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What's the difference between vector graphics and raster graphics?
I have been playing around with various free trails before buying an editing program. I am somewhat confused about layers, Raster, Vector, Adjustment Layer etc. How do they differ & how do I use them?
I am slowly learning about masks, but I think I need to learn to walk before I try to run.
We are making a website for pixel art that will have a diverse audience.
Our leading tagline for the site is: "Real-time, collaborative pixel art." Real-time meaning updates to the pages will be immediate without page reload (real-time technology).
We are not wordsmiths by any means. So we are curious as to the scope of the term "real-time" - will this term be understood among a broad audience? If not, what term would be better? Perhaps "Live"?
Answer
Real-time is a term that is not just used in the tech world:
Real-time Leader Updates for the Masters
I agree with Koen Lageveen, "live" doesn't always mean "real-time" in your context. Sometimes you see "live" and "up-to-the-minute" together, whereas "real-time" is trying to convey the idea of "up-to-the-millisecond" type of updates.
I'd stick with the term "real-time".
I have trouble imagining things. With me everything is blurred, as if I were almost blind. That's why I find it hard to describe things. For example, the protagonists enter a castle. I have a very rough idea of what the castle looks like. But when it becomes more precise, it becomes much more difficult. I couldn't say exactly how the rooms are decorated, only that they are decorated. I'm always worried that I won't describe enough and the readers can' t get a picture of the setting. How much description is necessary and when is it too little?
I like card games, particularly Magic: the Gathering, because they're a nice mixture of strategy and luck. I don't like chess because it's pure strategy, and I don't like bingo because it's pure luck (this analogy is an oversimplification).
For a piece of fiction, how does a writer introduce an element of random circumstance without it ultimately seeming contrived?
Answer
Finding the sword of Godric Gryffindor would have been a DeM had the individual elements of that type of event not been introduced before hand.
Luke (a farm boy who has never flown a space ship) firing the killing shot at the Death Star is a DeM, except that the elements are introduced beforehand. (a. He's got the force, b. they have the plans, c. R2 probably helps out, d. he misses a few times, e. his buddy Han helps out too.)
Many solutions would be DeM except that all the pieces are introduced first in believable ways.
And that's how you do it. For the event you are considering, establish the points to the event before hand. It's a puzzle - you are writing a puzzle. Give all the pieces to the reader. Do it in a way that the reader doesn't necessarily see how they go together, except in hindsight. Then when you provide the solution, they smack their heads.
I think it's hard to make a character standout and embody their traits without becoming cliched or cartoony. How do you do this? What are some tips to enlivening a character and making them memorable?
Answer
There's two issues here. In no particular order:
Some of the best advice I ever had about making quintessential characters came from James N. Frey author of "How To Write Damn Good Fiction". In that book he gave two essential pointers to making a good protagonist which is a great start. Again in no particular order:
Going to the current market leader in quintessential but accessible characters Pixar if we look at Woody from Toy Story, Pixar nail that. He is shown to be a great leader with a balance of energy, humility and kindness. However he is also afraid of being abandoned, obsolete, finished with. Being made redundant, in all senses is a basic human fear and Pixar tap into that.
This dichotomy between capability and sympathy is a useful one. Most characters could do with having one attractive quality and one sympathetic one, even those supposed to be antagonistic.
To go deeper, however, many writers give characters "flaws" in the hope that this will add dimension. While it's true that perfect characters are grating in the extreme a flaw doesn't automatically avoid cliche. For example the self-destructive cop, the neurotic beauty and the anti-social genius all present some attractive qualities and some flaws. All are cliches. Not only that but it is possible to write characters like this who are not at all quintessential, in these instances they seem like cardboardy facsimiles of their quintessentially fun but cliched counterparts in other stories.
This seems to leave us up a tree. We can make a character capable, sympathetic and flawed but still cliched and possibly not even very convincing (although the more they are sympathetic the less they may seem unconvincing).
The final part of a really complex character is to go into the business of archetypes. There are many weighty articles available on the topic of archetypes but the one I found most revealing actually dealt with hero character archetypes in romantic fiction. There are two articles one about male archetypes and one about female archetypes.
Before you tune out. Yes, romance novels use cliche like a baker uses flour, but like many things complex constructs are made of simple ones and I found the hero archetypes discussed in these articles to be like a list of primary colours for character building. What occurred to me is that a proper multi-dimensional character uses these character archetypes like paint makes a beautiful picture, mixing, blending and shifting. Where as colour and tone are positional on a canvas a character's tone and shade are defined by the context in which they find themselves in the story. A deep character sees themselves as various archetypes in different contexts, one archetype for work, one for relationships, one for being a parent.
To go even deeper maybe certain common situations cause them to use other archetypal behaviours in certain situations within those contexts e.g. mostly they are a "chief" type parent but when it comes to discipline they find themselves unable to be authoritarian and instead fold to become the "best friend" type giving their own children mixed messages about authority and morality.
The key thing is that hero archetypes often relate to the way a person sees themselves as an actor in their own life. People are constantly trying to live up to their own expectations of what they "should" be doing. Most people don't see their lives as one story, people change their own archetypal make up within single relationships, within life situations and even within the stuff of life such as marriage, parenthood or education. As my wife put it after reading the list of archetypes: "I can be all of those within a period of four hours"
In fact although the articles linked above talk about "male" and "female" archetypes I would tend to rather classify them as "rational active" and "emotional passive" archetypes allowing the sixteen of them to be unisex. So a very male character could find himself resorting to a "female" archetype in a certain situation or even in a single archetype about a particular emotional topic.
