Is it GIF or jiff?

The Kmart ad has resurrected the GIF v jiff war that raged in the early 1990s. I thought this was settled but then some pseudo-intellectuals bring it back up. I don't know why I'm so exercised about this but I am. It was an interesting debate 20 years ago as the community was trying to come to terms on how to describe things.



Do we say GIF (hard G) or jiff?
Do we say J-P-G or jpeg?
Is it dub-dub-dub or www?
Do we say "forward slash", "slash" or leave it out all together?


It doesn't matter what Steve Wilhite says, nor does it matter what CompuServ had in their original documentation. This is not 1993. The pronunciation, as chosen in millions upon millions of conversations over the last 20 years have settled the question.

I got the following quotes from twitchy.com

That awkward moment when Kmart can't pronounce "gif" in their national commercials.

— Lauren Stricos (@laurenstricos) November 29, 2013

Not only is the KMart commercial annoying, but they improperly pronounce GIF.

— Amazing Rando (@scout_6) November 27, 2013

The Kmart commercial about "giffing out" pronounce "gif" incorrectly. I mean I use the hard "g" sound too, but on tv let's try harder.
— Hannah Murphy (@hanner2012) November 27, 2013

I don't know why I am so irritated that this religious war is being refought - but, there it is. I find it ridiculous that people make these claims. If they believed what they were saying (as opposed to being pretentious) they would be saying "jiff" instead of "GIF" in their conversations. And yet, I haven't heard it called "jiff" in close to 20 years.

So True

"One man's data is another man's noise." Nice quote from #swarm mission manager Rune Floberghagen #swarmmission #esa

— AnneliesA (@Lanne_ies) November 22, 2013

It's been a while since I've visited ThinkingWithType. If you're at all interested in graphic design I highly recommend it. In going through the site I once again came across this gem.

Beautifully said. Beautifully executed.

UX Design: Outline versus Solid Shapes

I read an interesting article regarding that the brain takes more time to process an outline than a "filled-in" icon.

Your brain traces the shapes on the first row an average of twice as much. Your eye scans the outside shape and then scans the inner line to determine if there is value in the “hollow” section.

Icons without this empty core are processed as definite and only the outer lines are processed. Depending on the outline of the shape, this happens pretty fast. No matter the shape, though, the hollow icons take more time to process.

While I agree with this completely within the context of the article - designing mobile apps - where people are often scanning your app while moving, or being in a crowded environment where they will devote even less of their attention then they do while sitting at their desk, I fear that Aubrey Johnson may be taking the point a little too far. He writes:

Choosing to use hollow icons for the sake of lightness / very-modern aesthetic is not the issue, it’s that to sacrifice the usefulness of what an icon does (aide in reading speed) for aesthetic feeling is really bad. Don’t follow bad design decisions to appease a platform.

Design above it.

Yes people will scan the solid shape faster than the outline, and if they are hurried and distracted will more likely miss or have to concentrate more on the app to perceive the icon, but this ought not be taken as a hard and fast reason to not use outlined icons - even in mobile apps. At issue: (from an IA perspective) is "how are people using the apps?" and from a UX perspective it would be: "does the [less readable] iconography increase the users enjoyment/experience more than the lack of usability detract from the experience?"

Combining the two questions would be: are there user personas which are negatively impacted to the point (from the reduced scannability) that they will either not be able to use the app or would reject it? IF that happens then absolutely one must "sacrifice" the hollow icons and follow the author's advice: "Design above it."

Sublime Text 2 Won't Save

I was using Sublime Text2 and all of a sudden it wouldn't save a file. I kept getting a permissioning error: "Can't save file 'x'. It took a little while, and a little aggravation, to figure out what happened. Windows 8 just went through another of it's forced upgrades and the admin rights for Sublime Text to write to the C:\inetpub folder was revoked.

The solution is to right click on the application and give yourself admin rights.

Problem solved.

Back to work.

Windows 8 Mouse is Freezing - Solution

My wife got a new laptop with Windows 8. She hates it by the way, and what little I've seen of Windows 8 I can see why. The UI is not intuitive, especially for someone with years of Windows experience going from DOS to Windows 95 to XP.

Be that as it may be her mouse/slidepad kept freezing. She solved the problem, up-to-now, by rebooting her computer. Last night it froze and rebooting wouldn't start it. Of course I was dragged in to solve it. The long-and-short of it is:

PRESSING F5

SOLVES IT!

So much frustration for nothing.

Google has a problem with Brooklyn

I made a search for several addresses in Brooklyn and the search results kept displaying NYC instead of Brooklyn. What's going on Google. This is the first time I've seen something like this!