Over the past few weeks I have become increasingly interested in user interface design, and even more specifically icon design. I have never had the opportunity to create an icon, and wanted to give it a shot.
A couple weeks ago I began using Fluid.app for my absolutely favourite online music service, Grooveshark. I tried searching for a good icon to use, however came up short. On Friday I opened up Photoshop, and took to the task myself.
Using the amazing Grooveshark logo developed by the incredible David Pache, I took to designing the icon. I wanted to make sure I adhered as best I could to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), and made sure to include appropriate lighting and shadows.
Special thanks to John Ashenden for his advice and encouragement.
To use the icon for your own Grooveshark app, download the .zip file below and follow the included instructions.
A week or so ago I was introduced to the wonderful “Finer Things in Mac,” a blog devoted to the small details in Mac OS X and Mac apps in general.
While the Mac truly delivers an amazing experience, there are a few minor things that bug the heck out of me.
One of those things is the default focus in some preference panes. Allow me to illustrate:
As you can see, the default focus for keyboard input in this preference pane is the field where the keyboard shortcut is determined to control the zoom on the Mac. By default, this setting is set to the Control key.
When I was in this preference pane, I hit a few keys before closing the window. When I went to try the scrolling, my Control key no longer worked. Because the field to select the keyboard shortcut was selected by default when I opened the pane, any key strokes I made before closing the selection are set.
In this particular situation the fix was easy, as I knew the default key was Control and could set the setting back. However, in some preference panes I do not remember what the keyboard shortcut had been set to before I overwrote it. Sometimes it takes some digging to figure out what I needed to set it back to.
Anyway, this is a minor thing, but something I’ve happened across enough times to notice.
