Karlin Fox | Atomic Spin

Figure, Readability, and Paper: UI Gems and a Successful Skeuomorph for iPad

By Karlin Fox | Published: April 25, 2012

The last time I wrote about user interfaces for tablets, I was talking specifically about how Fitts’s Law informs usability in tablet contexts. This time I’ll start with a new example in that category, but I’ll also expand the scope a little bit and take a look at some exciting new interactions that don’t focus...

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Posted in Mobile, User Experience, Visual Design | Tagged iOS, iPad, UX | Leave a comment

Hate-Driven Development

By Karlin Fox | Published: March 19, 2012

Posted in Design & Development, Tools | Tagged .NET, intellij, java | 6 Comments

You Should Read: The Visual Language of Dashed Lines

By Karlin Fox | Published: February 14, 2012

How heavy should this line be? Should I use weight, value, or dashes to de-emphasize it?

Posted in Visual Design | Tagged visual language | Leave a comment

Say it again: CRUD is not REST

By Karlin Fox | Published: January 17, 2012

After watching the presentation CRUD is not REST – Hypermedia for Y’all! by Nick Sutterer (also known for Apotomo) I was delighted to see mention of all the parts of REST that I find myself repeating most frequently: Representations of resources should be uniform Use hypermedia—not URL schemes or resource name mapping—to represent relationships Use...

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Posted in Web | Tagged javascript, rest, ruby on rails | Leave a comment

Ludum Dare 22 Jam Entry

By Karlin Fox | Published: December 19, 2011

Over the weekend, myself, Shawn Anderson, and Jason Porritt built a game to submit to the Ludum Dare 22 Jam. Ludum Dare is an open videogame creation competition that a few Atoms have competed in previously. Unlike the regular, individual competition (48 hours with results judged over the next two weeks) the Jam is a…

Posted in Community, Culture, Events, News | 2 Comments

Binary Serialization Tour Guide

By Karlin Fox | Published: November 23, 2011

I love choices! But there are a lot of binary serialization formats out there. I recently surveyed them for a project with fairly loose requirements for transferring text and binary messages between servers and embedded devices. The result was a list of most of the available binary serialization formats and libraries, with comments on each….

Posted in Embedded Software, Languages, Mobile, Tools, Web | Tagged networking, serialization | Leave a comment

Builder Syntax: A Timeless Way of Building

By Karlin Fox | Published: October 19, 2011

I was excited to see the description of a “builder” syntax in the upcoming Java-compatible JVM language Kotlin, from the folks at JetBrains. Builder syntax is an expressive way to build tree-like object structures in languages that are more typically seen expressing code than data.

Posted in Languages, Tools | Tagged groovy, java, ruby | 1 Comment

Agile Retrospectives at Atomic Object

By Karlin Fox | Published: September 9, 2011

The end of a project is a good time to look back and reflect on the lessons that you and your team learned along the way. Good or bad, stressful or straightforward, every project teaches us something. When you move quickly to new projects, it’s easy to forget to capture these lessons. More importantly, it’s…

Posted in Business of Software, Company, Culture, Process & Practices, Project Management, Project Planning | Tagged retrospectives | Leave a comment

Applying The Opposite of Fitts’s Law to Touch Interfaces

By Karlin Fox | Published: August 2, 2011

I recently wrote about how Fitts’s Law can help direct design decisions in tablet interfaces. Fitts’s Law says to put the things users need most closer to them, and make them bigger, to reduce the amount of time users will need to select them. But frequently we have actions in software that are “dangerous” or…