Yeah obviously old, meant to include that. I just love how it's written. Still my personal high watermark of good technical writing.

re: bootstrap / twitter

is it just me, or do all these bootstrap sites have the ugliest fonts? they are always pixellated and difficult to read. the font edges are all sharp and jagged..

for example:
http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/

the headline sitename looks smooth, but maybe thats cause its so large.
the sub headline starts to get a bit jagged
and forget about the acutal text next to the icon bullets. its gross

wtf

Unfortunately the main reason I used bootstrap is because I don't even have the eye to spot ugly fonts

On a totally unrelated note...has anyone here used "Pygame Reloaded" and has some feedback? I want to build some stuff for my AI lecture in the near future to illustrate search etc. and was thinking about pygame. I'd prefer Python 3 because some other part of the toolchain would need that. Down the road I want to interface Eclipse (the Prolog not the IDE) and Python and there's a Python3 only bridge.

I know I won't have the time to hack around with it much so the furthest I'd probably go is see if 3to2 works on said bridge :P

i don't know, i think that site looks good.

Looks good on my retina MBP too.

quite possible its on my end, cause on SO MANY of these sites, the fonts look like crap. i'm not sure if its some of these new Web Font thingys. i'm just using standard google chrome browser



take a look, i cut out direct images of that site. can you see how choppy the fonts are?

edit/
ok it must be google chrome. cause on firefox and ie, the font looks smooth. maybe chrome doesn't have anti-aliased fonts?

It looks like this in Chrome for me:

yep, it looks exactly like that for me too

looks crappy , no? look at the font at those areas that i selected. they are the same in your image

They could have chosen a better body font but I don't think it's really that bad.

I do love font awesome though.

maybe not perfect, i def wouldn't say crappy.

i think some people are just way more sensitive to those kinds of imperfections and it bugs them.

Greg Nice, these things wouldn't bother you if you had poor eyesight...

***

I have an interview coming up this week for project manager, which considering the low starting pay and the minimal required knowledge set, I am perfect for.

The company deals with a few technologies, including Magento, Drupal, MS, and Oracle.

I called him on the phone, and he opened by saying that my cover letter was well-written then said tell him something about myself. I went with the angle of being able to communicate with different types of people and why this is difficult to do, which I guess was the answer he was looking for. He asked me if I was well-organized, which I said yes to and why I am, then asked me to go in.

So... aside from buying hair-spike slime and stocking up on Brut aftershave, what can I do to prepare myself? I have the company's website open and I am examining some of their work. I'm so clueless.

Edit 2 Add: I sent the company the links to the Clojure site and two other sites that I built (both converted to Drupal) and there is zero hits on G analytics, so apparently they aren't looking for anyone who is well-versed in technology or has a portfolio.

A couple of things can make text look bad like that. Webkit browsers can use a CSS rule to make sure text is being rendered anti-aliased (which Font Awesome doesn't seem to be using):

Although they are using:

Which is a bit different.

Another thing that can make text look bad is the (IMO) overused text-shadow CSS property. I think sometimes people (myself included) get caught up with all the cool things CSS3 can do and tend to overdo it.

i didnt know about those, thanks

Yw.

An easy way to implement is just to add this line to your CSS file:

The universal selector will add it to all of the text on your page. Just be careful with using universal selector if you have a very complex DOM, it can slow page rendering times. But in most cases it won't make any noticeable difference.

I like using text-shadow for mouse-over:

It's not a technique I see often, but if done well, it looks pretty darn cool, giving the anchor a 3D effect. I think using 3D on plain text is rather tasteless tbh.

man look at that screenshot the other guy posted. theres no way that you can say that the site looks good with choppy fonts like that. its un-readable.

however, in FIREFOX, the same site looks fine, and the fonts are very smooth.

now greg, that is just hyperbole

I've been looking through some of the sites in this company's virtual showroom.

I'm bothered because I am sure that I will be asked my opinion on a few of them and there's some issues. If asked, I would probably mention the really bad errors. I think with a deft approach, there could be a really interesting conversation here but I don't want to bash into the company's work either.

Remember dude, it's all about framing the answer. It isn't an "error". It's an "opportunity for improvement."

