Design guru, Neven Mrgan, of Panic Studios and several apps (Blackbar, The Incident, Space Age, Glyphboard, Salt & Fat) with an introspective look at Skeuomorphism.
Spring has come early in the Northwest, and so has a flood of annoying recruiters. Recruiters aren’t the best for anyone looking for a career, so I’ve taken the liberty of breaking down the phrases I’ve found in some of the job postings. Without further ado, I present a front end developer’s guide to reading job postings!
“Work hard, play hard"
Translation: Workaholic culture is the norm, we’re chained to our desks and when/if set free, we drink ourselves silly to forget the fact we’re over-worked and underpaid.
"Work life integration"
Translation: We have no respect for work/life separation. Expect to work 65 hours a week and a divorce/break up or to remain single. You’re better off serving Lattes for a living.
"Rockstar”
Translation: We have unreasonable expectations in your abilities.
“True Startup”
Translation: Expect mismanagement.
“Excellent benefits”
Translation: Average benefits.
“Highly competitive benefits package”
Translation: Has 401k.
“highly skilled” / “problem solver”
Translation: Personal capable of working unsupervised.
“strong experience”
Translation: Actually did this at your last job.
“motivated”
Translation: Shows up on time to work/meetings.
“Full Stack”
Translation: Unrealistic qualifications at not enough salary.
“kick-ass team”
Translation: Our team, but we think it sounds cooler.
“reinventing”
Translation: Incrementally improving.
“Lean”
Translation: Understaffed.
“gig”
Translation: Job, but we think it sounds cooler.
“fast-paced”
Translation: Dead line oriented.
“world-class”
Translation: Unlikely.
“Quickly build prototypes”
Translation: Use CSS frameworks.
“Work directly”
Translation: Open office floor plan.
“mobile optimization”
Translation: Probably isn’t using resolution independent images yet but would like to.
“UX design principles”
Translation: Not really a UX job.
“highly interactive”
Translation: We miss Flash.
“client-facing”
Translation: Expect phone support with our clients
“responsive design”
Translation: Web design, post 2010.
“Java”
Translation: Not really a front end job.
“disruptive”
Translation: Business as usual.
“end-of-year holiday party”
Translation: Mandatory.
“social web”
Translation: The part where people spam each other things.
“key stakeholders”
Translation: The people who have the money.
“native JavaScript”
Translation: Without JQuery.
“ES6”
Translation: See native javascript.
“learning by doing"
Translation: Shiny new libraries are preferred.
"Scala”
Translation: More than a front end job.
“Ember, Angular, Require"
Translation: 1 in 3 chance of your preferred library.
"Sass, Less, Stylus”
Translation: 1 in 3 chance of your preferred precompiled language.
“location-based”
Translation: Probably PhoneGap.
“HTML5 and CSS3”
Translation: You have “CanIuse” bookmarked.
“Demonstrated Ability…”
Translation: Will be in your job interview.
“wide range of support”
Translation: Usual attention to edge cases
“Semantic HTML” / “DHTML”
Translation: Sounds better than HTML.
“Strong understanding ”
Translation: You have “StackOverflow” bookmarked.
“revolutionizing” / “revolutionary”
Translation: Less than 5 years old.
“insanely driven”
Translation: Reads e-mail before meetings.
“stock options”
Translation: Non-redeemable compensation.
“best practices”
Translation: The design pattern/methodology that the supervising Project Manager read about.
“hackathon”
Translation: A 14-18 hour work day.
“Ping pong table”
Translation: Something you probably won’t use.
“unlimited vacation”
Translation: No Vacation.
"mandatory vacation”
Translation: Good idea.
“profitable"
Translation: We have a business plan.
"stealth mode”
Translation: We do not have a shipping product.
“SEO”
Translation: 2008 Mindset.
“design-minded”
Translation: Photoshop and Illustrator proficient.
“cross-browser”
Translation: Expect to support Internet Explorer 8.
