The Buzz Media » design

The Growing Divide in Ubuntu – Apple’s Methods meets Linux Community

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:18:26 +0000

This article is my opinion. Mark Shuttleworth is dragging Ubuntu (and by extension) Linux, kicking and screaming into the “design-first” world of computing lead by Apple. This progress requires that he, to some extent, ignore an entire community that has never prided itself on or been particularly good at design aesthetics. Ignoring such a community has… it’s [...]

Nexus One Poor 3G Signal Most Likely a Design Issue

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:21:05 +0000

We’ve been covering the Nexus One 3G connectivity problems for a while now. 2 weeks ago Google declared they got to the bottom of the problem, issuing an OTA update for the device to improve what we assumed would be connectivity behavior while in a 3G-covered area, but made it clear that this wouldn’t improve [...]

Screenshot Tour of Windows 7: Libraries, Taskbar, IE8 and the New Paint Application!

Riyad Kalla — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 19:23:50 +0000

Introduction When the public beta of Windows 7 was announced, we did like everyone else and ran over to the Windows 7 site to download it (ISO Download Links: 32-bit, 64-bit). After getting it installed and spending some time with it, our overall take away so far are the following things: Windows 7 is a [...]

All right, put down your Crackberry…

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:34:21 +0000

You have GOT to see the new phone they’re cooking up. It’s the most innovative, amazing, awe-inspiring, god-like thing to descend to the earth since…like…good ol’ homecookin. It does everything. Rumor has it that it will even shit for you. I have to get one. Go check it out and take the whole tour, it’s [...]

UI Design Can Be Funny Sometimes… Again

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:45:32 +0000

Right after we got done laughing about Mixx’s somewhat mixed message on it’s “do more!” submission confirmation page, we tried out Google’s Friend Connect (integrated on the right hand side of the site if you are interested) and saw an even more interesting placement of conflicting functions: Pretty great if you ask us… immediately after [...]

Object Oriented-Style CSS Inheritance Tip

Riyad Kalla — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:20:29 +0000

I was trying to figure out recently how to apply multiple CSS styles to a single element. What I wanted to be able to do was define a single base style for a particular element, let’s say the P tag, and then define a multitude of differing additional styles for that same tag, like a [...]

UI Design Can Be Funny Sometimes

Riyad Kalla — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:01:41 +0000

The other day I was posting something to Mixx (it’s a social news site, like Digg) and noticed on the submission confirmation page there was something interesting about the flow of additional “promotion” work I could do for my story: It’s minor and I think overall (even this screen) that Mixx has an excellent UI [...]

Heavy Rain – 2000 Page Script, 70 Actors and 170 Days of Mo-Cap

Riyad Kalla — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:04:48 +0000

Game Daily posted interview bits with David Cage (President, CEO, Writer and Directory of Quantic Dream and Heavy Rain respectively — and the #1 entry on my personal “People I Admire the Shit Out Of” list). The interview gives us some insight into the scripting and story development aspects of Heavy Rain, which is just [...]

Microsoft Will Never Understand Usability – Vista Device Driver Security Example

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 17:42:58 +0000

We took our first look at Microsoft’s inbility to create something genuinely useful and a minature review of Vista when we evaluated Windows Vista Backup at the beginning of the year. The premise of that article being that by evaluating a single program, and all the usability/functionality flaws it had, you got an impression of [...]

CSS Slicing Guide and XHTML/CSS Page Design Guide

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:07:38 +0000

When I first got into web development, the new layout craze for websites was “table layouts”. The idea that you could slide and organize everything in a grid (using <table> tags) was a godsend for designers. All you had to do was learn how to “slice” your Photoshop mockup into the appropriate squares and they [...]

IMDB Epic Site Redesign Leaves Something to be Desired

Riyad Kalla — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:56:44 +0000

I’m all for huge corporate visual overhauls. Now adays they take months to roll out and usually stay in service for a decade, but what happens when one company’s site redesign is so epic that it can’t even be measured? That’s what happened with IMDB. If you visit IMDB you’ll see the same old site [...]

Mega Man 9 to Feature Optional Glitches

Riyad Kalla — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:41:51 +0000

Confused? So are we. In an interview with Gamasutra, Mega Man 9 producer, Hironobu Takeshita reveals that Mega Man 9 will feature classic glitches from previous 8-bit installments. One of the more common glitches were sprites would start to flicker if you had more then three enemy’s on screen at a time. Takeshita went on [...]

What the Internet Would Look Like if it was Designed by Girls

Riyad Kalla — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:22:59 +0000

Great story over on College Humor about what the internet would look like if it were designed by girls.

Rock Band 2 Guitar Pictures

Riyad Kalla — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:17:41 +0000

We’ve been covering the up-coming war between Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2 as the details unfold… this is mostly because I finally played one of these games and see why people like them so much; they are pretty fun. Since Guitar Hero: World Tour got the announcement-drop on Rock Band 2, Rock [...]

New Site Redesign Launched!

Riyad Kalla — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:56:37 +0000

Well it’s been years but we finally made the move to a new site design, we hope you like it. Here’s a quick breakdown of the goodies available now with the new layout: Besides the improved look we also rolled out optimizations across the site design itself so it should load much faster for most [...]

Alone in the Dark: Cutting Edge Design

Riyad Kalla — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:00:11 +0000

And now, I’m not just referring to the insanely realistic physics/material engine in the game that has been demoed before, I’m referring to the use of ‘DVD chapters’ to allow shuffling through the game. Let me explain… Every game, ever, has had the design that you only progress by completing the levels in-order. Old-school games [...]

GIMP 2.4 Released

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 15:00:43 +0000

Chris Hunkele sent this in yesterday, it looks like everyone’s favorite Photoshop clone, GIMP, finally released it’s 2.4 version after years of development from the 2.2 stream. This is a pretty huge release as the team has been working on some major rewritten aspects to GIMP for a long time, and now they have finally [...]

What if Google, Designed for Google?

Riyad Kalla — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:39:59 +0000

Todd Swarthout sends in a great link, what if Google had to design it’s own page to be optimized for Google? It would look like this…

GIMP 2 for Photographers

Riyad Kalla — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:39:24 +0000

First off, if you are a professional photographer you probably have a Mac and probably have Photoshop on it. But if you aren’t a professional, are just getting started or don’t want to pay Adobe more than your camera is worth for photo-editing software… this might be for you. GIMP is the “Gnu Image Manipulation [...]

Making Sexy CSS Buttons

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 07 May 2007 20:19:36 +0000

This is a cool tip on how to make sexy CSS buttons. Just a quick heads up, the buttons are images, but the way they are sliced up is smart. It’s one super long image that is culled to the right length, then the right-hand end is popped onto the right edge like the top [...]