Khoi Vinh, a designer formerly of The New York Times, writes about typography, grids, interface design and redesigns.
HN commenters list it among favorite design blogs for typography-driven design, though one asks what makes the site notable given its plain look.
Just realized that the "blogs" category in my Feedly has 347 entries in it, and about half of them haven't published in more than 3 months.
Here are some that are prolific and good:
https://marginalrevolution.com/
Marginal Revolution: wide-ranging and prolific blog about economics and culture.
https://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com
Anecdotal Evidence: well-written personal blog, mostly observations on books.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/
Krebs on Security: about information security. It's written for a popular audience, which is about the level at which I understand the subject.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/
Michael Tsai: collects quotes from other people about ongoing software-related news.
https://acquisitiontalk.com
Acquisition Talk: about weapons system acquisition, government procurement, etc. Something I wanted to follow because it's a huge sector that doesn't get a lot of attention.
https://www.futilitycloset.com/
Futility Closet: wunderkammer-style blog with historical miscellany, quotes, puzzles, etc. Also a great podcast.
https://www.tor.com/tag/jo-walton-reads/
Jo Walton's Reading List: Not strictly a blog, but it's in my RSS feeds. I like to see what she's reading lately, and sometimes I get good recommendations from her (e.g. KJ Parker).
https://www.bldgblog.com/
BLDGBLOG: about design, architecture, etc.
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/
Colossal: about art and design.
https://www.subtraction.com/
Subtraction: about design
Disclaimer: Android user.
Every time I'm up to get a new phone I come this close to switching to iPhone. My wife has one, and I've switched to Macs. But there are certain utilitarian functions that keep me on Android.
As of the last two design revs, though, I also have an aesthetic aversion to the iPhone. Gruber describes the jewelry or fine watch-like quality very well. But I don't wear jewelry or fine watches. (Ok, I wear a wedding ring, but it's a plain band.)
Maybe I'm just a philistine, but there's something about old original Motorola Droids that are at this point beaten up and worn that have a really nice aged, aesthetic weight to them.
It's a sentiment similar to the one Khoi Vinh lays out here: http://www.subtraction.com/2007/07/16/designed-det but not quite, because I think smart phones become obsolete too quickly for 'designed deterioration' to be realistic.
Maybe it's more that I don't want to feel that precious about these objects. I like to be able to not have to worry that much about taking care of my phone, to be able to toss it around without worrying about damage.
Or maybe it's just an emotional, class-based aversion to luxury goods because I grew up in working class conditions.
The two main designers that started the grid-craze were Mark Boulton and Khoi Vinh. Some resources from them:
http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/five-simple-steps-to-designing-grid-systems-part-1
http://www.subtraction.com/2004/12/31/grid-computi
How to use grids? It is usually as simple as adding some css, divs and classes. At its most basic, you can use a gridpaper background or this javascript gridder: http://gridder.andreehansson.se/ that works well with the http://960.gs grid framework.
Why I use grids?
- maintainability and cooperation
- visual consistency across browsers
- less development time spent with display bugs
Why I don't use grids?
- Can become a bit boring/holding you back
- Not all designs work with even columns (for example those based on the golden ratio)
- Code bloat (you are using divs like columns and rows, in almost the same way one would layout a page with tables, also devs sometimes forget to remove the unused classes from the production CSS)
The NYTimes example is by Khoi Vinh (http://www.subtraction.com/). He's certainly no design slouch, particularly when it comes to grid based layouts.
NYTimes is an enormously complex site. Given the ridiculous number of priorities they have to juggle, and number of people they have to please, I think they do an admirable job. The site has to balance looking like a historic newspaper with the constraints of the web.
I particularly like Vinh and Boulton's presentation "Grids are Good" http://www.lifeclever.com/khoi-vinh-mark-boulton-grids-are-good/ which applies a grid layout to a Yahoo type homepage.
Looks good. Design point: I'd try to stick with a grid. The "beta" text seems to have a random position off to the right, and while the table of example searches are functional, they could use some consistent cell padding.
On the search page itself it'd be great if you tried to align the left margin better. Right now the top bar hangs out, which makes the page flow poorly for the eye.
In general, reduce number of vertical columns of alignment. A grid helps that. That's my advice.
Read this blog post / attached PDF -- it's fantastic: http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0318_oh_yeeaahh.php
Believe it or not, you can alt-tab on an iPad now if you have a keyboard hooked up. https://www.subtraction.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-08-ios9-external-keyboard.png
And while iOS won't give you a local terminal, remote servers are in reach with a pretty nice SSH client: https://panic.com/prompt/
Text selection on a touchscreen still sucks compared to a mouse, unfortunately.
Still, if an IDE can hit most/all of your needs, I can see iOS working pretty well as a programming environment. Apple's Swift Playgrounds in iOS 10 feels like a first step toward them bringing Xcode over.