One of the questions we are asked regularly when a client has a visa refused is – What are my chances of success if I appeal? Statistics would seem to indicate that the Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) often takes an unreasonable approach to their decision making. In the AAT Migration and Refugee Division caseload report […]

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The Australian government is making a significant update to the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT), reflecting its ongoing commitment to maintaining fair wages and conditions for skilled migrants. From 1 July 2024, the TSMIT will increase from $70,000 to $73,150. This change is part of the broader initiatives announced during the Jobs and Skills […]

The post Important Changes to the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT) Effective from 1 July 2024 appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.

In an era where remote work continues to thrive, the concept of being a digital nomad has gained significant traction. As boundaries blur and opportunities become global, many adventurous souls seek to combine work with travel, exploring new destinations while maintaining their professional endeavours. Australia, with its stunning landscapes, vibrant cities, and thriving economy, often […]

The post A Digital Nomad’s Guide to Australia on a Subclass 600 Visa appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.

On Wednesday 12 June 2024, the Minister for Home Affairs the Hon. Clare O’Neil MP announced changes that will stop certain visa holders being able to make further visa applications onshore. These changes will come into effect on 1 July 2024. The focus of these changes rests on student and other temporary visa holders. As […]

The post Minister for Home Affairs announces changes to onshore visa applications to stop ‘visa hopping’ appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.

The Restaurant (premium dining) industry Labour Agreement, also commonly known as the Fine Dining Labour Agreement is a specific labour agreement available in Australia designed to address skills shortages in the fine dining sector. This agreement allows fine dining restaurants to sponsor overseas skilled workers for specific roles that are otherwise difficult to fill within […]

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As we near Citizenship Day on 17 September, Australians have an opportunity to reflect on the meaning and importance of Australian citizenship and the responsibilities and privileges we have as citizens. Australian Citizenship Day was first celebrated in 2001. Every year on this day, Australia welcomes thousands of new citizens in local communities across the […]

The post Becoming an Australian Citizen by Conferral appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.

Australia is a nation built on migration, with many citizens tracing their heritage back to different parts of the world. For those born outside Australia to Australian parents, citizenship by descent offers a direct route to becoming an Australian citizen. What is Citizenship by Descent? Citizenship by descent is a way for individuals born outside […]

The post Becoming an Australian Citizen by Descent – A Path for Those Born Abroad appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.

When a Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (subclass 482) is granted by the Department of Home Affairs it come with a mandatory condition, Condition 8107. This condition governs the visa holder’s employment arrangements and ensures that they adhere to the requirements of the visa. While holding a TSS visa the individuals work rights were generally […]

The post If my business sponsors an overseas worker on a Temporary Skill Shortage (482) visa, can they work for another employer? appeared first on Australian Visa Experts.

Fuji released their new flagship camera this month, the X-Pro2. It is the first X-series camera to feature a 24MP sensor (compared to 16MP before) and it has a very interesting hybrid optical & electronic view finder. When I first […]

Being a photographer with some spending money and a bad habit of lusting after gear, I have amassed a lot of photo gear. Due to that I am often carrying at least two lenses and also prefer zoom lenses versus […]

This year went by in a hurry and now it is late December already and Jim Goldstein is running his blog project again, asking for galleries of everyones best photos of the year. Of course I knew I had to […]

As in years past Jim Goldstein is running his annual “Best Of” photography blog project in which I have participated since 2008. Usually I had a few thousand images to sort through. This year has been a rather sparse photo […]

For years now I’ve had a thing for old doorways with big old locks – now on Cyprus it escalated a bit due to the number of absolutely beautiful old doors. Many of them not restored but broken or run […]

Another year has almost passed and as has become tradition Jim Goldstein is running his annual Blog Project. You can find my entries for years past right here on my blog. This year I took a lot of images early […]

Another year – and in this case another decade – coming to an end. I haven’t had many chances to go take photos this year. In fact my battery charger got lost for months… just so you know how little […]

Unsolicited redesigns are fun. They’re also always criticized for their superficial approach that only takes care of surface level problems. Developers at Raureif have done yet another redesign of Wikipedia, but with one big difference from all the other redesigns: they’ve actually created a real, working app.

