passengers. …
TV set usability model
A heated discussion today at work has helped me to understand how to think about TV set usability. But before we get to the details, let’s first talk about the cars and computers. The UX model of cars can be best described by “There is a button (lever, pedal, wheel) for that”. Whichever interaction you …
Great Frontend Development
tl;cr: great frontend development is not trivial, and requires a lot of power to make decisions. There are an interesting article about how important the role of great frontend software developers is in creating great user experience. They even go so far as suggesting to move frontend developers out of the engineering department and plant them into …
Media Player Framework Guidelines
The following recommendations are based on my experience of creating two media player implementations. The one was based on the MediaElement in Silverlight and provided out-of-the-box integration with SilverHD DRM as well as some smart transport channels and performance tweaks. Another one was based on GStreamer in an embedded software and featured tight coupling with HW decoder …
Anti-Pirate
Hello, freedom fighter and member of the pirate party. Welcome to my blog. Let’s team together and make a movie. Better yet: let’s make a great movie and make a lot of profit out of it. This will be a world hit. Let’s say, we call it “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” …
The secret of git
The secret of git popularity is simple. It is very logical, quick and has an awful usability. A perfect combination for its primary audience – the geeks, who love tinkering with a complicated beautiful thing to make it work for them. Another lesson learned – great UX doesn’t have to be ergonomic (in tayloristic sence). In …
Bashing C++
It’s easy to bash C++ having Linus Torvalds on your side. But bear with me for a minute and you will see how this bashing post is more argumentative than others. Before the flame begins, let’s speak about the following two worlds of application development: constrained software and rapid application development. The former world includes …
The Internet Killer
I hate HTML. And not only from the technical point of view. It is deeper. You see, a lot of persons who have conceived Internet, and WWW and HTML… Their principles and goals are very far from the most folks who want to do something in and with Internet. Well, may be it is my personal bias, because I have …