The final factor to consider is that although in a hero's story a hero's behaviour is correct and proper the lines between "good", "evil", "right" and "wrong" are a lot blurrier in reality. So most people behave as if they are some kind of hero, whether it is appropriate for the situation or not. On such rocky ground are the foundations of self-justification laid.
So in our quest for quintessence without cliche we've gone from the simple business of vetting our characters for properties of capability and relatability to the need to make characters a melange of different archetypal flavours and colours. I think the "attractive/sympathetic" dynamic is the most important part to making characters people want to spend time with. Sympathetic is essential at all times. Giving people random flaws which can't be attributed to any realistic motivation is what tends to let characters fall flat.
As per this question, it has been brought up in comments that methods to specify colors for brand guidelines are moving from PMS to other techniques (ColorCert, spectral data...).
How do these approaches differ from PMS and how would one implement them in a brand style guide?
Answer
Major brands have been moving away from using Pantone colours as a method of defining their visual brand identity for quite some time.
The reason for this is that brands want (and need) absolute consistency of colour across marketing platforms, packaging formats, POS, etc. It has been shown that even small, hard to notice variations in colour reproduction can have a measurable impact on sales.
Using a Pantone reference alone fails to fulfil this requirement for various reasons. Pantone books are not printed on the same substrate as all of the required formats and they are not even all the same colour! This makes them a difficult (some would say impossible) target for manufactures. That said, they perform a valuable role as a starting point for selecting and defining colour.
Once the starting point is defined, major brands then move into a process of print trials and proof verification. The results of that process are then fed back into the design process.
For example: consider a fizzy drink that comes in red packaging - Pantone 200 is a nice dark red. You would then ask the manufactures of the cans, bottle labels, bottle caps, multipacks, POS, etc, etc to run a print trial to get their best match to Pantone 200. None of them will hit it exactly. You then take the furthest away of the colours and supply that as a sample to all the other manufacturers and you go again. (If it is important that the brand colour be reproduced out of CMYK then this will often be the governor). You now (probably) have a much closer grouping. Another iteration or two and you will have a consensus of a red that can be achieved by everyone, consistently. You then define and distribute the specification of this colour as "standard fizzy drink red" and everybody matches to that, knowing that it is achievable. Along with this, you would output digital proofs, based on press fingerprints, to verify that they match the final print. All of these trials are signed off by the brand manager (or similar). The Pantone 200 swatch that was the original inspiration is now confined to history.
The colour that is included in the brand style guide is now "standard fizzy drink red" and the definition of how to reproduce it may include various colour definitions, such as Lab, RGB, CMYK, etc. It may also include information regarding specific ink suppliers and/or substrate manufacturers that were part of the trial process and therefore can provide proven results. Colour data (i.e. CXF) files and/or print profiles may also be distributed alongside the style guide.
There would then need to be a process of colour measurement and control applied to the production of the packaging, etc. This might include press passes or samples being supplied to brand managers, for instance. All of these supplied samples would need to adhere to an agreed tolerance, usually measured with a photo spectrometer, and excessive variation would be a cause for concern, discussion and potential contract cancellation.
As the length of this answer might imply, this is a HUGE subject, an expensive process and (for some people) a full time job.
This is not within the scope (or budget) of small brands and companies and is therefore only a consideration for major brands. It is however, a worthy consideration of designers who contribute to (or aspire to contribute to) the visual brand identities of major global brands.
I'm currently working on a user experience problem that involves a user's multiple devices (smart phone, tablet, laptop, etc.)
What I'm trying to accomplish is that the app "intuitively senses" when the user is on their laptop/desktop (as opposed to smart phone or tablet), and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
My question is: what sort of criteria would suffice to determine if a user is at their computer?
For example:
Answer
Functionally, I think it's pretty clear what evidence indicates a user is actively using a given device:
That's it. The input device could be waking up the device, logging in, triggering any mouse event (move, scroll, click, etc.), triggering any touch event (tap, drag, etc.). With desktop PC's (dying breed that they are) and plugged-in laptops and mobile devices, you can't count on the device being "not idle" to mean there is a person sitting there.
A tricky and major exception to this rule is when the user is doing something passive for an extended period of time - ie watching a movie. Not sure how to handle that, frankly.
How bad is it if you are wrong? Is it worse to be wrong in one direction (false positive vs. false negative)?
Technically, this is probably a crazy-hard, make-lots-of-compromises-and-educated-guesses problem, but I think your goal should be to see whether there has been recent user input.
I'm currently answering the exercises at the back of every chapter of the book "Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance" and would like to compare my answers to the correct ones. Tried looking at the back of the book but there are no answers. Appreciate if someone can direct me to where I can find the correct answers. Thanks in advance :D
My application has need of only two button with around 15 characters for each, on the main screen. The problem is the screen is large on tablet. How can I present these two button ?
Answer
Centered design, on top of each other both in landscape and portrait? Looks easy to use, but it really depends on context. I'm assuming the buttons are a group, and that's the basis of my design
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
I recently spoke to an options trader that tried to demonstrate option pricing by considering a random walk of balls dropping down a lattice so the underlying stochastic process is a simple random walk of say 100 steps.
The contract considered is $(U_{100}-K)^{+}$ where $U_{100}$ is the number of times the ball goes "up". He states that this is an option. I think he doesn't understand what an option is because there is no underlying market in this case (ie you can't exactly trade the balls to hedge your position and there is no underlying that moves based on what the ball does except for the contract itself). I would say that this is a bet or a game that you would pay for at a casino.
