Links (12,294 links)

Divesting from something has obvious symbolic value. But many protesters hope to have a real-world impact, too. Divestment campaigns may exert influence by starving their targets of capital. Scare enough investors from an industry or country and, so the argument goes, companies will find it harder to raise or borrow money, which will force them to change their behaviour [...] How likely is this to work?

Instead of making elements visually distinct to be noticed, designers should focus on integrating important elements seamlessly into the user interface. This ensures that crucial actions and information are perceived as part of the overall user experience, rather than distractions to be dismissed.

Hay was chosen as a soft target, in a campaign primarily relying on peer pressure and public moral intimidation, because the activists knew the festival management would have to give in, and so this was a campaign that could be won. But who really wins here? Not a dime has been divested from fossil fuels. Not a gram of CO2 has been reduced.

Let’s talk about dark mode and accessibility! There’s a myth that dark mode is good for accessibility, because it improves text readability (among other things). As always, when it comes to accessibility, it’s not black or white (haha, color pun intended). We can’t really generalize, so, the answer is often, “it depends”, dark mode can make it better for some users, but not all of them.

Small agencies with weak positioning tend to find new business tough.

I got into Pixies at the beginning of 1993, just before they broke up. Perfect timing, as ever. They were my first introduction to 4AD and set the tone for me. I was completely into the early/mid 90's era 4AD but 80's era 4AD - Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil - were completely uninteresting to the 16 year old version of me.

But now I'm older, I have a good-enough Celestial Jukebox and no desire to pogo I have the perfect set of circumstances to dig into early dreampop.

The most common first-time experience I come across is a developer coming from a classical component framework like React with JSX going straight to writing vanilla Web Components, becoming frustrated, and then deeming web components “not ready for primetime.”

Doesn't sound like it.

Amazing, creepy and disappointing all at the same time. Also, best comment:

This has the same vibe as two toddler's playing house and pretending that they're doing actual work

Zero-Click content is content that offers valuable, standalone insights (or simply engaging material), with no need to click. Clicking might be additive, but it’s not required [...] but how can we get value if we can’t get trackable visits? Just like our marketing forebears did: through hard-to-measure brand lift.

Users are more tolerant of minor usability issues when they find an interface visually appealing. This aesthetic-usability effect can mask UI problems during usability testing. Identify instances of the aesthetic-usability effect in your user research by watching what your users do, as well as listening to what they say.

For the sugggested re-reading order:

* Thousand Autumns * Cloud Atlas * Utopia Avenue * Black Swan Green * Ghostwritten * Number9Dream * The Bone Clocks * Slade House

This popped up in my radio for the first time in many years. From Raw Digits, by Jamie Lidell and Cristian Vogel's off-kilter, millennial glitch-funk Super_Collider project.

This song got stuck in my head after a rapid unscheduled disassembly of Aeropress all over the kitchen floor and my arm.

One web page for every book ever published. It's a lofty but achievable goal.

Find people to talk to or collaborate with by searching across the /about, /ideas and /now pages of 1000s of personal websites.

Guess you had to be there.

Companies everywhere are investing heavily in paid social, websites and CRM programmes but agencies are increasingly using similar techniques, emulating each other’s functionality and using the same tonality. Done in the name of optimisation and best practice, it might deliver in the short term, but long term, brands are shedding their personality.

An open source collection of Design Principles and methods.

Takes a couple of minutes.

From the same era as Milky Disco and slots in well with that.

...use Preview.

A linter with superpowers! 🔥 Use LLMs to enforce best practices across your codebase.

An open-source colour picker app for macOS

The main monorepo for Power Stack

Via jamesholloway.

Getting brand consistency right is tough, as it's not just about your marketing channels. It covers everything across your company – from your business purpose and mission to your culture, values and products. There’s also a slew of external factors like customer comments and ratings on Google, Trustpilot etc. Even opinion leaders, influencers, and journalists have a say, especially if you encounter bad PR for any reason.

Good tip on “free” wireframe brand.

Theme using fallback vars.

New Identity for Ayushman Bharat Wellness Centers by Lopez Design

Wow.

Highcharts JS, the JavaScript charting framework

Interactive Tables and Data Grids for JavaScript

Somehow we forgot how to center rectangles and must find our way back

The fact that, in the span of less than year, Facebook effectively removed anything resembling news from the platform, even conservative news, and allowed AI-generated spam to take its place, and both investors and advertisers don’t care, should tell you all you need to know about what social networks are in 2024. They’re a data holding pen for advertisers to harvest and it seems like Meta has finally given up pretending they’re anything else.

Good for route-finding, particularly directs.

Database of AIs

So as you can see, building context menus is quite a bit more complicated than it looks from the outside!

Another good "UI is more complex than pictures" example.