Joe Dombrowski
On The Verge since Nov 01, 2011
- 22 posts
- 1967 comments
Joe Dombrowski
On The Verge since Nov 01, 2011
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It was originally developed for Microsoft Bob as a comic book speech bubble style text, as more standard fonts didn’t look right.
From the designer
I designed Comic Sans while I was working at Microsoft. I had been given a beta version of Microsoft Bob, a comic software package designed primarily for young users. The package featured a dog called Rover, with message balloons set in Times New Roman — a system font oddly unsuited to the comic context. My inspiration for Comic Sans came from the shock of seeing Times New Roman used so inappropriately.
For informal, illustrative styles like comics, it’s very well suited. The hatred comes from its misuse in more formal settings, like basically anything else.
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I used to be all about the sans…until I realized what serifs were for. Serifs offer hints that we subconsciously use to fill in the blanks in printed text, allowing people to read more accurately and faster. Obviously, this isn’t applicable to the logo (I like it, for what it’s worth), but I wouldn’t say sans serif is better than serif as a blanket statement.
Every font and every font style has a place. Even Comic Sans.
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Recommended Google has a new logoRec
Recommended Google has a new logoComment
My point (and I would believe the OP’s as well) isn’t that it has to be one way or another. The main things that make TotalCommander look cluttered to me are the old style gradients and icons, and the fact that the developer has never heard of padding. Having every UI element running into another in the name of information density makes for a much less usable experience.
I could easily take any screen in TotalCommander (as long as I know what each thing is supposed to be in the first place) and make a much cleaner, nicer interface that does the exact same thing. In fact, replace "TotalCommander" with [MyCompanyProduct] and you literally have my day job.
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There are several websites that you can use to easily convert png files to ico.
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Recommended Share Your Windows 10 DesktopComment
Thank you! That ad was in incredibly poor taste, and I was surprised to see something like it on this site.
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To everyone suggesting Total Commander, a wonderfully functional file explorer replacement, the OP’s main complaint was "Dear God is it ugly & cluttered", and Total Commander makes Explorer look like a minimalist work of art.
Unfortunately, there are way too few developers in Windows-land that understand that while functionality is important, form and user experience is equally as important.
3 replies 1 recommendComment
I can’t even use MacOS without installing TotalFinder, and it still doesn’t fix the most horrendous bit: Why would any reasonable person make "enter" rename a file instead of opening it!?
Really, though. Finder is bad. Really bad.
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Hope the printing bug (in Word) is fixed… Wasted several expensive certificates on it.
In landscape, it doesn’t actually print like the preview shows. Things are shifted, causing lines to move pages.
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The lugless design looked fine on people with larger wrists, but it looks downright silly on small wrists, since the band pulls away from the watch too quickly (basically disappears). It is also the cause of so many watch backs cracking (happened twice to me, and I gave up getting it replaced)
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Just wait…
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The best phone is one that isn’t big enough to serve sushi on.
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Agreed. It’s a pain to look up the components individually and go this route, but if Dell is not going to support your computer, it’s your only option.
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There are definitely bugs still there. And plenty of them. However, I haven’t run across any show-stoppers since upgrading, so I say go for it!
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Recommended Assault on AmazonComment
So many people still complaining about the "flat tire". I’ve had my watch for a year now, and I don’t even notice it anymore. My problems with it have been:
- The way the band hooks on causes the plastic back to crack on small wrists. It also looks a bit odd, since the band immediately moves away from the watch, making it look even thicker.
- The low resolution screen makes a lot of watch faces just look bad!
I’m not sure if we’ve seen leaks on the screen res, but the new lugs look like they completely solve the first problem. If they make it thinner, and with a better screen (and processor), I may be selling my gen 1.
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It’s a little problematic putting screen sizes, since there’s sometimes a big disparity between screen and phone size. For example, my HTC One M7 and Galaxy S6 Edge are pretty much the same size physically, but the screens are almost half an inch apart. For what it’s worth, the size of those phones has been perfect for me.
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For what it’s worth, I started learning WPF this weekend (I’m a .NET developer, but my work is still using WinForms, and I know that would be really slow as an explorer), so I may actually do this.
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Start Menu? Or just hold Shift while clicking on the taskbar. It opens a new instance if the app supports it (which nearly all apps do.)
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Well, separate tablet versions are a totally different story, but they’re also not really a thing anymore, since one APK can have multiple layouts now.
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Recommended Start Button on Windows "MOBILE" ?Comment
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing one in my spare time, but there’s just not a lot of that to go around. I agree, though, Explorer has gotten really bad, and I’d love to see a decent alternative emerge.
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If by "a few devices" you mean almost every mid and high end device from the last 2-3 years, then yes, it’s a hardware thing. But I’m talking about how on a phone that allows "Okay Google" from anywhere, Microsoft is unable to implement the same functionality because Google doesn’t allow outside apps to constantly listen.
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I looked for it, too… Not there.
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If you read the article, you would have seen that Cortina can’t have always listening "Hey, Cortana" like Google’s "Okay Google". That seems a lot like an OS integration thing.
4 replies 13 recommendsRec
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