So my question is: Is there a resource that actively explains or demonstrates why a derivative is called a derivative? As in why insurance and bets are fundamentally different from derivatives?
Answer
From the introduction (Chapter 1) of Baxter's and Rennie's excellent book Financial Calculus:
With markets where the stock can be bought and sold freely and arbitrarily positive and negative amounts of stock can be maintained without cost, trying to trade forward using the strong law would lead to disaster […].
[…]
But the existence of an arbitrage price, however surprising, overrides the strong law. To put it simply, if there is an arbitrage price, any other price is too dangerous to quote.
[…]
The strong law and expectation give the wrong price for forwards. But in a certain sense, the forward is a special case. The construction strategy $-$ buying the stock and holding it $-$ certainly wouldn’t work for more complex claims. The standard call option which offers the buyer the right but not the obligation to receive the stock for some strike price agreed in advance certainly couldn’t be constructed this way. If the stock price ends up above the strike, then the buyer would exercise the option and ask to receive the stock – having it salted away in a drawer would then be useful to the seller. But if the stock price ends up below the strike, the buyer will abandon the option and any stock owned by the seller would have incurred a pointless loss.
Thus maybe a strong-law price would be appropriate for a call option, and until 1973, many people would have agreed. Almost everything appeared safe to price via expectation and the strong law, and only forwards and close relations seemed to have an arbitrage price. Since 1973, however, and the infamous Black-Scholes paper, just how wrong this is has slowly come out. Nowhere in this book will we use the strong law again. […] All derivatives can be built from the underlying $-$ arbitrage lurks everywhere.
When I write my short stories, I usually end up using a direct style as follows:
Tim remembered the day he had to say goodbye to Cathy. He did not really have a choice. He had to let go of Cathy, for she had no future with him.
"I'll never forget you," that was the last thing Cathy had said as he had pushed her away.
The words had continued to haunt Tim all these years.
Tim picked up his backpack. It was time to move on again. He had just caught a glimpse of Cathy.
My stories usually have flashbacks and dialogues that I use to try to connect seamlessly the past to the present.
Question: Does a direct style like the above appear snappy?
I am after some techniques that I can use to turn a direct style (like the above) into more interesting and captivating prose. Based on an answer below, this is a minimalist style.
Question: Does minimalist style need to be descriptive?
Note: I hate to admit that I really do not see much wrong with the above. Perhaps this is my style of writing and I cannot improve it further. I would be very grateful for more feedback.
Answer
I agree with you. There's nothing wrong with that direct style. I even prefer it over the indirect/complicated one.
I believe this style is called minimalism, the biggest exponents being Hemingway and Raymond Carver.
That being said you can vary your prose and make it more captivating in the following ways:
Start the sentence with a verb/action (e.g. Picking up his pack, Tim started moving again).
Use metaphors/similes (e.g. The words had continued to haunt Tim all these years, like ghosts lurking in the shadows).
Vary sentence length (e.g. Tim remembered the day he had to say goodbye to Cathy. He did not really have a choice; he had to let go of Cathy. She had no future with him.
When describing the physical features of my more important characters, I often don't add much. I of course describe important features, especially if they will be relevant in the story. For example Harry Potter's scar. Part of my problem is my mental model of my characters is their personality and not their physical features.
As my readers, what is the bare minimum you need to know about the main character(s) physical appearance? Can I get by casually mentioning their height and gender and, if needed, their symbolic plot driving scar? Do you need more? If so what? If length is important, I am mostly interested in answers that focus on long short stories or novella length works. I would be curious to hear about other lengths as well if you have insight on that as well.
Answer
In my opinion Harry Potter is actually an excellent example of how to describe characters. Harry is described in detail because his exact appearance has important bearing on the story. Ron's appearance is slightly less detailed but shows how he is clearly related to the other Weasley's. Hermione is describe as bushy haired with buck-teeth, nothing more is known about her because it isn't important. Rowling has said Hermione could have been black but since it didn't have a bearing on the story it was never included.
One thing you need to avoid in describing characters is changing that description later on. Within the first few chapters your readers will have developed an image of that character in their mind. This will be based on the details you gave and biased by their own experiences. If you later add details to the character that conflict with this vision they will reject is and may lose interest in the book entirely. This is known as 'breaking the contract with the reader' and should be avoided.
How do you track several plot lines woven together?
I usually run 2 or 3 plot-lines in parallel, so I detail those plots each in a separate document. But as the book goes on, it is sometimes difficult to make sure all those "threads" are woven together nicely because I have to manage 2-3 mini-books instead of one.
Any advice? I try not to rely on memory alone, because I tend to forget things I don't write down.
Answer
I'm a visual person. I have a large whiteboard which I used to draw graphs, flowcharts, etc... If you're limited on room, like I am, take a picture of your drawing before you erase it and keep it as a digital file.
You could also try the technique displayed in a lot of police investigation shows: note cards and/or pictures taped to a wall with colored thread to show the connections between the characters/events.
Any ideas how can I create "subtly pushed" buttons like the "Active filter" buttons in the following screenshot?
The mockup is from here.
UPDATE: Here's what I have got so far:
Answer
Try using an Inner Shadow Layer Style:
You can tweak the size and opacity to adjust how subtle you want the effect to be
Taking a very close look at the example, it "pops out" using 3 features:
I used the following layer style settings to try and recreate the example as close as possible (in addition to a Gradient Overlay of course):
I', trying to understand difference between DPI and PPI.
