@cassidy@blaede.family
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cassidy

@cassidy@blaede.family

Building useful, usable, delightful products that respect privacy.

:eos: Partner success at https://floss.social/@EndlessOS Foundation
:gnome: @gnome Foundation member
:flathub: https://floss.social/@flathub contributor

Previously: co-founder and CXO at elementary OS, UX architect at System76.

Frequently posting about #OpenSource, specifically in #GNOME and #Flatpak realms. I also enjoy #StarWars, #LEGO, #3DPrinting, and #SmartHome.

I have a background in UX architecture, open source, product design, & communication.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

cassidy, to privacy
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I’ve spent a long, long time thinking about ethical software, the challenges we necessarily give ourselves compared to closed competitors, and crucially, how to overcome those challenges.

Four and a half years ago, I wrote:

>respecting your privacy is the ethical thing to do; users have a fundamental right to the utmost privacy, even from companies and products they trust.

That’s as true as ever.

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/privacy-and-elementary-os/

cassidy,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

The combination of rapidly-improving technologies like GNOME, Flatpak, Wayland, and Portals also means our active privacy protections are also better than ever before.

I went on to write:

>If and when we are able to develop an open, peer reviewed, industry-respected method of responsible and privacy-first telemetry, we may consider doing so.

While that post was in the context of elementary OS, I believe every word I wrote.

mcc, to random
@mcc@mastodon.social avatar

Today's tiny computer hell discovery: If you're signing up for Old Navy's customer loyalty program in a store, the little machine rejects any email containing a + character

cassidy,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@mattdm @mcc I just have a wildcard email handler with my hosted email, so I can do the same thing but with servicename@example.com. No character tomfoolery involved, and I don’t have to host my own server! I do have to commit to the domain name in perpetuity, though.

cassidy, to random
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

If you use content warnings for posts, first: thank you! A lot of folks appreciate it whether it’s about potential triggers or just specific interests.

I’ve also found that it’s more helpful if you spell out the warning rather than using shorthand. This is especially true for franchises: not everyone will read an sw warning as a Star Wars spoiler, or suf as Steven Universe Future, for example. It’s also helpful for common ones like “eye contact” or “mental health” instead of ec or mh.

cassidy, to random
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I have posted my public Twitter archive at https://twitter.cassidyjames.com/

You can browse or search for any of my old tweets without visiting the hellsite.

mlundblad, to GNOME
@mlundblad@fosstodon.org avatar

It's about that time of the year for the yearly „Summer Maps Blog Post”! 😎️⛱️

http://ml4711.blogspot.com/2023/07/summer-maps.html

#mapstodon #gnome #maps #openstreetmap

cassidy,
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

@mlundblad such good updates! Great work, and nice write-up!

cassidy, to CSS
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Much shorter little blog post today: recoloring SVGs on the web. Thanks to @jimmac and @razze, I learned you can include prefers-color-scheme support directly in an SVG used as a favicon! 🤯

https://cassidyjames.com/blog/prefers-color-scheme-svg-light-dark/

✨ As a reminder, publicly replying to this post will add your reply as a comment on the blog post.

cassidy, to random
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

I take it back, Trunks is a great experience on Android tablets with its mosaic view! Goolge+ vibes. 😍

cassidy, to random
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

Twitter is dead for third parties. Not just the apps, but anyone building anything innovative or useful that used Twitter.

https://mashable.com/article/twitter-api-elon-musk-developer-issues-apps

On the contrary, the Mastodon API is super nice, and ActivityPub means there is virtually no limit to what interesting things you can do on the Fediverse. Developers, you are welcome here!

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/client/intro/

cassidy, to random
@cassidy@blaede.family avatar

After designing the layout for comments on my site*, I lightweight want to make some sort of social feed or more interactive UI for Mastodon. Maybe my most recent posts displayed in a sidebar on my website? 🤔

I have to look into if/how to support actions other than just linking to the original post. Maybe I can do something like @micahilbery’s https://share-on-mastodon.social/ and remember the user’s instance in local storage, then use instance-relative links? 🤔

*See: https://cassidyjames.com/blog/freedesktop-accent-colors-gnome-proposal/#comments

jcrabapple, to android

deleted_by_author

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    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    @jcrabapple I don’t personally love the design of Trunks, but it seems to be the only Mastodon app that’s adaptive for tablets. I just added my instance to the home screen from Chrome (I tried Firefox, but it was sorta buggy). It’s getting me by even though I don’t like the web notifications compared to a native app—so they’re just off for the tablet.

    I concur about the overall experience of the Pixel Tablet, though! It looks and sounds great; my kid and I watched a movie on it yesterday!

    daniel, to random
    @daniel@social.telemetrydeck.com avatar

    You know how in macOS I can use spilt screen to have to windows next to each other without window chrome and shadows? Is there a tool that does the same but more? Like basically a tiling window manager?

