Re: flat web design.

Buttons that don’t look like buttons.

I blew someone’s mind today. She’s about my age, competent at her job, but not much into technology.

She complained that she always needs to scroll past the weeks in her web-based calendar.

I pressed the current date shown in the top-left corner above her appointments, which pulled up a big date overview by month.

She was so excited, asked me how I did that.

Mind you, the date was shown as simple black letters on a white background, with only a black, downwards-pointing chevron a bit to the right. It hardly suggested interactivity, especially to those not knowledgeable about web design.

I often think that flat design was a mistake, and today’s situation was a good example of bad user experience (UX) stemming from non-intuitive controls.

#UX #WebDesign #WebDev #accessibility

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I think we're using formal in different ways and maybe talking past each other? You can formally assess the likelihood of an event in a number of ways, or estimate values using formal methods and that's incredibly useful and may produce informally true results (believed likely with reason) but has very little to do with formal logic: I have a set of axioms and a chain of implications 'we can't prove if this is true or false' is a valid and frequent answer.

It saddens me deeply that as someone who would have said Evangelical was the closest shorthand to my own theology ten years ago that I disagree with none of Ian Dunt's summary about the politics and recent history of the Evangelical movement in the last couple of decades. I'll be curious to read the full article.

https://bsky.app/profile/iandunt.bsky.social/post/3mnes43zatc2a

@[email protected] I'd be pretty much the first in line to agree that truth, honesty, and correctness are not simple at all. And that, in fact, trying to simplify or even overly codify them in real life situations is an enormous source of great harm - much as my programmer's soul would prefer life to be that straight forward.

@[email protected] Probably not important. After all, it will only be an unending dissatisfaction that will itch at the back of your brain every time you see the images or think of them from here to eternity.

@[email protected] @[email protected] Because, of course, the addiction should come before the security and compliance.

Priorities, people. Priorities.

@[email protected] Ha! No, you're not completely off and it's a fair implication that I was being somewhat informal in my use of 'formal'. Yes, I had taken as one of my axioms was that the statement "Tom is at the party" would be true if and only if Tom is actually at the party. If I choose to define the semantics of 'true' to include whether Maria honestly (and with some arbitrary level of evidence) believed the statement at the time, then we get (I think) to @[email protected] 's position which I find completely reasonable especially in everyday conversation.

Personally I struggle more with @[email protected] 's assertion that 'formal' truth is based on information available. You could define truth as depending only on the information you have available, but if you apply that formally you get into a weird situation where you confidently state things as true (or false) when you know you have a high probability of not being correct - which could be logically consistent, but in the broader context could also frequently be called dishonest!

i want smaller applications with fewer updates made by people who are paid more to produce less code and i'm not kidding

Then I think British Airways did it as well? The late 90s had some weird choices in advertising.

cosocial.ca/users/mhoye/stat...

I'm not sure why, but @[email protected] 's post above has reminded me of the time a large car company tried to sell the luxury of their cars using Bjork's "Play Dead" as an ad soundtrack. A beautiful song... about depression and a serious mental health crisis. It was even fairly well known at the time.

@[email protected] apart from some of the things you've already listed, exceedingly long not too deep web novels from places like Royal Road work well when I have no focus at all but need a distraction to rest. The top rated complete works page is a good starting point if that appeals

@[email protected]

@[email protected] Epic, Faith No More (youtu.be/WkqPVMKsN20 )

I would like to know about your music. Please tell me: what was the last track that came up for you on shuffle that reminded you, I haven't heard this in a long time, but this song is great?

(Boosts welcome, let's share some great music.)

@[email protected] @[email protected] I wish that 'or' was an 'xor', but unfortunately our timeline won't even give us that much.

I was reminded of the existence of Welsh rarebit yesterday ("Welsh rabbit"), a food that is not Welsh and has no rabbit in it.

It is quite tasty though. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_...

(cc @[email protected] on his entertainingly named food hunt)

A young mathematician named Micah Zarin interviewed me. It was fun, but I forgot to say some obvious yet important things about AI. So read this first:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2026/06/02/interview-with-micah-zarin/

@[email protected] @[email protected] oh, yes! Especially because 'pull me up' can have the same figurative meaning as a 'pick me up' in English, and it's made mostly of coffee, sugar, and liquore...

I needed to write recently about how VisualInk is different from other #visualnovel software in being designed primarily for teaching, and I think this paragraph captures most of it.

Many of these tools also suffer from being too powerful! For example, Ren'py gives you the full power of Python and the ability to completely customize the look and feel of your game, while Atrament allows you to design your own style sheets and custom JavaScript extensions to develop on line interactive fiction. The flexibility these systems give is actively confusing to the youngest learners or total beginners, and gets in the way of being able to use the tools to focus on specific topics when teaching. VisualInk takes the approach of using a narrative scripting language that allows flexibility in story telling mechanics - without forcing complexity - but deliberately limits all but the simplest configuration. A simple 'tagging' system shows characters, changes locations, and adds audio, and VisualInk ensures that the resulting visual novels display correctly across different browsers and devices.

@[email protected] I only just thought about it, but I've also just realized that vermicelli (the type of pasta) is a derivative of vermi (worms).

This is actually a really good write up of #ChronicFatigue / #LongCovid in general even if it is framed from the point of view of joint pain.

mastodon.social/ap/users/116...