Yikes. I hope you're young and need the money :P

Sounds like exactly the kind of company that could get you very frustrated very quickly. I wouldn't be shocked if you'd be one of the better guys tech wise. Probably best to get as much customer contact as possible because that's really what you should get used to/good at if you want to move on eventually imo.

Either way, good luck. Constructive criticism is never wrong just don't make it sound like "lawl you suck". Pretty much +1 to sdturner02.

Believe me, I've seen far worse from other dev houses in Los Angeles. This company actually does have some decent sites. I get the impression that they lay down to customer demands very often. This was one thing I picked up on pretty quick when I was searching for a dev house at my old job; I would always pick a site with questionable look or UI and ask about the site. Nine times out of ten, the person would tell me that the fought really hard to strike that decision and they regret having that site listed on their gallery. My intention was never to insult the company but to strike up an interesting conversation and that would be my intention here.

There is one site where I have to ask what happened with the anchor tag to the banner logo because it points to a page that doesn't exist at all. I suspect that the customer took it upon themselves to hack core and add in this element, and something like that would probably be a good place to start since that shows I did see some of the work, do care about errors, and (hopefully) demonstrate my ability to have a soft hand when needed. I see it as an opportunity to shine and if it blows up in my face, oh well.

I really hope the assertion that I would be one of the better tech guys is incorrect. Also, considering the pay and the requisite needed experience, I have a feeling I would be assisting with PM and not actually have my feet to the fire from day one.

Yes, I need the money and no, I'm not very young. I mean, I'm over 30 but still under 40.

A little late to the discussion but I just watched the Johnathan Blow video and it was very convincing. Just to clarify, the video isn't about what game developers are doing wrong in terms of making a financially successful game. He's saying that the game industry HAS gotten a lot better at making a financially successful game, but his objection is a moral one against the new techniques that are being used.

I think before I saw the video my position would be that all games are basically just fun time-wastes. But if I think about it, not all "fun" is equal. Blow talks about the core of a game, where you strip away all the bells and whistles which make the game more fun, some of which may even induce compulsive behavior. That in itself isn't really a bad thing, but most games at their core at least have an idea that someone thought was fun or interesting. An example of a game at it's core which isn't fun or interesting is slot machines. It's really just pulling a lever and watching pictures match up, but the lights and reward structure make it addicting. He then talks about Zynga games in a similar way, and says that the people working there have no interest in making a game that at its core is fun.

And sure, who are we to say what's fun and what's not fun? Maybe people truly like Zynga game at its core. But I think there is something to the distinction, because at least anectdotally I've played some games where I felt good about the experience and other games where I didn't, regardless of how "compelling" they were to play or how long or how much I spent on them.

So does the argument imply that poker is unethical? I think it's a grey area, because for me I don't feel that poker is just a bunch of addictive patterns piled on top of nothing, and that there are parts of poker that are genuinely interesting outside of that. But I guess for a lot of people poker is pretty much the same as slots. And Blow does mention that in the video. He explicitly says that he's not going to draw that line between what is and isn't exploiting your players. That's a judgement that each game developer has to make themselves. But the main point is that that judgement should be made if they respect their players, even though there's a lot of incentive not to.

First, does he make any claims to back up his assertion that, "the people working there [at Zynga] have no interest in making a game that at its core is fun." Even if you believed (or could prove) that the Executive felt that way it seems hard to believe that all of their product managers and designers felt the same way.

I also find this whole premise of games needing to be fun at their core kind of ridiculous. Look at house gambling games: Slots (pushing a button), Roulette (picking a number), Craps (picking a number), Black Jack (following a fairly simple predefined strategy of asking for cards), etc. None of those games are fun at their core. Virtually no one plays these games without the reward structure but it seems to me that people still get genuine enjoyment from playing these games.

The potential reward is what makes it fun to some people. The core of the game is essentially the reward mechanism.

A lot of those Zynga games are like:
Click a button, wait 7 days for something to build behind the scenes OR spend $10 right now to get it instantly.

Cool, so we agree that some people find it fun. And I don't see how its somehow an ethically bad form of fun. It seems strange to me, especially on a poker forum, that people consider these types of games "evil", "offensive", or "immoral".