Note to self: Start reading Opera’s Blog regularly. Two blog posts later, and I’ve attained enlightenment.
Check the excerpts.
Not all browsers hide text while downloading web fonts. For example Internet Explorer always renders text in a fallback font while it is downloading fonts. This has been dubbed the Flash Of Unstyled Text (FOUT). This misnomer. FOUT is a feature and a condition everyone should anticipate and design for. Selecting and testing fallback fonts is an important task while designing and building a site. - The State of Web Type, Dev.Opera
What happens when you slap a fancy new @font-face custom web font into your CSS? As it turns out—not much. Just including a @font-face block doesn’t actually initiate a download of the remote font file from the server in almost all browsers (except IE8). - Better @font-face with Font Load Events, Dev.Opera
The second article gets crazy quick, using JS to management fallback fonts for newer browsers. Some seriously awesome stuff….
Running Windows 8.1 emulator on a Mac is a huge pain in the ass.
Requirements:
A core i-series Mac. Windows Mobile Emulator requires VT-X/EPT, which isn’t found on the Core 2 series or Xeons of that era. If you’re running this on a Hackintosh, you may need to enable VT-x/EPT in the Bios. EPT allows for nested VMs, a VM within a VM.
Windows 8.1 64 bit. Notably the VMs found on Modern.ie are 32 Bit and will not work.
VMware or preferably Parallels. VMware has a tendency to lock up on my MacBook Pro Retina when trying to run the Windows Phone Emulator.
You’ll need to install Windows from your source: thumb-drive / DVD / ISO. Be sure to give your VM enough ram and be sure to enable “Nested Emulation” in Parallels or VT-x/EBt under Advanced in VMware Fusion.
Pictured: VMware Fusion
Pictured: Parallels
Step 2: Installing Visual Studio Express
There’s multiple version of Visual Studio, Express is free, provides all the support you’ll need. You can get VS Express here.
VS Studio Express is a minimum of roughly 10GB download so it’ll take some time. Be sure to Install the Windows 8 Phone SDK. If you do not, or already have VS Express installed, you can get it here.
Pictured: Be prepared to wait after running the VB Express installer.
Step 3: Running Windows 8.1 Mobile
Go to Tools -> Windows Phone 8.1 -> Developer Power Tools.
And then select a Device and click connect. If you do not see any devices, you may need to install the Windows 8.1 phone emulators.
You should see the Windows 8.1 Phone pop up, it can take a few minutes to load so be patient.
Troubleshooting:
While it seems simple in retrospect, I had a bunch of problems getting the Windows Mobile SDK to work which was amplified by the fact restarting meant downloading a new VM or copying an existing VMing and reinstalling Visual Studio Express.
I discovered that the modern.ie installs will not run the Windows Mobile Simulator. VMware failed to report that VS Express needed 64 bit, and gave me a very unhelpful error:
“The virtual machine management service failed to start the virtual machine ‘Emulator 8.1 U1 WVGA 512.ieuser’ because one of the Hyper-V components is not running (Virtual Machine ID: 00B303EC-5432-9116-D4E75CCC4546).”
Parallels gave me the much more helpful error with the same configuration.
The only remedy is to reinstall Windows 8.1 with a 64 bit install, which required “sourcing” a 64 Bit VM. It’s frustrating as MS throws web developers a bone to support Internet Exploder by bundling up VMs for Parallels, Virtualbox and VMware Fusion for free at Modern.ie but makes it impossible to use them for Windows Mobile.
If any MS employees are reading this, thanks to the Modern.ie team, but there’s still legwork to be done for Windows Mobile.