Since Wikipedia has a permissive license, you can repackage (and even sell) its content if you so wish, so there is little stopping anyone from implementing a functional redesign of the site (besides all the hard work). The team at Raureif have seized this opportunity and created Das Referenz – an iOS Wikipedia app. Apart from seeing your ideas tested in the real world, this hands-on approach to redesign also gives you an opportunity to profit from them: if the new UI provides enough value, people will pay you for it through app sales or via ads (Das Referenz uses both ads and a pay-for option to remove ads). That’s how you do a Wikipedia redesign.

A design pattern that is currently growing more popular is the fixed position bar at the top of the page. Sometimes the bar stays the same throughout, sometimes the header morphs into a slimmer bar as you scroll down, sometimes a completely new bar appears.

For example, as you scroll down on the New York Times website, the top navigation bar shifts from displaying typical site-wide navigation to article specific controls, showing the title of the article, the share link, the comments link, as well as compressed site-wide links:

At the Forbes website, as the user scrolls down the page a fixed position bar appears at the top promoting links to other articles the reader may find interesting, as well as a drop-down site navigation menu, search and user controls:

While these bars may be useful, they take up vertical space, reducing the reading space the user has chosen for themselves by picking the size of their browser window. Additionally, information displayed on these bars does not do anything to aid the reading of the actual content, making the bar more of a nuisance than help.

An interesting way to solve the issue is to hide the bar when scrolling down, and show it when scrolling up. On mobile interfaces, where space is precious, this technique is used to hide chrome, such as Web browser controls, but it’s also a good pattern to use on the Web. For example, Medium has just updated their new navigation bar. As you scroll down, the bar goes away, but it can be revealed at any time by scrolling up. Here’s what it looks like:

Less annoying than bars that just sit there as you scroll down, and makes the menu easy to access without having to scroll up to the top of the page. Scrolling up won’t necessarily mean the user wants the navigation – they may just be scanning the content – but 100% of the people wanting the navigation will be scrolling up, making it a pretty good compromise.

Update 2014-06-16

For anyone interested in using this design pattern on their own sites, Eduardo Martins Barbosa has created a jQuery plugin that performs much the same way as the bar on Medium, including the subtle effect of revealing the bar at the scrolling speed of the user rather than simply sliding it down upon scrolling up.

Anthony Colangelo makes the case for letting the browser and operating system decide how form elements should be styled:

Dropdowns and date pickers are just a sampling of the things that are better handled by systems themselves—a device will always be able to make better decisions about its use than the device-agnostic web.

The simplistic interactions of early input types gave us room to experiment, but the more complex interactions of modern fields leave little room for that. There’s only so much we can control before the browser and operating system take over, and then we’re at their whim. The web isn’t stopping any time soon—we’re headed for more complex input types with even less control exposed.

I agree. Trying to control form styling is a bit like trying to build sites for a specific set of screen widths. Yes, you can keep creating and managing more breakpoints, but you’ll always be fighting a losing battle because there will always be more screen sizes to design for. A better strategy is to choose a minimal amount of breakpoints to suit the content, and use a liquid layout to fill the rest. In the same way, browsers will always be evolving the implementation of their form elements, so trying to keep your own implementation consistent across all platforms will introduce an ongoing maintenance burden. Of course there will be cases where you have to implement your own styles – the form element you want may not exist, or may not be suited to your needs – but if there is no great need then it’s best to leave the specifics of form implementation to the browser.

Google has recently been experimenting with burying the full URL of the page you’re at and showing just the domain. Yesterday Apple unveiled their next installment of the OS X operating system in which we can see the new Safari interface doing just the same: truncating the full URL to just the domain name. This behavior is consistent with what Safari currently does on iOS powered devices. In another change, the title bar is now completely gone, its place taken by the simplified address bar.

So that’s at least one major browser deciding to go the route of hiding the full URL. I’m not sure whether I like this change or not, but I do like the idea of dropping the title of the page. Since page tabs already show the title of each page (albeit truncated), it doesn’t make sense to duplicate it again just a few pixels above them. Dropping that title bar removes a whole line of interface chrome, making the thing feel cleaner and more compact. This is what other browsers have done long ago, and it’s nice seeing Safari follow suit. Obviously the title still remains very important in the tabs – you cannot use the domain for the tab label because that won’t let you differentiate between different pages on the same site – but it doesn’t make sense to dedicate much chrome to it when its main purpose is quick identification rather than description. The purpose of description is handy in a different context, e.g. managing bookmarks. There, you’d want to see the titles in full.