I learned that a DOT is the smallest physical entity a device can show or printer can print and a DOT may consists of R,G,B elements.
A pixel is the smallest amount of information within a digital image.
So, does that mean in coloured picture each R,G,B value are individual pixel?
If so, then each dot consists of more than one pixel, am I right?
If I'm right is there some attribute like pixel per dot?
Answer
I like a lot the reasoning of the question. I will break a little a rigorous analysis for the sake of making this answer as simple (and practical) as possible.
Each dot consists of more than one pixel... Is there some attribute like pixel per dot?
This could be, to some extent, be the other way. One pixel formed by several dots.
And my short answer is Yes. There are some correlations.
A printed "dot" (as the basic unit of a printer) can contain only 2 types of states. Or is it printed or not.
A pixel is not only a digital "dot" it can contain different levels of information. The most basic type of pixel is a monochromatic 1bit pixel. It is the same case. Either you have a black pixel or you have a white pixel.
If you use a monochromatic bitmap the relationship can be exactly 1 to 1. One black pixel = one printed dot.
Most of the time we do not use a monochromatic image.
If I have a pixel that can have for example 3 values: 1-white 2-Gray 3-Black I could resolve this using a 2x1 dots grid. 0dot=white, 1dot=Gray, 2dots=black.
This means that the reproducible levels of gray depending on how many dots we assign to match the depth of the pixel.
Normally on commercial print we have 8-bit images producing our printed images. If we have a basic grid of 16x16 dots we can have 256 combinations of dots to have 256 levels of gray.
It is not a direct dependency, (It is an optimization issue) so it is not a direct relationship or it is carved in stone. But you will find on commercial print this numbers together: 300ppi, 150lpi, 2400dpi (150x16=2400).
Things are a bit more complicated than that. But that relationship is a base to optimize these conversions.
I need to finish a paper and video about this. I am preparing physical tests, macro images, etc.
Let us analyze a bit more the case of the commercial print 300ppi, 150lpi, 2400dpi
16x150=2400 is a direct transformation when your screen angle is 0° and is the easiest to understand.
But we have some other angles, like a halftone screen at 45°, where we need a file resolution of at least 212ppi
So, why do we use 300ppi instead of 150ppi when we have 150lpi?
Here is a simulation of a 150lpi screen at 0°. Watch the red circle.
On the left, we have a 150ppi file. The circle could start growing for example from the center.
On the right, we have a 300ppi file. Now the rip has better information on how to start to grow the circle. Both are 150lpi but the extra information helped a bit to produce a better halftone, but after that, the extra information is lost.
If we use a lower resolution, for example, 75ppi, each line-dot is repeated 2x horizontally and 2x vertically. and this will be noticeable as a pixelation.
Some amount of pixels assigned to a line to produce enough different shades of gray (16x150=2400).
A workable, optimized range of pixels assigned to produce a nice line-dot. 300-212ppi on a 150lpi output. We can push this in some cases to 150ppi.
If we want to get rough I'm listing some other things to consider.
Halftone or dither
Viewing distance
Type of paper
Print technique
The pixel on electronic devices
Pixel density
Sensors
What really is a pixel
Types of pixels
etc.
That was the easy part.
On inkjet printers (and other systems) we do not use a line. We shoot the dot directly into the paper.
The error diffusion shoots "random" amounts of ink droplets according to the percentage of the color they want to reproduce.
But they do not need to fill a grid, so it can shoot for example some droplets and shoot a different amount of droplets if it has some new color information next to it.
Think of the difference with the other approach. Using LPI will be like if "it's a military formation". But here we have "a bunch of civilian dots playing around". They produce an overall shade, but no formation is detectable.
This means that using the same 300ppi file will have a bit more final detail printed on a photographic inkjet printer that on a magazine (remember that the information is lost in sake to produce a nice 150lpi dot)
This also means that you can use a 200ppi image and still will have more detail than the 150lpi counterpart.
But as this is random it would be impossible to say "this droplet corresponds to this pixel."
I ignore the internal algorithm used to produce the "randomness percentage", but there is a chance they have a 16x16 "grid" or 256 unit somewhere in the mathematics of it. They need to produce some density of droplets shoot according to one maximum unit.
Just a note on joojaa's comment about "a pixel is not a little dot"
If we treat a pixel just as an array of digital information, the trick is how to convert this information between information systems.
If our system A supports 1bit information (2 states) and our target system B also supports 1-bit information per unit, the relation is 1 to one.
If our system A supports 2bit information, and our target system B only supports 1-bit information, we need to grab two units to reproduce the same amount of information as our the system A.
And so on...
There is a direct correlation between a pixel depth and a dot array in terms of information.
In previous Photoshop versions, we were able to move freely anchor points in the document but in Photoshop CC, by default, anchor points follow the pixel grid. I found how to disable it (visually) but the magnetism is always present.
So my question is: How to disable pixel grid magnetism?
Edit: magnetism options are all disabled
Answer
I found the solution: see the screenshot bellow
I don't understand why this option is hidden in preferences panel and why it is enabled by default, his place should be in "snap to" menu and disabled
I'm developing a mobile app and dealing with various UI/UX issues. I'm open to all kinds of ideas at this stage, however some designers I consult with seem to be zealots for bottom-navigation and are hesitant in actually analyzing whether the bottom-nav is actually best for my app; they just want me to use the bottom tabs navigation as if it's some UI law.