The break meant bringing up a new Web rendering engine, free from 20 years of Internet Explorer legacy, which has real-world interoperability with other modern browsers as its primary focus – and thus our rallying cry for Windows 10 became “the Web just works.” This pragmatic viewpoint, which was initially proven out by our work in Windows Phone 8.1 Update, meant that Web standards would continue to be important but should function in the background to drive real-world interoperability between browsers. - A break from the past: the birth of Microsoft’s new web rendering engine, blogs.msdn.com
I’m always rooting for IE to get better as Internet Exploder edge cases define my job. That said, using Windows Phone 8.1 as your yardstick?
Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 both have some strange behavior regarding hover states. MS tries to spin this as building websites correctly, when Android and iOS browsers have no issues. Correct or not, MS doesn’t have the marketshare to define “correct” anymore.
Windows Mobile 8.1 has some fixed positioning issues that Windows Mobile 8 did not.
Windows Mobile doesn’t have Inspect Element. We’re in 2015. iOS has had it for years, Mobile chrome has had it two or three years. IE requires javascript injection for 3rd-party, less functional, inspect element tools.
Windows Mobile 8.1 requires EBT to simulate. iOS, Android, Windows (desktop) do not. This means the few Core 2/Core Quad windows boxes in the office cannot simulate it, and must be run inside one of our MacBook Pros as a Simulator within a VM, meaning double overhead.
Getting the simulator requires downloading the entire 15 GB VS Express library. Xcode requires roughly 4GB all said and done to run the iOS simulator. Android with GenyMotion is roughly 2-3GB. Both allow for inspect element.
Native devices can be connected for development: Plug in your iPhone or Android phone into your Mac and you’re ready to do front end development in real time. Windows Mobile? You can plug away, but VS Express won’t assist you for front end web development.
These are just my complaints I have at the tip of my tongue. IE11 for the desktop certainly a welcomed change and the IE team seems dedicated to forward motion. Modern.ie is a great start but If MS wants the Web to just work, they need to throw the bone to the front end developers / ux developers to make it possible for them to develop a web that just works.
PhantomCSS is incredibly powerful, but an incredible pain the ass. I had the chance to install PhantomCSS on my desktop from scratch, and thus this time I documented my adventure. It took me several hours to get this up and working on my development computer. The only assumptions I’ll make is that you have Xcode installed and are using OS X. *Nix users will be able to follow along and my apologies to Windows users. Users may be at all walks of skill so I’ll try to keep this as humanly sane as possible despite jamming in a bunch of terminal commands. PhantomCSS requires pieces of software to work (and several more to install these):
CasperJS (a navigation scripting & testing utility that interacts with headless web browsers)
ImageMajack (a CLI batch image processor that makes Visual Regression Testing possible)
Let’s begin, shall we?
Terminal Commands
Check to see if node is installed: node -v If you do not have Node installed, you can grab it Here. Node is an open source cross-platform runtime enviroment for fullstack js development, but contains built-in libraries to act as a web server without software like Apache or IIS, and used commonly to distribute packages.
Check to see if you have bower installed bower --version If you do not have Bower installed, npm install -g bower Bower is a package manager for popular web libraries, allowing for quick distribution of code.
Install Xcode developer utilities: xcode-select --install This is required to install Ruby, and even if you have installed Xcode, will still need to be run. Skip if you have already installed it.
Casper bundles the wrong version of PhantomJS, uninstall it. brew uninstall phantomjs
Install a compatible version of PhantomJS brew install homebrew/versions/phantomjs192 Note: this will install version 1.9.2, you can manually install 1.9.8 by visiting PhantomJS’s downloads section, downloading 1.9.8, unzipping it and moving the phantomjs to /usr/local/Cellar/
Install Resemble.JS sudo npm install resemblejs
Testing to make sure it is installed correct
In your terminal, go to your desired directory and run bower install phantomcss
Next test to make sure it works by running the default test from this same directory. run casperjs test bower_components/phantomcss/demo/testsuite.js You should see three or so failed tests as the testfile isn’t entirely configured correctly but followed by “Must be your first time?” Success!