Co.Design asked Tobias Frere-Jones of Hoefler & Co. to give his thoughts on Apple’s choice of Helvetica as an interface typeface for the upcoming OS X Yosemite update:

Despite its grand reputation, Helvetica can’t do everything. It works well in big sizes, but it can be really weak in small sizes. Shapes like ‘C’ and ‘S’ curl back into themselves, leaving tight “apertures”–the channels of white between a letter’s interior and exterior. So each shape halts the eye again and again, rather than ushering it along the line. The lowercase ‘e,’ the most common letter in English and many other languages, takes an especially unobliging form. These and other letters can be a pixel away from being some other letter, and we’re left to deal with flickers of doubt as we read.

This reminds me of what Erik Spiekerman wrote about Helvetica:

[Helvetica] really wasn’t designed for small sizes on screens. Words like milliliter can be very difficult to decipher. If you ever had to read or write a password with 1, i, l or I, you know the problem.

Still, I wouldn’t keep Lucida Grande for HiDPI displays. With a 2× resolution jump (4× pixels) pixel fitting becomes less of an issue, and pixel optimized typefaces like Lucida Grande begin to look crude in comparison with typefaces made primarily for print. Legibility obviously still matters just as much, but the choice need no longer be bound to fonts optimized for low resolution displays.

Min Ming Lo analyzes the various designs of the share icon currently in use. He concludes:

The best icon is not the one that is the simplest, nor the one that makes the most sense. Instead, the best icon is one with which most users are already familiar. An effective icon is one that requires minimum effort for the user to translate that symbol to an action.

I think part of the problem with coming up with a good share icon is that the concept of sharing physical items doesn’t directly map onto the concept of sharing digital resources, which oftentimes simply involves posting a link on a public feed. The latter is closer to broadcasting a message rather than dividing up a resource or experiencing a thing simultaneously. Icons with more specificity – e.g. a tweet icon, a Facebook like icon – are unambiguous; they relate directly to a service and the kind of interaction that service allows. Trying to cover them all with an umbrella of “sharing” is difficult, if not impossible, to do clearly.

The problem doesn’t lie in the icon, but in the vagueness of what it represents. For this reason I think Apple’s icon resembling an upload action is probably the best choice because what it represents is not so much sharing but putting the content somewhere else. Whether the full file is uploaded or just the link is given doesn’t really matter, what matters is that the thing in question is transmitted somewhere. It’s also worth considering whether the fight for an icon-only button is worth it, and that it may not be easier and better to just use the words “share” to describe the action. There’s a reason why the stop sign just says “STOP” – you can represent it with something else, but the negative effect on clarity is just not worth it.

Joel Unger approaches the blurry, semi-transparent window aesthetic, recently introduced in iOS7 and now making its way to OS X Yosemite, from the standpoint of evolutionary biology. He argues that the reasons for this latest trend, as well as other trends, are: 1) the visual effect is relatively rare, and 2) the effect is expensive to achieve (in this case expensive in terms of graphics processing power). Both of these go hand in hand given that what is expensive to achieve is probably also going to be rare, at least for the period it still remains expensive. While these two things are initially the differentiator for the trendsetter, they will inevitably be mimicked by others, resulting in a design trend.

Curt Arledge ran a user test to find out whether hollow icons perform any different to solid icons. Hollow icons are an icon aesthetic popularized by iOS7 – icons that are composed of thin lines rather than filled in shapes. It was previously theorized that this icon style required more cognitive processing, and thus would perform worse than typical solid icons.

