Andrea Bernabei

SW Engineer at @CrowdStrike. Ex @Samsung R&D. Passionate tinkerer. Linux, Qt, 3D graphics. Previously @Canonical and @JollaHQ

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

@stskeeps Wow that's great!

[Carsten Munk @stskeeps]

The first OSS project I founded turns 25 years today! was 15 at the time and learnt a lot about OSS development, community, supporting your users and letting go when you can’t contribute any more - and it still staying alive despite. Much thanks to Syzop &rest of UnrealIRCd team.

[John Carmack @ID_AA_Carmack]

Act on press

This is a UI design hill I will die on, and it dismays me how often and hard I have had to fight for it.

Almost all interaction methods have a “press” and “release” event associated with them. Whenever possible, you should “do the thing” when you get the press event instead of waiting for the release event, because it makes the interaction feel substantially more responsive, and it reduces user errors by not allowing the focus to slide out of the hot box between press and release.

Even a “ballistic tap”, where your finger is intentionally bouncing off the button or touch surface, involves several tens of milliseconds delay between the press and release, and most button presses have well over a hundred ms dwell time. There is a delight in interfaces that feel like they respond instantly to your wishes, and the benefit to every single user is often more important than additional niche features.

Game developers, with simple UI toolkits, tend to get this right more often, but “sophisticated” app designers will often fight hard against it because it is mostly incompatible with options like interactive touch scrolling views, long press menus, and drag and drop.

Being able to drag scroll a web page or view with interactive controls in it is here to stay, and nets out way better than having to use a separate scroll bar, but there are still tons of fixed position controls that should act on press, and it is good UI design to favor them when possible.

In the early days of mobile VR, the system keyboard was a dedicated little OpenGL app that responded instantly. With full internationalization it became prudent to turn it into a conventional Android app, but the default act-on-release button behavior made it feel noticeably crappier. The design team resisted a push to change it, and insisted on commissioning a user study, which is a corporate politics ploy to bury something. I was irritated at how they tried to use leading questions and tasks, but It still came back one of the clearest slam-dunks I have seen for user testing – objectively less typos, expressed preference, and interview comments about the act-on-press version feeling “crisper” and “more responsive”.

So, I won that one, but the remaining times I brought it up for other interfaces, I did not, and you still see act-on-release throughout the Meta VR system interfaces.

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

@jarvisthedev @Canonical We all dream a world where we unconditionally help each other. DM me 👍

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

Did you know it is possible to volunteer even for just a 30mins heralding slot? Every little contribution helps, it all adds up :) join in if you can! Let's help keep FOSDEM going, together! #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

@jarvisthedev @Canonical It goes without saying: it's critical to also focus on the feedback (I hope) you got during the interview, to make sure you're ready next time you try 👌

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

@jarvisthedev @Canonical Hi Jarvis, my advice would be to approach it from the opensource side of things, if you haven't yet. Contribute to Ubuntu's projects, contribute code, docs, bugs, get your name known in the community and amongst devs :)

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

@BobSummerwill How did I miss this? So looking forward to hearing more about it next time we meet IRL!!

[Fairphone Newsroom @Fairphone]

Raise your hand if you've ever dropped your phone and the screen has broken 🙋‍♀️ 🙋

Tired of being ripped off for repairs? Make the switch to Fairphone and save (at least) 136 euros when repairing it 🪛 💸 ! The planet & your pocket will thank you for it 🩵

#ChangeIsInYourHands

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

Got to love @Fairphone !! Did you know Fairphone is paying factory workers a bonus?#fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

James is an excellent speaker, make sure you attend the TPM talk starting now!
#tpm #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

This is what happens when your software is everywhere and users find your email in the license documents :D #curl #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

It never goes away #curl #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

The challenge of developing very popular software #curl #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

People are more difficult than code. #fosdem2024 #curl

[Eddie Jaoude | DevRel | Open Source @eddiejaoude]

Ex-Google, ex-Uber, ex-Amazon, ex ... blah blah...

That doesn't impress me! Show me your GitHub profile - how do you collaborate and treat others

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

In 1998 (2y after creation), curl reached "massive popularity", 300 downloads! \o/ #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

"You too could have made curl!" #fosdem2024

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

Here's what caused the .ru TLD problem earlier this week. A technical problem. #fosdem

[Andrea Bernabei @faenil]

Come on in! #FOSDEM