Troubleshooting
Problem: npm ERR! Error: EACCES, open ‘somefile path’
Fix: You didn’t run a npm install as sudo, re-run the npm install as sudo npm install
Problem: Fatal: [Errno 2] No such file or directory; did you install phantomjs?
Fix: brew install homebrew/versions/phantomjs192
Problem: CasperJS needs PhantomJS v1.x
Fix:Casper, the library that talks to PhantomJS only works with PhantomJS 1.x, you have currently installed PhantomJS 2.0. Run brew uninstall phantomjs and brew install homebrew/versions/phantomjs192
Problem: FAIL [PhantomCSS] Resemble.js not found: ./node_modules/resemblejs/resemble.js
Fix:You need to install resemblejs, sudo npm install resemblejs
I recently went to a talk by Micah Godbolt on Visual Regression Testing (who forked Grunt PhantomCSS). Micah has been leading the charge for the banner of "Front End Architect”, and also an advocator for regression testings. I have been compiling my notes for my company, Emerge Interactive, and figured it'd make for a great blog post. Introductions aside, let's begin.
What is Visual CSS Regression Testing?
Visual CSS Regression Testing (often shortened to CSS Regression Testing or Regression Testing) is a set of automated tests to compare visual differences on websites. It's an automated game of "Spot the Differences”, where your computer uses a web browser to render a page or portion of a page and highlights all the differences it finds between two sources. Visual CSS regression testing requires a fair amount of technical know-how, so I'll try and distill this into common-folk language, but with a few assumptions: You're familiar with at least the concept terminals/command consoles, you've heard of Grunt or Gulp, and you have an intermediate understanding of the fundamentals of front end development.
Some designers/developers may be familiar with visual difference testing using programs like Kaleidoscope, GitHub's Image Viewer or ImageMagick. These tools allow users to compare two images and use a variety of views to compare the visual differences, including A/B swiping, onion skinning, and highlighting changed areas. These tools are useful but require manual operation.
Kaleidoscope comparing image differences
In the cases of both Kaleidoscope and GitHub, can be only used on pre-existing files, meaning you cannot setup the tools to take screenshots that automatically run a visual comparison and give it a "pass” or "fail”. (note: Kaleidoscope does have KSdiff, a CLI tool that can be used to automate some functionality).
Enter Automated Visual CSS Testing
Console reporting PhantomCSS test
The obvious next step is "What if you could run automated tests?” and assign a value to it for difference tolerances to assign a pass or fail grade. ImageMagick already has a command line-level ability to run visual tests. It was only a matter of time before clever developers used it to create smarter testing.
While there have been some web services that provided automated visual difference testing using specialized services, there hasn't been an easy way to roll these into a development workflow until recently.
Combined with headless web browsers (browsers that do not feature a graphical-user-interface aka GUI), PhantomJS (Webkit) and SlimerJS (Gecko) visual tests can be rolled into Grunt or Gulp tests or even triggered on Jenkins builds. A developer can get instant and immediate feedback on the implications of his/her code change.
Headless Web Browsers are insanely quick and efficient. Despite the name, PhantomJS is not Webkit ported to Javascript. PhantomJS is actually platform-specific compiled native code. The "JS” in PhantomJS is the javascript API that allows the browser to be controlled externally. This means the browser can be spun up, render the page, and capture a screenshot in much less time than if you were to use a GUI browser as it runs natively.
Fun fact: In OS X, you can double-click the PhantomJS binary, and it will launch in its own terminal window. Don't expect too much! Without a GUI, you're limited to the JS console.
Comparative vs Baseline: The Philosophies of Regression Testing
There are currently two types of visual regression tests: Comparative and Baseline. Each has its use case and pros and cons, and each has its own separate code libraries Wraith and PhantomCSS, each firmly rooted in an aforementioned philosophy.
