Adobe cancels Fireworks➝
Over the last couple of years, there has been an increasing amount of overlap in the functionality between Fireworks and both existing and new programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Edge Reflow. At the same time we have shifted to focus our engineering teams on building smaller, more modular, tools and services for specific tasks in web design. Due to this overlap and as well as our change in our product development focus, we have decided not to update Fireworks to CC and instead will focus on developing new tools to meet our customers needs.
Thanks to all of you who tried to persuade me to switch from Photoshop to Fireworks in the last couple of years. Have fun switching to PS or Sketch.
Simplify➝
Paul Stamatiou:
I used to be a slave to my startups. If I wasn’t working, I had a perpetual feeling of guilt that I should be working. That lead to many all-nighters and eventually landed me in the hospital last year after fainting twice from fever and dehydration. That reads more like an accolade to the workaholic culture of Silicon Valley, which joyously consumes posts like how Marissa Mayer worked 130 hours per week. It was most definitely no accolade for me. My last five years have been stressful as fuck.
What a great post.
How To Prototype In Xcode Using Storyboard➝
The purpose of prototyping in Xcode is to be able to create a super high fidelity flow using the exact same software that builds iOS Apps. In Xcode, there is no limit. You can embed beautiful interactions, transitions, animations and sounds to produce a true native experience. In this tutorial, I will focus on the Storyboard feature, a powerful tool in Xcode that allows you to build an App without a single line of code. You will be able to create a functional prototype in a matter of hours.
What sounds like a crazy idea is actually quite brilliant. Doesn’t hurt you to get to know Xcode a bit better than “The thing the developer spends all day in”.
Back online after a year without the internet➝
My last afternoon in Colorado I sat down with my 5-year-old niece, Keziah, and tried to explain to her what the internet is. She’d never heard of “the internet,” but she’s huge on Skype with the grandparent set. I asked her if she’d wondered why I never Skyped with her this year. She had.
“I thought it was because you didn’t want to,” she said.
With tears in my eyes, I drew her a picture of what the internet is. It was computers and phones and televisions, with little lines connecting them. Those lines are the internet. I showed her my computer, drew a line to it, and erased that line.
“I spent a year without using any internet,” I told her. “But now I’m coming back and I can Skype with you again.”
When I return to the internet, I might not use it well. I might waste time, or get distracted, or click on all the wrong links. I won’t have as much time to read or introspect or write the great American sci-fi novel.
But at least I’ll be connected.
Paul Miller is back online.
I once have been like you, I listened to middle aged men who talked about Apple products, when they might come out, what they will be able to do and several other topics that suddendly bore me out of my mind (is that a phrase? Now it is.)
However. One beautiful day I had enough of Benjamin, Gruber and Apple and found Radiolab. It’s a podcast about science which – quite frankly – doesn’t sound as awesome as it is.
Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich are a amazingly great duo and it’s so much fun to listen to them talk about topics like Color, Parasites, Lost & Found, Good, Bad and many more. I could go on and on about how this show improved my life over the last past weeks but let’s make this easier for you and me: Just go and listen to it. I listened to every show since 2008 and not one of them was uninteresting or bad.
Don’t Launch Your Product➝
Our plan was simple. Launch the app and generate enough buzz for 25-50,000 downloads, or what we guessed was enough to propel us into the top apps in the Social Networking category in the App Store. Once we got there, we would start generating “organic” downloads from people checking out the top free social apps. A month later we’d roll out an Android app and web and we would be proclaimed king of the messaging space. Mark Zuckerberg would invite us to Fuki Sushi for vegetable tempura rolls, and we would laugh about how we crushed all of our competitors as he handed us a billion-dollar check addressed to Everyme, Inc.
Shortly after this picture Ivy gave my delicious ice cream (the one on the left, Ivy’s right) back to me and I dropped most of it on the floor. Poor me.
Even if you think that you’re working perfectly fine and your handling of Photoshop and Illustrator is state of the art: Take a look at this amazingly comprehensive .pdf that covers every topic that’s important regarding “hygiene” in Photoshop and Illustrator. I’m sure there is something in it for everyone.
Designing in the open➝
When we get more confident a new phase opens up. We believe more in our process and we know that things are never perfect. So we start showing work earlier and start talking about our rationale at a given step. We’re excited for feedback on a clumsy design because we know feedback will steer us to a better one. We might even be unafraid to open our tools and do some real work in real time in front of people. This is designing in the open.
This is such an important phase. The best work I’ve done so far has been with people like Martin standing besides me. Talking about what you’re doing is such a relief. Suddenly a lot of things are so much clearer then before and the small problem that you would have thought about for hours is gone.
You don’t need to be afraid to show unfinished works to people. As long as they are at least a bit open minded, they will get what you’re going for and will provide you with valuable feedback. Go out there and look for your own Martin. (
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What UI really is (and how UX confuses matters)➝
People mix the terms UI and UX together. UX is tricky because it doesn’t refer to any one thing. Interface design, visual styling, code performance, uptime, and feature set all contribute to the user’s “experience.” Books on UX further complicate matters by including research methods and development methodologies. All of this makes the field confusing for people who want to understand the fundamentals.