24 karma · joined April 10, 2012
Gruber brought up a very good point about the somewhat less than perfect screen size which shows a UI weakness of iOS: the back button—one of the most used UI elements—is always at the top left. Try it yourself, go to versus io to see the iPhone 5 in its orignal size, calibrate your screen (click at the top-right corner on versus io) and place your hand next to the iPhone and see if your thumb would be able to reach the top-left corner: http://versusio.com/en/apple-iphone-5-64gb-vs-samsung-galaxy... In contrast, Android has hardware back keys always at the bottom, so even 4,8" phones could be used for a short while with one hand (just try the same experiment with the S3). Moreover, there's a huge target not bothering about bigger phones because they have space in their bag and don't put them into their pockets (women). So, I agree with Gruber to start offering two size: 3.5 and something about 4.5 or even larger (and changing the back button UI in the long run).
Compared to the iPad 3: http://versusio.com/en/apple-ipad-mini-64gb-wifi-cellular-vs...
Compared to the Nexus 7: http://versusio.com/en/apple-ipad-mini-64gb-wifi-cellular-vs...
To see the 7.85" in real size click in the top right corner.
Compared to an iPhone 4s: http://versusio.com/en/google-nexus-7-vs-apple-iphone-4s-64g...
Compared to an iPad 3: http://versusio.com/en/google-nexus-7-vs-apple-ipad-3-64gb-w...
(You have to click in the top-right corner to calibrate your screen)
Apple plays safe. Looks kind of real considering the hints leaked the last days (4" screen, front cover)
This tool is a must for every site owner and highly addictive.
In the earlier days without powerful frameworks I was really developing: figuring out which pattern/algorithm did the best job. Nowadays when working with frameworks I feel dumber and dumber—before thinking myself I just google API calls and put them together. I am not trying anymore because I don't know where to start and everything is already solved on Github. This magic feels sometimes so meta and boring because I am more into consuming specs, tutorials, screencasts just gluing things together instead of real programming.
Just diving into JS and Node.JS to get this "go-kart" feeling back. But I guess the more magic involved the faster the development and Meteor admittedly looks revolutionary.
He (playing with his iPad 3): PHP
Me: I thought PHP devs died out for years??
He (angry): PHP is still the most used language for the web and it's fast.
Me: Do you guys still mix front-end and back-end code?
He (still angry): Of course not.
Back home I started googling "PHP" and "PHP frameworks" for the first time since 2003 again. I was surprised: there are many Rails-inspired frameworks like Yii, Zend, Codigniter, etc. And I tried to be objective giving PHP another chance (I haven't an actual use for PHP but I was just bored and wanted to be prepared for better counterattacks next time).
My impressions:
- There seem to be too many frameworks or call them ecosystems, so I couldn't figure out which is the dominating one (Zend?). And I am not sure if they are really interoperable
- Not relevant but awkward: most frameworks websites (except Yii) and in particular the PHP site look like 2003. What disturbed most was the often used claim "no console needed".
- On Freelancer.com, Monster or any other job-related site the quantity of postings for PHP devs were massive—any other web-related fraemwork/language else like Ruby, Python, Django was a small fraction oft that.
After looking at some "modern" PHP code (which strictly follow the MVC patterns now) I still couldn't get warm with PHP. I assume that most PHP devs are long-time PHP devs and I don't understand how PHP can attract people compared to newer concepts.