One point I try to bring up is that my business model has users who aren't typical one-handed mobile users, are tech savvy, would use my app more of a tool, and would spend only a few minutes in it. The app isn't a typical lazy-content-browsing experience where you want to minimize fingers-over-top-of-screen interference, and where you want to keep the use transfixed and spending time in the app.
Anyways, I'd like to hear about situations where a bottom nav was decided-on, or started-with, and you had good reason to eliminate it and go with another navigation design.
Most articles out there talk about eliminating hamburger menus and diving into bottom nav. Is the converse simply going back to hamburger menu?
Answer
You're right in questioning in the "one nav fits all" mindset. It really depends on your content. Here's a few things for thought.
Bottom nav is shown to increase engagement
There is a lot of research about this now. I highly suggest looking at Luke Wroblewski, specifically he talks about bottom nav here, here, here and here. Like you said, however, your primary goal may not be driving longer, sustained engagement.
Hamburger menus hide information, but that may be ok
It's proven in research that hamburger menus hide information, but this could be ok. If you need to include several functions but they are not of premier importance, hiding them behind a hamburger menu can be a good solution.
Combinations of nav systems can work
I'd suggest using a nav bar for the top 3-5 things a user is most likely going to be doing in your app. And then if there are more functions available to the user – especially a user who is highly technical and driven to use your app – then placing those in a less-obvious nav structure is fine.
I've got some checkboxes with text values of varying lengths (from say 5 characters up to about 60) - which is the preferred layout? Value to the left and checkbox to the right, or vice versa?
The picture below summarizes it pretty well: letter "k" looks very different in the upright vs. italic form of font Consolas. What is the rationale, design choice, ... behind such a strikingly different letterform for italics?
For the other differences, like the additional bottom stroke for "f", and the different letterform for "a", I have seen (and read about) in other fonts.
So in a nutshell: is there a precedent in other (e.g. traditional) font or font design theory behind this variation in letter "k"?
Answer
The characters in your question (k, f, a, and e) are all of the usual suspects when it comes to italicizing a roman typeface. While not all fonts conform to these modifications in their italicized incarnation, these are in fact very traditional transformations and do indeed have precedent. Here are some examples of the various transformations a roman typeface might undergo in a traditional conversion to italic:
A "round" or one-storey a
An e whose bowl is curved rather than pointed
An f with a tail (known as a descender)
A k with a looped bowl, a k with a ball terminal
A p with an intersection at the stem (ascender)
A v and w with swashes and curved bottoms
A z with the stress on the horizontal strokes as opposed to the diagonal vertical one
It's important to note that none of these are required to design the italic version of a typeface. As you can see from the previous examples, Consolas does not employ all of the tradition italic character styling but it does has a couple of other classic modifications that are worth mentioning:
g replaced by single-loop version.i, j, and l)Some examples of classic italic modifications:
Garamond
Bodoni
Perpetua
Source: Italic Type - Wikipedia
Are there any rules on when to use icons vs. icons with text vs. just text links in a web application?
For example:
vs.
save
vs.
save
Extra question: Is save -or- save preferable?
Answer
Icons are notoriously ineffective as labels, being very difficult to interpret correctly without training or experience. For most situations, users learn correct interpretations better with text alone than with icons alone. See: Wiedenbeck, S (1999). The use of icons and labels in an end user application program: An empirical study of learning and retention. Behaviour & Information Technology, 18(2), p68-82.
Icons are especially bad for anything abstract, such as Invoice or Bid, since abstract things generally do not have any strong visual image (both Invoice and Bid could be represented as paper documents, but how would you distinguish them?). Similarly, icons are particularly bad for actions (e.g., Save, Publish); it’s hard to clearly show a process with a picture. Yes, icons are used all the time in toolbars for actions, but toolbars were intended for experts, and nonetheless users are frequently confused by them (on average, users know only six Word toolbar items after regularly using Word for two years).
Icons can save space over text, but at the price of recognition. For small icons, such as 16x16 pixel, it’s very difficult for users to even recognize what they are supposed to be a picture of, let alone what the picture is supposed to stand for. One user I know thought the “disk” icon for save was a picture of a TV. (She was old enough to know what a floppy disk was.) I personally used Word for years thinking the Track Changes icon was some sort of stylized Rosetta Stone. Expert users find it easier to rely on the memorized physical position of the toolbar controls rather than the icon labels to pick a control. Bigger icons (e.g., at least 32 by 32 pixels) can help recognition, but take so much space you’re better off using the space for a clear text label. If space is limited, often you’re better off using abbreviated text than icons.
It’s extraordinarily difficult to get icons right. Do not attempt to develop a new icon without extensive iterations of user testing. Even then, you may fail. Microsoft designers tried everything to make interpretable icons for Outlook’s toolbar before giving up and going with text labels on key controls.
Icon labels also make tech support difficult (e.g., “Click on the yellow sheet with a blue checkmark,” versus “Click on ‘Accept’”).
As rule of thumb, icons alone should only be permitted when at least two out of the following three conditions apply:
Space is very limited (i.e., too small for text alone).
The icons are standardized (e.g., the floppy disk image for save)
The icon represents an object with a strong physical analog or a visual attribute (e.g., a printer icon to access printer attributes, or a red rectangle to set a page background red).
Tooltips are required for icons when they are used alone, but they are a poor substitute for text labels. Your users shouldn’t have to use your app by groping around for things. The fact that text labels never need graphic tooltips is a pretty good clue that text is better than icons.
