Ryan Singer of 37signals on Comic Sans:

There must be some value in Comic Sans if millions of non-designers choose to use it on their signs and memos. Designers should be curious about this instead of feeling superior about it.

Yishan Wong on OpenID:

The fact that anyone even expects that OpenID could possibly see any amount of adoption is mind-boggling to me.  Proponents are literally expecting people to sign up for yet another third-party service, in some cases log in by typing in a URL, and at best flip away to another branded service’s page to log in and, in many cases, answer an obscurely-worded prompt about allowing third-party credentials, all in order to log in to a site.

One option is to feel superior about your knowledge of security protocols, encrypted traffic, ligatures, slab serifs and line heights. Another option is to see what task the end user is trying to accomplish and make sure he gets there as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Another year is gone, and it’s time to review what has happened on this blog over the last twelve months. I’ll start the top ten most read posts, and then list my own favorites.

Let’s start with the top ten most read posts published in 2010 as measured by Google Analytics:

1. Meet the Green Goblin, part 1 started the four-part series on the visual redesign of Android Market client. Published in December, has around 8,200 reads.
2. JavaFX is a train wreck talked about the failure to attract visual designers to JavaFX. Published in July, has around 5,800 reads.
3. Live wallpapers with Android SDK 2.1 provided a step-by-step tutorial to create a live wallpaper for Android. Published in February, has around 5,700 reads.
4. Meet the Green Goblin, part 1 delved into the pixel-level details of custom canvas drawing in Android. Published in December, has around 4,100 reads.
5. Monkey see, monkey do, monkey remember talked about question the status-quo. Published in August, has around 3,900 reads.
6. Meet the Green Goblin, part 2 talked about designing for landscape orientation in Android. Published in December, has around 3,100 reads.
7. Meet the Green Goblin, part 4 covered improving the UX and visual aesthetics. Published in December, has around 2,400 reads.
8. Animations 202 – scrolling delved into the fine mechanics of realistic scrolling. Published in January, has around 1,300 reads.
9. Animations – the big picture reasoned about why physics-based animations can make your applications more user-friendly. Published in January, has around 1,300 reads.
10. Swing Puzzler #1 was the first and only installment on Swing code that doesn’t do what you would expect it to. Published in February, has around 1,200 reads.

While these have been the readers’ favorites, a few entries that didn’t enjoy a wider readership are worth highlighting. These are my personal favorites that were published in 2010:

1. Shifting gears: from desktop to mobile talked about the differences between desktop and mobile UI development, and the major role of the form factor.
2. Your application will be with you momentarily highlighted the importance of a responsive user interface.
3. Naming colors was a small peek into the fuzzy world of color names.
4. The colors of “Tron: Legacy” analyzed the color palette of the movie and how it supported the story.
5. Finally, this year has seen the birth of two new series. Design, uninterrupted started in March, aiming to analyze the best examples of modern web design. Retro:Active started in October showcasing the fusion of modern and vintage in visual and industrial design, photography, typography, illustration, animation and other related areas.

If you still have not subscribed, click on the icon below to stay tuned in 2011!

Over the past 6 years I’ve hosted a number of my open-source projects on Java.net. Over the last two-three years the site admins kept talking about moving the hosting forward, enhancing both the visual and the backend functionality of the site. I have no insight into the complexity of the existing infrastructure and the amount of resources available. It thus thus be foolish – and pointless – to speculate on the reasons for the glacial pace at which things are happening.

After a lot of promises, early November brought the rather hostile announcement (emphasis mine):

This is an opt-in migration – we have thousands of junk, test, and abandoned projects on the site and we intend to leave them behind.  Any project owner can request that we move their projects, and any community leader can request that we move specific projects in the community.  Any project that is not specifically requested by name via the opt-in form by November 30, 2010 will be purged when the CollabNet site goes dark.  We will be keeping tarballs of the CollabNet contents and will be able to distribute them after the site goes dark, however projects that request migration are our top priority.

Aptly named “Move it or loose it“, this is quite a threatening statement that makes not one, not two, but three direct references to the projects that will not opt-in to the migration. Even though i’ve put the development and maintenance of my projects on hold, i still want to have the sources, binaries, documentation and the source history available for interested developers. And so i promptly added all my projects to the opt-in form.

Fast forward three weeks after the deadline date. A couple of days ago a comment was left on my blog (thanks Eugene) – Substance look-and-feel is nowhere to be found. It’s no longer at substance.dev.java.net and certainly not on the new java.net/projects. Let’s look at my new profile page that lists some of the projects that i asked to migrate. Looks like java.net/projects/substance is the winner, except that it leads to an error page. Most of the project links on my profile page lead to errors, and some lead to the subset of the original content. Every page takes minutes to load, and i have no idea if the old forum postings and binaries will ever make it through. Top priority indeed.

So here’s the deal. Over the next few days i will upload all the sources, documentation and additional materials to my GitHub page. However, it will be up to you to build the binaries, run sample applications and browse the downloaded documentation. I simply don’t have time to untangle this horrible migration mess that was unilaterally forced on me and my users.

And yes, i know that Java.net was a free service, and that the same exact thing may happen to GitHub in five years. I’m not that naive.

When the alarm clock goes off at seven, i wake up and wearily find my way to the kids room. Exhausted from the late Sunday evening, they hardly wake up when i pick them up and put them in our bed. Weaving in and out of their dreams, instinctively clutching their worn out plush toys, they lay next to me, one on each side. Turning every now and then, catching the last few quiet minutes, still caught in the pretend world of their fairylands. Their little hands rest in mine, warm and defenseless. Half smiling at whatever figments are passing before their eyes, unaware of the sublime beauty of the moment. No fighting over the same toys, no precarious jumping on the sofas, no danger of splashing watercolors on the carpet.

With every minute that passes i know that we’re going to be late to daycare and i’ll get stuck in traffic on the way to work. Somehow it all does not matter. In a few years these moments will be no more. It all seems so far away now, but it is inevitable. And so i lay there, listening to the soft breathing of two small pieces of me, one on each side. It costs nothing and is worth everything.

These are my Monday mornings.