Arledge found no significant variation between the icon styles. One combination performed worse than others: white hollow icons on a black background. Others performed similarly, irrespective of whether the icon was on a white or black background. What seemed to matter most is not the style itself but how meaningful the design of the icon itself is. For example, a filled in speech bubble is less recognizable than a hollow one because a speech bubble is something that is often depicted as an outline. On the other hand, an outline doesn’t add anything to the icon of a cloud, so a solid shape performed better in that case. Arledge also found that the lock icon performed the worst. Looking at the lock icon used in the test one could guess why: the thing has no keyhole, and so looks just as much as a shopping bag as it does a lock. Adding a keyhole would likely provide enough of a clue to dispel the confusion. The takeaway here is that the style doesn’t really matter – at least not enough to make a significant difference. What matters is how well the icon represents its object. If the icon is good, then it will work whether or not it is implemented as a solid shape or as an outline.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.¹

Publilius Syrus

When software in a particular category stops rapidly evolving and its interface begins to develop along a set of accepted patterns, designers begin to decorate. Decoration is a luxury, it is something you can only afford to do once the functionality of the thing you are working on has been implemented to a high degree. It is in the period of gradual evolution and established interaction norms that designers begin to decorate, begin to focus on small aesthetic details for the visual experience alone. Prolonged times of slow evolution lead to decorative excess. Unable to differentiate software on the level of how it works, developers try to push it ahead on the level of how it looks. When the buttons in all the apps are the same, when the controls all appear in about the same place, when all the interfaces are laid out in a similar fashion, designers begin to differentiate their work by changing the appearance of the interface rather than its function or its structure. The interface begins to gather decorative moss.

The recent minimalist trends in software design – Metro, flat, iOS7, Material – are attempts to scrape away the moss without a radical alteration in the underlying function. It is a reaction to the friction felt between the old stratum of software that has cemented its implementation and thus could afford to wear a rich visual coat, and a new stratum of software that yearns for a radically different approach to interface design. The old and the new cannot co-exist in harmony because the appearance of the two look nothing alike. The layers of visual excess painted over old software apps – e.g. skeuomorphic visuals, rich textures, reflection effects, etc – became baggage to designers who wished to develop something new, for example, using animation to help differentiate between the different states of the app and create a more fluid experience. If you wish to move content around, scale things, change colors, morph one element from one into another, all the superfluous visuals like gloss and textures simply get in the way. Minimalist design makes animation simpler.

The old paint was scraped away not for the sake of a minimalist style, but to allow the designer to create a new kind of experience, an experience where the content making up the interface would be more alive and more dynamic than ever. Buttons morph into panes, panels bounce back and forth to reflect the speed of the finger used to pull them across the glass screen, bits of content fly from place to place signifying a change in state or context, icons move or change shape, and everything gently slides in or fade out as you navigate around the digital canvas. Without the baggage of skeuomorphic visuals, rich textures or decorative styles, the designer can now experiment with motion, can begin to craft a new kind of visual experience from the content itself.

1. The saying has two interpretations. In one, moss is seen as a sign of stagnation. If you don’t act, if you don’t keep moving, you will begin to rust away. In another, moss is seen as something desirable. If you keep changing projects, if you keep losing focus, you will never be able to build up anything worthwhile. I think the duality of the message is quite fitting for the analogy in the post. Excessive decoration is bad design, it is a distraction that adds unnecessary baggage to our work, but decoration is also beautiful, something that enhances the experience of people using our work. Decoration is not in itself good or bad, just as design is neither good or bad – it is how it is implemented that makes all the difference.

Delphine Joly Pujol est l’âme poétique et inspirée qui se cache derrière OcciD Créations. Issue du milieu de la biologie, dont elle emprunte le vocabulaire pour intituler ses collections, l’artiste est passionnée de céramique depuis 15 ans. Fascinée par la naissance d’une pièce à partir des quatre éléments que sont l’eau, la terre, l’air et […]

Le Prix Picto pour la photographie de mode 2022 a dévoilé ses lauréats : Christopher Barraja remporte le Grand Prix, Camille Brasselet le deuxième et la dotation le19M et Antoine Henault le troisième prix ainsi que la dotation Filippo Roversi. La cérémonie de remise des prix a eu lieu le mardi 19 avril au Palais […]

Mademoiselle Salty est une marque née dans l’esprit de Marion Ferrari, lors d’une année de vie en Indonésie. L’équipe derrière elle, liée par une passion de l’océan, du surf, des voyages, des bijoux et de la culture indonésienne, propose des bagues, colliers ou encore des bracelets et accessoires fabriqués à la main. Ces derniers sont […]