If space allows, icons combined with text is best. (I think there was research showing this from the late 1980s but I can’t find it.) Selective use of icons with text makes certain items stand out more or add visual interest. It may also improve the scanability of the items, but good text labels can do this too. Users have been known to subjectively think an app is easier if it has icons, even when they don’t actually improve performance (see Wiedenbeck, 1999 cited above), so that’s another reason to have icons and text combined.
I usually see the icon either above or left of the text label. I don’t think it’s necessarily inherently better than the alternatives, but it’s a convention you should follow too if you have controls next to each other so the user can rely on experience to tell which text label goes with which icon.
My question is should I start with paper to learn to draw or learn to digitally draw with Photoshop or Illustrator or any image manipulation application.
I am thinking of using a book or some other accompanying material (if you have any recommendations). I am thinking of this book.
If I do learn to draw digitally (or do graphic design to be more precise) does that translate or least help in drawing in the real world?
Also if I learn to draw with pen and paper does that improve your Photoshop or Illustrator skills?
Lastly if you have learned Photoshop and then started to draw in paper did you notice or feel a difference in your designs?
I am interested in practicing graphic design and feel that I should learn to draw as well. Not just for graphic design but for pleasure as well.
Answer
I'm going to disagree with everyone else and say that, if you're serious about graphic design or digital illustration, you should get a tablet ASAP.
If you're the creative type, then it's unlikely that your first experience drawing is going to be in a digital media, as you were probably exposed to analog media in art classes likely as early as kindergarten or grade school. And I do think you should take traditional art classes to build your foundations, as those courses generally aren't taught using digital media. But that's more to do with tradition and practicality than anything else. (It's easier to furnish a class with pencil/paper than it is to provide each student with a digitizing tablet. And not all students will have a tablet to practice on at home.)
Yes, analog media has a lot of qualities that can't be replicated by digital media, but the reverse is also true. And if you're going to spend most of your career drawing digitally, then getting accustomed to the feel of a tablet as soon as possible is going to be much more beneficial than learning the nuances of physical media. And it does take some time to get used to drawing with a digitizer tablet.
And while a high end tablet may be quite expensive, a cheap entry-level tablet like the Bamboo may actually save you money. Art materials aren't cheap, and if you're drawing/painting all the time, it quickly adds up. So digital media lets you get in more practice without spending as much money.
Digital media is also more beginner-friendly in some ways. The biggest reason is that there's no undo button for your physical canvas. Sure, you can erase a pencil sketch, but you can only do that so much before it starts to wear down the paper. There are no such problems with digital media. You also don't have to worry about making one mistake and ruining an entire piece, or smearing, or having your paint dry prematurely, or not being able to match a color you used in your last session, etc. There's also less cleanup if you're doing a digital painting versus analog.
All of the above reasons might make one inclined to practice more using digital than if they only had access to physical media (I know it did for me). That isn't to say you shouldn't bother with physical media, just that you should have both options available early on. The most important thing is that you set yourself up so that you can, and are motivated to, practice as much as possible. If you have both a tablet and a sketch pad, you can draw on the media of your choice whenever the urge strikes you.
I would like to ask for any guidelines that could help to determine when a story can be considered "erotic". Is it based on the words, the number of scenes or on how detailed they are? Shortly, if I talk about the story, from which point on should I say "It's an erotic story about [...]"?
Answer
I'd say it's erotic if:
1) the sex is a major part of the action (not necessarily the plot)
AND
2) the text is explicit enough that if it were a movie, minors couldn't see it.
So something which has a lot of sexual contact but the "camera" always cuts away before the deed starts wouldn't be erotic. Something which describes sex in gauzy or vague terms ("they melted into one another's arms and twined their limbs together until they fell through the clouds and rain into bliss") wouldn't be erotic either.
Something which reads like a transcript of an adult film with lots of tab A into slot B is erotic.
I get tired of "he said", "she said", "they replied". Is there a better, but still reasonable way, to indicate dialogue?
Answer
I like to describe the how (explain intonation, body language) and the purpose of the dialogue, not just the fact of the speech being made.
"Your chest pains have not subsided, have they, Mr. Gittes?" Zimmerman squints at me across the desk.
"How did you guess?" I mumble, scanning his morose, concerned expression.
He arches his eyebrows, avoiding my question. "I assume you're experiencing... hallucinations?"
I turn to leave the office. "Well, would that be expected? Just from codeine?"
He shakes his head in response and releases an impatient sigh. He rises to his feet. “You can’t hide behind those sunglasses, Jake. We can all see you.” His eyes flick upwards, indicating the crowd of spectators in the gallery; we’re trapped inside a play by the Marquis de Sade. He begins to undress to jeers from the audience. Exit stage left.
Is it possible to make a .jpeg photo larger without losing "quality"?
I have a photo that is 450px x 750px and would like to make it 3 times bigger for web not print?
I've been told that Illustrator is the tool to make it happen and I have Illustrator CS6.
Answer
To say it short: No.
Images in jpg format are not vector based images. Vector based images can be resized without to lose quality. Bitmap images contains colored pixed. If you try to double the size one pixel has to grow to 4 pixel with the same color. Result: If you want the image 3 times bigger you will see the original pixels in your image.
It depends on your image if it is changeable to vector format or not. An usual photo (portrait of a human, mountains, landscape etc.) is not changeable to vector format.
I always was curious about the following question:
What is the best UX way to present a text that act as information and also as a link (for example to more detailed information).
I always deliberating between the following options:
similar way is to keep the text in the defualt color but changing the color when hovering over the text.
don't use any differences between the text with and without link - but use a tooltip explaining that this is a link text when hoverring the text.
don't use a text as a link .insted use icon near the text.