It's important to understand neither philosophy is correct, but rather, each has use cases and pros and cons. Both strategies can be used in conjunction. Also, not every project will benefit from visual regression testing as it requires at some point the assumption that the "Correct” the state has been attained and that it has been signed off as "Correct” or "Gold”
Visual Regression is only truly useful once a "finalized” version of a page or component has been developed to be used as the reference. So, while actively developing, this will not assist in creating new components or pages beyond preventing style changes that possibly affect other elements. Also design patterns that include style guides will greatly benefit each competing philosophy. If you aren't developing style guides for sites, consider this a wake-up call. You should start developing style guides even if you do not start with visual regression tests today as it will aid you tomorrow. Check out A List Apart's "Creating Style Guides” for more information.
Lastly, visual regression tests do take time to set up and are most likely best suited for projects that will be on a service agreement or will be updated and/or maintained. Involved tests may not have much payoff for one-off sites for short campaigns.
Visual Regression tests are:
For maintaining agreed-upon visual standards for pages or components of a site.
That new code pushes do not break the agreed-upon standard.
Visual regression tests are not:
For developing actively developing pages/widgets other than making sure they do not break finalized pages/components
ideal for one-off sites that have a short life span. Visual regression tests are not without benefit but may not be necessary
Comparative (Wraith)
Comparative visual testing requires a "correct” or "gold master” version of a website to be used as the source to be tested against. Comparative takes a full-screen image and highlights the changed areas. However, due to the fluid nature of the web, new images, text, and so forth will be seen as changes. It also doesn't take into account pseudo-states like hovers and offscreen menus. It also breaks down further, as any changes to page length will offset content like footers. Thus, anything below the difference in page length will be highlighted as a change.
In short, a comparative screenshot is like taking a command+shift+3 & spacebar of a window (PrintScreen for the Windows crowd) of a website from Server A (Source) and Server B (Staging/Feature Branch) and highlighting all the changes.
This doesn't mean that comparative tests are not useful, a comparative test is quick to set up, and could be easily assigned to a style guide and run as a daily automated test to make sure any code pushes haven't affected the style guide of base styles at various breakpoints. Due to the unchanging content of a style guide, the test can easily be tested to run as pass or fail.
Pros
Fast
Easy setup (Uses YAML)
Cons
Cannot "Ignore” content areas
Not very useful on pages that have changing areas
Tests will report any areas affected by vertical positioning as "different” below an offending area.
Does not test for pseudo-states and UI interactions
Baseline (PhantomCSS)
Baseline tests are quite a bit different than comparative. The baseline is for testing individual elements, such as UI elements, and can be scripted using JS and JQuery to trigger UI interactions.
Baseline uses a "Gold Master” or Signed off screenshot as its basis, and then compares from this image. Tests can be defined in a host of ways, from screen size to states, each individually run. Its best to think of these as command-shift-3 vs Command-Shift-4 (in terms of entire page vs area).
Due to the modular nature of Baseline testing, tests can be written with a host of patterns, often pairing up with Grunt to perform batch tests of modules on pages.
However, due to the more precise nature of the baseline, it requires a much larger setup and is much more complex.
Pros
Granular
Works with a wide variety of workflows
Allows to capture UI interactions
Cons
Tests take much more time to setup
Initial setup is confusing (PhantomJS 2.0 currently isn't officially supported by Casper, which requires hacking)
Slower to test
UI interactions must be manually coded
Its all about workflows
Since visual regression tests can be baked into Grunt / Gulp tasks and Jenkins builds, deciding on usage patterns is key. In a completely componented site, every "Gold master” component could include the PNG with the component in the Git repository and the JS for that component's test, then the grunt task could pull in the list of component tests for each component. Jenkins builds could be automated to run Wraith against a style guide and report if the test fails, with links to the offending failed screenshots.
PhantomCSS can also be used with live products/websites. PhantomCSS tests can use JQuery to write in filler content to avoid PhantomCSS reporting differences on constantly changing elements. These are simply a few hypothetical use cases, and there are plenty more.
Technologies involved
In order for all this to work, I've already mentioned most of the technologies visual regression testing requires.