Découverte du plus grand hôtel des Seychelles, situé dans un domaine immense pour un séjour avec des activités variés. Membre de la gamme des hôtels Constance avec une forte réputation, cet établissement est adapté pour les familles et les couples avec le luxe de choisir entre deux plages et cinq restaurants. Plus de détails en […]

Le court métrage “Moonlight Mojave” est un sublime timelapse pris dans le parc national de Joshua Tree, dans un paysage nocturne. Un ciel étoilé hypnotique se déploie au dessus du désert que la lune et les étoiles illuminent comme si c’était le jour. Le film fait partie du projet Skyglow, qui veut sensibiliser au problème […]

Depuis son plus jeune âge, Sami Bencheikh arpente le Sud-Ouest de la France. Interne de radiologie à l’hôpital de Bayonne, il a débuté la photographie au début de ses études de médecine. Motivé par de grands photographes comme Ben Thouard pour ne citer que lui, il a trouvé en l’océan un refuge au stress du […]

Loin d’effectuer un travail archéologique (quoique…), Rachel Crisp alias @bluesunthreads créé des broderies inspirées par la nature. L’artiste, photographe et guide touristique réalise des œuvres sur lesquelles figurent des crânes de dinosaures, entourés de végétation. Travaillant sur plusieurs formats l’artiste donne l’impression, grâce à son travail sur la texture, que ces os reposent sur le […]

Parfois, en levant les yeux au ciel et avec un peu d’imagination, on peut imaginer des formes dans les nuages. Une sorte de jeu qui parle à tous et qui aide à apprécier la beauté de ce qui nous entoure. Dans un autre genre, ce sont les ombres que Vincent Bal interprète. L’artiste utilise en […]

Sous les mains expertes de l’artiste serbe Endre Penovác, l’encre coule. Vivant son histoire naturellement, elle occupe l’espace sur le papier. Le peintre vient ensuite souligner quelques traits, dessiner des yeux, apporter une touche de couleur ou ajouter des détails qui viennent créer une texture. En ressortent des animaux sauvages et domestiques à l’allure quasi […]

Le film Dune de Denis Villeneuve a remporté six statuettes le 24 mars à 94e cérémonie des Oscars. Un franc succès pour ce film monumental avec Timothée Chalamet et Zendaya à l’affiche. Adaptation du roman fleuve de Franck Herbert de 1965, le film de science-fiction remporte les prix du Meilleur montage, Meilleure musique originale, Meilleur son, […]

That title is a lot to digest, but as part of my (ongoing and never ending) journey to master effective leadership, it would be irresponsible not to cover the topic of autonomy. Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people …

The post Autonomy, failure, and “pushing down”; what I’m learning about leadership appeared first on Nathan Rice.

I made some poor decisions in my 20s. Or rather, a series of poor decisions that seemed to stack and compound. I took on tens of thousands of dollars of credit card, student loan, and tax debt. I gained 70 pounds since graduating high school, because I ate way too much fast food and pretty …

The post How to tackle big goals by narrowing your focus with two simple questions appeared first on Nathan Rice.

In December of 2012, I officially became a parent. Thinking back on those first years of my daughter’s life (before our other kids), it’s amazing the things you remember and forget (until something reminds you). Now that she’s a bit older, I see that one of the easy things to forget is what a handful …

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I spent the better part of the twenty-teens working as a software developer/engineer. To be honest, I paid very little attention to intentional professional growth during most of that span. We were a relatively small company, and I lacked the confidence and experience to think ambitiously. Being a great software engineer can be satisfying and …

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About a month into the economic shutdown that came as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started to notice something that was, let’s say, peculiar. At least peculiar to me. I’m an introvert. I certainly don’t deny that. The “stay at home” orders were really not a problem for me or my family. I …

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Habits are strange and beautiful things. They’re sometimes really hard to form or break, and yet they are absolutely key to living a successful life. We simply do not have enough willpower in reserve to do all the things we know we need to do. So, the brain forms habits to offload the task of …

The post 7 good habits that stuck (and 3 that I’m still working on) appeared first on Nathan Rice.

I love a good quote. There’s just something about finding a sentence or phrase that speaks directly to the part of your brain that needed convincing. So when I see a good quote, something that speaks to me or illuminates a concept that I needed to see more clearly, I take notice and try to …

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