I know that some of you are going to say that this is depand of the context and the object that the text is presented in. So to be more specific I'm curious about link text inside a table - what is the best way to present a link text inside a table ?
Do you know more ways of displaying a link text ?
Answer
Users scan text, and when they do - there shouldn't be "things in the way" such as icons, underlines or upper case letters. All these mentioned make text scanning harder and adds cognitive load to the users scanning. The most important thing to remember is to link the keyword and at the same time avoiding the use of 'here' as a text link.
That's a lot of don't do this-advice. So what should you do? Use the same font size, without using underline, italic or bold style - unless the surronding text isn't bold or italic. The only thing you should change is the link color of visited and unvisted linkes. Nothing else.
When i try to copy and paste arabic text in After effects the letters in the words look divided one from the other. I already had the same problem with Ps and i had to change the settings of the software in "middle east settings" but i don´t find this solution in the Ae menu´, i discovered a script online but i think it´s more about typing than copy and paste
Answer
You can use a program called GI-Arabic NOW (google it it's free) just meant for that purpose.
How to use:
Some drawbacks:
You are limited to the font the program provide.
Alternatives:
Abu Rasheed Text reverser support 120 fonts.
Arabic text reverser support all your installed fonts. No need to install any additional fonts.
How to use:
- open it
- write your text
- right click and select convert and copy تØويل ونسخ
- go to Ae and and paste
I personally prefer GI-Arabic NOW. I don't know why, may be because I use it since 2005 =)
It seems "Everyone" knows they're highly disruptive for many situations but often times clients don't. Particularly in desktop applications this form of dialog is often misused, often disrupting a workflow.
I intellectually know all of the reasons to avoid them and some rare cases they may be warranted, and we have a great deal of anecdotal evidence and professional opinions in our modal-dialog questions.
I know there is published research on modal dialogs, but to my dismay few people reference this research when supporting or opposing the use of modals dialogs.
I know for example that distracting users while in a state of flow (such as writing an essay in Microsoft Word) can be easily destroyed by interruptions such as modal dialogs, having disastrous results on productivity.
In my particular case the issue is attention (working on the mistaken opinion that modal dialogs attract attention and comprehension) and productivity as the dialog disrupts workflow for a "confirmation".
What are the most convincing resources to give to a client who believes modal dialogs are not problematic?
I am particularly looking for scholarly articles, but high level explanations (which cite real data) may be applicable as well.
Wikipedia has a good list of "common knowledge" about and criticisms of modal windows, but even they mostly cite blog posts and a couple books.
Answer
Generally speaking, disruptions and distractions negatively affect human performance, a common finding in cognitive psychology. Many studies have shown that distraction greatly increases task time on a wide variety of tasks.
There also exist many Quantitative studies showing task performance is negatively affected by distractions (note these figures are not specifically for modal dialog distractions):
We can all relate to the above distractions, but what is their quantitative effect on our performance?
- Forgetting the as-left conditions: 45%
- Forgetting to return to the original task: 25%
- Original task out of control during distraction: 17%
- Not knowing changes after returning to original task: 13%
How does this relate to modal dialogs? Users find dialog windows distracting. The linked University of Minnesota study found users rated dialog windows to be considerably more distracting than two other tested window types.
Dialog windows in particular show an extreme effect on task performance (emphasis mine):
Results show that when peripheral tasks interrupt the execution of primary tasks, users require from 3% to 27% more time to complete the tasks, commit twice the number of errors across tasks, experience from 31% to 106% more annoyance, and experience twice the increase in anxiety than when those same peripheral tasks are presented at the boundary between primary tasks.
Subjects unanimously rated the dialog window as the most distracting (intrusive) awareness technique.
Other research has specifically found that interruptions from modal dialogs greatly increase error rates in a simple form workflow exercise.
On average, errors were made 7.14% (SD = 8.06%), 17.26% (SD = 7.28%) and 25.89% (SD = 9.88%) of the time in the zero-, one- and two-interruption conditions respectively
In addition, research on video games have shown that Calm Messaging improves task performance (pdf download link). Emphasis mine:
Games have shown that reducing demands on the user’s attention can aid performance; through the use of sound, speech, transient text, and animation, games communicate in a calm manner that promotes a fluid, uninterrupted workflow.
Bottom line: Modal dialogs can double error rates, increase time to task completion, and are near-universally despised by users. Alternate means of notification are often available and should be utilized wherever possible and appropriate.
I'm sorry if this is a noob question. I use photoshop a lot, but not illustrator. Do you draw these manually? or is there a filter for this? Do you use a separate software like 3d studio max or mathematica?
I have been designing a 60 page publication for over a year for a client and they have all of a sudden asked for all of the editions working files for 'safe keeping'. I have advised them this will come with a release fee. Can anyone help on how to work out what the release fee will be or what it should be based on?
Reading books of Dan Brown and that sort (pardon my inability to produce any other relevant examples off the top of my head) gives off the impression to budding writers that novels need to have a minimum standard of vocabulary, in order to be taken seriously or for the story to be more interesting. At least that's what it makes me think.
It puts off average English speakers like me from even attempting to write anything impactful, let alone a novel.
I've read few novels where the language is on par with what people use in day-to-day life (albeit my collection of read books is limited mostly to classics and thrillers, both of which tend to use gaudy words every now and then). The case with classics is understandable as even the normal language back then used to be more complex than what it's now (just look up at any Shakespeare piece, although that would probably be a tad too extreme). Thrillers, on the other hand, have this tendency to employ crisp and sophisticated vocabulary to set a certain mood.