Both Wraith and PhantomCSS use headless web browsers like PhantomJS / SlimerJS to render the pages. ImageMagick is used to capture and render the difference tests. PhantomCSS uses another library, CasperJS to interact with PhantomJS.
Installing everything takes time. Currently, Brew installs PhantomJS 2.0 by default, which isn't out-of-the-box compatible with Casper PhantomCSS. I spent a significant amount of wasted time to get 2.0 to work. I was able to get PhantomCSS 2.0 run, but it hung after taking screenshots.
After a lot of trial and error, I uninstalled PhantomJS and followed the recommendation of Kevin Vanzandberghe. After uninstalling PhantomJS 2.0 and downloading version 1.9.8 from PhantomJS's website, only then was I able to get PhantomCSS to work.
More to come
As of writing this, I've managed to get both utilities up and running. I created dummy branches of my company's website to use as a playground, purposely broken tests as a proof of concept. I've yet to fully integrate these into any real-world projects, but I will without question.
My plans are to write a blog post about how to install Wraith and Phantom on a new computer as I'll inevitably be installing both libraries on my Mac Pro. Update:Step-by-step guide on how to install PhantomCSS.
I'll be revisiting visual testing in more future posts and covering how I integrate it into my workflow.
I hope all this is useful as a primer for visual regression testing.
Hi Greg, Not a question. I just wanted to say thank you for having gone to the bother of making the walkthrough for Korg NK2 and Cubase. It was helpful and therefore much appreciated.
Anonymous
Thank you random Internet Person! I was a bit miffed that there weren’t any directions. I don’t replies to post so its good to know humans visit blogs posts on occasion.
This spontaneous anti-green-bubble brigade is an interesting example of how sometimes very subtle product decisions in technology influence the way culture works. Apple uses a soothing, on-brand blue for messages in its own texting platform, and a green akin to that of the Android robot logo for people texting from outside its ecosystem (as people have pointed out on Twitter, iPhone texts were default green in days before iMessage—but it was shaded and more pleasant to the eye; somewhere along the line things got flat and mean). There are all sorts of reasons for them to use different colors. (iMessage texts are seen as data, not charged on a per-text basis, and so the different colors allow people to register how much a given conversation will cost—useful!) However, one result of that decision is that a goofy class war is playing out over digital bubble colors. Their decision has observable social consequences. - It’s Kind of Cheesy Being Green
It’s Kind of Cheesy Being Green has been making the rounds, accusing Apple of purposely signifying non-iOS users. It’s an interesting take but completely wholly disingenuous. Apple has had some slights before, (Get a Mac?) but this isn’t one of them.
This unintentionally has lead to “Green Bubbles”, the UI convention of using Green vs Blue has been a quick methodology to let users know if the other recipient is using Messages. The author does understand that Messages has practical application and is important as any “iMessage” isn’t counted as a text or SMS, and host of other reasons: videos shared between iOS users are higher bit rate, and know that their text messages use encryption, thus can’t be snooped easily. However, not all iOS users use Messages hence not all iOS users are “blue”, and if a user is not connected to the internet in a low service area where only basic service is available he or she will only be able to send/receive SMS, hence “not blue”.
It didn’t start with blue
There’s one fact I’ve yet to see called out. Back in iPhone OS days before Messages (formerly iMessage) all texts were green. I know this as I still have my iPhone 3G.
Don’t take my word for it…. Here’s a screenshot from Google images, source unknown.
Check out iOS 4.x reviews. iMore. Ars Technica. CNET. Or go back to iPhone OS 3.0. You won’t find “blue bubbles” as iMessage wasn’t introduced until iOS 5.
Had green been introduced to to denote specifically non-iMessage, the author may have been onto something.
Rarely do I have the inside scoop on anything, but I’ve been watching the progression of one of my long time friends going back to University of Oregon, launch her own technology company, and its exciting.
