Stop Password Masking
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009Jakob Nielsen implores web developers to stop masking passwords in web input forms. I have to admit I never thought about it this way.
Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn’t even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures.
The only case when you would need to mask passwords is when the user is in a public space, in which case Jakob proposes there be a check box to mask the password in the input form. (via Kottke)
Dollar ReDe$ign
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009Michael Tyznik redesigned the U.S. paper money to a much more modern and functional design. Looks a lot like European money, which has great design. Here’s his rationale in the redesign:
Here are the main ideas in this design: Money and the color green are inextricably intertwined in American culture. I think itd be a mistake to remove green as the primary color. Instead, each bill has a brightly-colored holographic strip embedded into it which contains the denomination. The width of this strip also changes with the denomination. This introduces an element which makes each bill extremely easy to identify. There is also braille denoting the bills denomination on the holographic strip.
The redesign is part of a project to “rebrand” the dollar bills. Also check out the redesigns by Richard Smith and Michelle Haft.
Update: Aegir Hallmundur at The Ministry of Type relates the potential new bill designs to European bill designs, in particular the varying bill sizes depending on the denomination of the bill.
Router font: Building a typeface
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009
Jeremy Mickel creates a typeface for the first time, inspired by typography in the subway station.
Generation Loss
Monday, March 23rd, 2009Generation Loss from hadto on Vimeo. Shows a cool “rusting” effect when recompressing a jpeg 600 times.
