Announcing Cheddar
Posted on
Cheddar is an app I started working on November of last year. From the start, it was a really exciting project, but I never had much time to devote to it. Now that I don't have a job, I've been focusing on it full time.
Cheddar will be the first Nothing Magical product that I launch. I'm massively excited to release it so you can see what I've been up to. It should come out in a couple of weeks. I have a lot of other ideas that I can't wait to work on, but more on that later.
Check out Cheddar. I made a little video to tell you about Cheddar. Head on over and watch it.
Don’t Forget the Little Things
Posted on
Tonight I spent an hour on a simple animation. Instead of the UI element simply appearing, it now fades in and fades out. To get this right takes time. You wouldn't believe how much nicer it feels with the simple animation. It feels polished and complete instead of jarring and hacked together.
It's funny how a 0.2 second animation can make something feel a million times nicer
The fade in takes 0.3 seconds, moves the element 100 pixels, and scales from 80% to 100%. The fade out takes 0.25 seconds, moves the 45 pixels, and scales from 100% to 90%. (All of these values are relative to the element's size.) The point being, getting all of this right took awhile. It's a lot of trail and error to get it right. When you get it, it will just feel right.
Unjarring The Responsive Web
Posted on
Responsive web design is what all the cool kids are up to these days. Basically a "responsive" site uses CSS media queries to change the page based on certain parameters. (This article a good place to start if you're new to the topic.) Usually this is width. The designer can change the appearance of the page based on the width of the browser. This allows the same design to be used on iPhone, iPad, and the desktop with minimal work instead of three different designs.
Most responsive sites are really jarring when they jump between media query sizes. Elements start jumping around and if you were reading something, your spot may or may not still be on the screen. I really wish people would take the time to improve this. It's not hard.
Here's a concrete example. Let's say you have a header on a website and want it to be smaller on mobile. This is easy with the following media query:
Hire Sam
Posted on
You can now hire me. During the next few months, I'll be mainly focused on some upcoming products, but I need to eat so here we are. You can now hire me for up to 10 hours a week for $200/hr. I know that's expensive, but I need to guard my time.
Bootstrapping is hard. I only have so much in the bank. It's really painful to watch it dwindle away. This whole process has put the pressure on. I love it! This is amazing motivation. The only reason I'm contracting is to keep my runway going longer so I have more time to get some products ready. Honestly, I could go without contracting, but the extra cushion will be nice.
I whipped up a little site and posted it at http://hire.soff.es. (The source is on Github by the way.) Head on over and hire me if you're interested. The first 4 weeks are already booked. The following weeks are already in talks so be quick.
Introducing Shares
Posted on
Really excited to finally be able to introduce Shares. I started working on this app in November. It's come a really long way since then.
Recently, I bought some Apple stock. (Which, by the way, has been a fantastic investment.) I found myself looking at the price in the stocks dashboard widget then using Alfred's calculator to do the math to see my change. This got cumbersome quick.
I just wanted an app to see my overall gain or loss at a glance, so I made one.