Dana Garves, former head chemist of Ninkasi, has started her own tech startup, but of a different variety. You won’t find it on ValleyWag, TechCrunch or HackerNews.
It isn’t an app, it isn’t another internet device, but instead its a service for home brewers and small breweries, outsourcing the common chemistry tests at modest prices. Home brewers can concentrate on brewing, while BrewLab handles part of the science. Simply mail samples and you’ll get your results one business day later.
Dana already has been making a splash weeks into her business, appearing on NPR and appearing at KLCC Brewfest, Eugene’s largest brewfest (by extension making KLCC Brewfest one of the largest in the Oregon), BrewPublic, and even BeerAdvocate’s Print Magazine.
There’s a few cool things going for her: tech startup, cool industry, female in a male dominated industry and in Oregon. She’s already lining up another potential employee #2, another woman. Why? because she’s the best qualified person.
“They don’t tell you that a lot of programming skill is about developing a knack for asking the right questions on Google and knowing which code is best to copy-paste. And they don’t let you in on a big secret: that there is no mastery, there is no final level. The anxiety of feeling lost and stupid is not something you learn to conquer, but something you learn to live with. - http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/24/dont-believe-anyone-who-tells-you-learning-to-code-is-easy/”
—
One of the toughest things to do when I’m teaching Processing is convincing the students who “just don’t get it ” to stick it out a little longer and persist in their efforts. I don’t expect all of my art students to become professional programmers. In fact I’m not sure if I have the mettle to do that myself. I do think that one of the many values of programming is that it “isn’t easy” and direct experience can cure the false perception.
I don’t think I’ve ever had an “A-ha!” moment where everything fell into place, rather when I look back, its a stack of minor victories. Its easy to downplay success as its so incremental, then I have to ask, “Where was I last year at this time?” That’s when things are really put into perspective. It’s only then that string of small victories turns into sizable accomplishments.
I recently was posed with the problem that CSS word-wrap: break-word was leading to not-so-intelligent results. Word wrapping will break up words but without any real regard to the word.
Usually this means slightly awkward word breaks but there can be all sorts of unintended results if say, the word Therapist was broken up between e and r, making for a bad Arrested Development joke.
However there’s a little used property, CSS-hypens that will break word at the hyphen if it ends up at the end of a line.
Using the CSS property of CSS hyphens, combined with invisible hyphens ( ­ ), you can create your own intelligent word breaks. I’ve attached the below codepen. I’d recommend visiting it at CodePen so you can resize the window.
Once upon a time, I used to use the screen shots (command-shift-4) as both as a way to grab colors from various images and as a ruler. This required using Photoshop to glean the necessary information.
It was cumbersome, but it worked. In fact, I continued use this method from my first forays in web design in my Mac OS 9 days (yes, even OS 9 had command-shift-4 or command-control-shift-4 which went directly to the clipboard) all the way up until about 2 years ago. So for 15 years, or roughly for half my life, I’ve been using screenshots as my preferred method to measure on screen elements or grab the color values.
An Onscreen ruler…
SnapRuler is one of those tools that I use on a near daily basis. Like Colorsnapper, when you press a combination of keys (command-shift-u) , you’re presented with an onscreen magnifying glass that allows you to draw on the screen.
Pictured: Taking a screenshot of a screenshot app was annoying.
You’re given several options to copy and paste the measurement to your clipboard in common formats, which can be configured to your preferences.
Also SnapRuler contains the ability to save screenshots to a specified folder and conveniently names the files by: date-time-size, useful if you need to make several quick measurements but need to keep them for later.
In retrospect, it seems so painfully obvious that I’m surprised this isn’t part of OS X screen shots.
Pictured: Menu bar icon reveals a few simple menu items.
At $10, SnapRuler isn’t cheap for the limited functionality but it does its job admirably well. I’ve been using it for years now, through several OS X updates and on two computers, my MacBook Retina (with a combination of external displays) and my Mac Pro.