    All the tools I found can manipulate the windows, but macOS windows aren’t meant to tile and will look weird when just placed on a grid.

    Boosts appreciated.

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    @daniel this is the same reason all the bolted on tiling options on Linux are not great. There needs to be an API to communicate tiling state with apps for it to work well IMHO.

    cassidy, to random
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Welp, GitHub is down. https://www.githubstatus.com/

    cassidy, to plex
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    I bought a lifetime subscription to Plex to help support them, and I hope other folks have as well because they provide a great service and delightful software.

    While yes, there are alternatives to the self-hosted media server space (and some decent open source ones, I’m told!), Plex has consistently been the easiest for me to set up and have non-tech folks use.

    I also hope Plexamp remains unscathed because I love it so much more than other music apps!

    https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23777418/plex-layoffs-20-percent-staff

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    @scottytrees

    Booo GIF

    cassidy, to random
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Does anyone else queue up written blog posts because they don’t want to inundate Planet GNOME, RSS readers, social media, etc.? 😬

    cassidy, to UX
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    One of my most popular blog posts is this oldie from 2014—I have updated it a couple of times, but I love how I still think about it all the time.

    Did you know the uncanny valley curve applies to UX design as well? Read how: https://cassidyjames.com/blog/uncanny-valley-curve/

    Also, publicly replying to this post will show as a comment on the blog post because ✨ Fediverse ✨

    cassidy, to android
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    I'm using the Pixel Tablet w/Android as a "computer" today, and yeah, it still falls short in a few ways.

    For touch-based multitasking, I love the new split view, taskbar, and overall setup. But for a mouse and keyboard, it's not there yet, which, fair, they don't advertise it as a laptop replacement!

    For anyone curious, here's what I've found so far (thread). I hope this can help inform some good/bad for people designing adaptive experiences.

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    See, in earlier versions of Android, Alt+Tab would do the same thing as a double-tap on the Recents button (back when button navigation was the default), which would pop you back into the last-used app. Continuing to hold Alt and tapping Tab would correctly keep the Recents view open and focus apps increasingly farther back in the stack: good!

    It seems the behavior is the same now, but there is no visual feedback. And it's also... buggy. Likely just literally untested on this layout.

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Next, mouse stuff. This is less bad, I think, because a mouse is a bit less-different from a finger than an always-present physical keyboard is from using an on-screen keyboard on demand.

    First, the good: I get a real, familiar mouse cursor, and even correct mouse cursors when hovering things for the most part (like on the web or when resizing things). You can generally just try to treat the cursor like a more-precise finger and it works. Mouse wheel works, even the built-in back button works!

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    But sometimes using a mouse feels weird, like when click-and-drag works for scrolling in most native apps, but not in web views. I feel like it should just be off all the time for mouse input.

    Also, if you use the physical scroll wheel and scroll up too far, it triggers some apps' pull-to-refresh mechanism which feels totally wrong. Idk if it's just that it takes less motion to accidentally reload, but I do it accidentally all the time.

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Context menus aren't really a pattern on Android anymore, and while in many cases that's a boon for discoverability (contextual on-screen actions are usually better than hiding things away into a menu!), it does feel like a gap. Especially when SOMEtimes a right-click triggers the same menu as a press-and-hold touch would, but sometimes it does not. I feel like they should just be the same, always. Press-and-hold for a menu with a mouse when there is no right-click menu feels broken.

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Other random observations:

    While I was fine with the default display sizing/scaling when using touch, I immediately wanted to make everything a little bit smaller for mouse/keyboard use. I was able to turn things down size-wise one notch, and it feels a lot better for this display. I guess because I'm farther away and doing more split-screening.

    There are some mouse affordances like a click on the clock/system icons opens the notifications and quick settings instead of requiring a swipe down.

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Over all I feel like this could be a GREAT adaptive/convergent device if some of these things were revisited. It just needs attention. If the rumors of a Dex-like desktop mode for Pixel 8 are true, I would imagine they're working this all out for the Pixel Tablet as well with the Android 14 update. We'll see!

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    Oh, and for the record: I had about 10x more trouble with audio devices in a video call in the browser on this tablet than I've ever had on my Linux desktop. Just saying. :) At one point literally no sound was coming in or out as long as my headphones were connected, and there was just nothing I could about it. :(

    (I still blame Big Blue Button for that, though)

    cassidy,
    @cassidy@blaede.family avatar

    What I really want is some pre-packaged way to get Flathub on this. :)

    I really do miss the ecosystem of apps for GNOME when using the tablet, and that's something that would absolutely keep me from using it as a "computer" long-term.

    We bought it as a bigger Nest Hub that can work as a video tablet for the kids around the house, and for that, it's perfect. But it's always fun to push the boundaries, right?

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