blog.jim-nielsen.com — Could I Have Some More Friction in My Life, Please?
A clip from “Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy” features a former executive of an online retailer explaining how motivated they were to make buying easy....
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Webkit’s New Color Picker as an Example of Good Platform Defaults
I’ve written about how I don’t love the idea of overriding basic computing controls. Instead, I generally favor opting to respect user choice and provide the...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Product Pseudoscience
In his post about “Vibe Drive Development”, Robin Rendle warns against what I’ll call the pseudoscientific approach to product building prevalent across the...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Multiple Computers
I’ve spent so much time, had so many headaches, and encountered so much complexity from what, in my estimation, boils down to this: trying to get something...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Notes from Alexander Petros’ “Building the Hundred-Year Web Service”
I loved this talk from Alexander Petros titled “Building the Hundred-Year Web Service”. What follows is summation of my note-taking from watching the talk on...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Notes from the Chrome Team’s “Blink principles of web compatibility”
Following up on a previous article I wrote about backwards compatibility, I came across this document from Rick Byers of the Chrome team titled “Blink...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Language Needs Innovation
In his book “The Order of Time” Carlo Rovelli notes how we often asks ourselves questions about the fundamental nature of reality such as “What is real?” and...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — The Tumultuous Evolution of the Design Profession
Via Jeremy Keith’s link blog I found this article: Elizabeth Goodspeed on why graphic designers can’t stop joking about hating their jobs. It’s about the...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Backwards Compatibility in the Web, but Not Its Tools
After reading an article, I ended up on HackerNews and stumbled on this comment: The most frustrating thing about dipping in to the FE is that it seems like...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Craft and Satisfaction
Here’s Sean Voisen writing about how programming is a feeling: For those of us who enjoy programming, there is a deep satisfaction that comes from solving...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Brian Regan Helped Me Understand My Aversion to Job Titles
I like the job title “Design Engineer”. When required to label myself, I feel partial to that term (I should, I’ve written about it enough). Lately I’ve felt...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — “I Don’t See Why Not”
Excuse my rant. Nobel-prize winning CEO of DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, was on 60 Minutes and floored me when he predicted: We can cure all diseases with the...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — You’re Only As Strong As Your Weakest Point
In April 1945, as US soldiers overtook Merkers, Germany, stories began to surface to Army officials of stolen Nazi riches stored in the local salt mine....
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Be Mindful of What You Make Easy
Carson Gross has a post about vendoring which brought back memories of how I used to build websites in ye olden days, back in the dark times before npm....
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Some Love For Interoperable Apps
I like to try different apps. What makes trying different apps incredible is a layer of interoperability — standardized protocols, data formats, etc. When I...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Ductility on the Web
I learned a new word: ductile. Do you know it? I’m particularly interested in its usage in a physics/engineering setting when talking about materials. Here’s...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Background Image Opacity in CSS
The other day I was working on something where I needed to use CSS to apply multiple background images to an element, e.g. <div> My content with background...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Tag, You’re It
I saw these going around, but didn’t think I’d ever see myself get tagged — then Eric assuaged my FOMO. As I’ve done elsewhere talking about how I blog, I’m...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Flow State and Surfing
Jack Johnson is on Rick Rubin’s podcast Tetragrammaton talking about music, film making, creativity, and surfing. At one point (~24:30) Johnson talks about...
blog.jim-nielsen.com — Don’t Forget the Meta Theme-Color Tag
Ever used a website where you toggle from light mode to dark mode and the web site changes but the chrome around the browser doesn’t? To illustrate, take a...