Pictured: Preferences panel
The only caveat I’ve found is when dealing with Retina. It treats all measurements as the scaled resolution, meaning its not using the 2880px x 1800px resolution in measurements but rather resolution that the OS is rendering. However, using the scaled resolution is the more correct of the two but a toggle would be nice for UI geeks such as myself.
Conclusion
Between the double whammy of ColorSnapper and SnapRuler (both of which play nicely with each other) I’ve updated my screen capture workflow and its been for the better.
So the internet is ablaze with MS’s new HoloLens, and Polygon has a sober reaction. Famed Apple blogger, John Gruber reposted his fantastic 2011 critique of Microsoft.
But the exact same criticism I have for Microsoft today applies to 1987 Apple. “Knowledge Navigator” encapsulates everything that was wrong with Apple in 1987. Their coolest products were imaginary futuristic bullshit. The mindset and priorities of Apple’s executive leadership in 1987 led the company to lose what was then an enormous usability and user experience lead over the rest of the industry, and eventually drove the company to the precipice of bankruptcy. That 1987 Apple was a broken company is so painfully obvious from today’s vantage point that I didn’t think it needed to be mentioned.
“Knowledge Navigator” didn’t help Apple in any way. Apple never made such a product. It didn’t bring Siri to us any sooner than if that video had never been made. It only served to distract from and diminish Apple’s then-current actual products.
Anyone remember the Nokia Morph? No? In February of 2008, Nokia decided that it was time to showcase the future of nanotechnology, touting that its features could be seen as early as 2015 on high end devices. It was a shot across the bow at Apple, who was widely seen as the most innovative company in the world.
Mind you, this was 5 years before the 2013-2014 hypegasm over wearables, and only a few short months before the second revision of the iPhone, the 3G. Smartphones were the new “it” product.
So here we are in 2015 almost none of the Morph’s features are available in the real world on a device of its type, other than the an ability to accept phone calls on your wrist (mostly aided by a cellphone). A short list of things that don’t exist: solar charging, completely transparent, raisable face, completely bendable surface, and so on.
Worst yet, Nokia isn’t even making smart watches, and its a backseat in the smart phone market, nearly forgotten.
So what ends did Morph gain Nokia? Arguably nothing, other than being likeminded to its new MS overlords for a willingness to create concept videos.
Having spent more time pondering, I think its important to draw a line between distinctions of vaporware and prototype hype videos. The Morph and Knowledge Finder was purely science-fiction, the HoloLens is real and has a strong possibility of shipping.
What Microsoft is trying to do is illustrate the potential of the HoloLens but set expectations beyond what the first few generations will be able to accomplish (assuming it ships and lasts long enough to mature).
In the case of the Surface, we’ve seen a natural progression and evolution through the magic of product cycles. Despite the misstep of the Surface RT, by all accounts the Surface Pro lineup has matured into a polished product.
There’s no reason to create fanciful fiction for the HoloLens, its already the anti-Google Glass and counter Oculus Rift/Sony Project Morpheus. Instead an omnipresent face computer meant to overtake your life or blot out the world you live in, the HoloLens looks to compliment it.
/edit #2 Jan 23 2015:
“It did remind me of [Kinect]. You kind of want to scream ‘don’t over promise these things’…My fear is that when you actually put the device on you’re not as blown away as you should be”
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Molyneux commented, “The bizarre thing is a huge amount of effort and time and money goes into researching the tech, like the Kinect tech and scanning the bodies, and there’s always this one line that hardware manufacturers - whether it be Microsoft or anyone else - say and that’s 'we can’t wait to see what happens when it gets into the hands of developers.’ Now if Apple had said that when they introduced the iPhone, I don’t think we’d ever end up with the iPhone! What really should happen is that they put a similar amount of money into researching just awesome real world applications that you’ll really use and that work robustly and smoothly and delightfully.
Anonymous 