Samples of what I usually end up writing (when I'm not trying too hard and just casually typing my mind away):
Tea-making was art.
I was fascinated, entranced by those fluid, graceful hand movements of that chaiwala, nimbly dipping the glass cups into hot water and pouring milk, tea, and gur one at a time.
I hadn’t realised I had voiced the exclamation. My doting aunt and uncle had charming smiles in response, with an all-too-familiar all-knowing look. It plagued me to imagine I had thought anything less of it. It was pathetic how urban juveniles, myself included, underestimated the classic villages back here. Granted, it had none of the poshness and luxurious comfort that allowed us delicate little things to get shamelessly pampered. But it was more raw and downright ‘fresh’ than anything I had ever encountered back home in Dhaka. It was pathetic.
My stomach did a series of somersaults within a mere fraction of a second when I spotted the 5-storeys tall building. We had arrived. I sat still, watching my mum bargain with the rickshaw-walla. Her lips pressed into a thin line; that was all I needed before I jumped down the rickshaw and hobbled my way up the long fifteen steps before stepping into the cool, refreshing air-conditioned room and into the limelight.
Almost as soon I heaved the door in, I could feel a slew of all-penetrating rays escaping from 60 pairs of young eyes boring into my shaking person. Their line of sight seemed to be aligned on me.
My heart stopped for the tiniest of moments when I spotted him in the back. No.
Suddenly, my stomach convulsed with violent cramps. It was the beginning of something red and nasty. Period.
I instinctively called out, “Uhmm, sir, I’m feeling sick.” The said sir concernedly rushed up to me and kindly asked whether I wanted to leave or go on to do rest of the class. I replied that a few minutes’ break would suffice, which he didn’t get. He assumed I hadn’t wanted to leave and simply went back. I don’t want to dwell on the fact that his English was woefully defective.
After a little coaxing from some girls who were seated next to me, I managed to squeak out (in English, might I add): “Can I just leave?” in a voice that was the epitome of girlish timidity.
He consented to my very innocent request. I simply packed my bag and dashed out. However I had to go through that boy to get to the exit. (He was sitting a couple of rows ahead.) And I somewhat awkwardly managed to heave myself through the heavy door and flee.
When does such a style get too simplistic for the average reader's taste? How much more polishing does it need to get close to being of a publishable standard?
I'm aware that they aren't perfect at any rate; they're to represent what my first drafts typically look like.
Answer
I don't think there is anything wrong with your vocabulary; if YOU are worried about it, I'd suggest you consult an online thesaurus at times. Here is one I use, it's fine and extremely extensive (2656 suggested synonyms for "fine"); so consult a dictionary or other source to fine tune the word you want.
Or better yet, use this resource to research the origin of the word (aka "etymology"). How it came to BE a word will often give you a good idea of how it should be used.
In general, many books are written in "plain" language, and that is all it takes.
The only time this gets in the way is if there is a really obvious (to most native speakers) a better word to use, then the author can seem amateurish. For example,
In a trial Josh was found guilty of shoplifting
versus
Josh was convicted of shoplifting
Such substitutions are less easy to find, but with the power thesaurus, "convicted" is on the first page of synonyms for "guilty", so it can help in that sense. But your writing does not seem to suffer from a lack of exposure to common English.
From a vocabulary standpoint, none. Save two instances: (1) "It plagued me" struck me as a wrong word choice, I'd actually prefer a simpler word like "bothered" or irritated or irked. (2) "Period." In English as a word in a sentence by itself, this connotation is "I won't discuss this further." To avoid that and indicate menstruation, it would be "My period." Even with your prior description.
Other issues make this fall short of publishable; and though I understand it is a first draft, I will point them out for future drafts:
You have an issue with pronoun agreement (The final "It was pathetic" is confusing when "it" has been used repeatedly to refer to "classic villages" in a positive tone (and for those references, "it" should have been "they").
You are in several places going over the top with multiple adjectives. "a mere fraction of a second" is too much. Pick an adjective, the perfect adjective, and don't make everything so extreme.
Not everything needs an adjective.
"instinctively called"
"concernedly rushed"
"kindly asked"
"simply went back"
"sad fact"
"woefully defective"
There is a maxim we use for people writing advertisements: If you emphasize everything, you have emphasized nothing.
If every tenth word in your sales letter is bolded, underlined, italicized, has a box drawn around it and a star-burst next to it, readers will just ignore all that. If you have ONE phrase in the letter set off in a box, that will be read by most readers.
A similar rule applies to adjectives in fiction. If you use them everywhere, they just start to be irritating!
Don't worry too much about building a fancy vocabulary. Do worry about word choice, though.
I have some writing experience, but I want to take my writing skills to the next level. I am particularly interested in writing quantitative finance papers for journals like Journal of Portfolio management, Journal of Asset Management, Quantitative Finance etc. A common tip you find in books on writing, like the Elements of Style by Strunk or Economical writing by McCloskey, is find someone in your field that writes well and find out how he did it.
Does anyone have papers that he or she can recommend?
Or, does anyone know a writer that in this field that really writes well.
UX practitioners often use the term Cognitive Load to describe something bad. User have difficulties processing all information required to complete a task, and may fail, falls into the category: Cognitive Load.
It's nice that we have a common phrase for it, but do we agree on its impact? Is it possible to measure cognitive load, and if so, what is the scale? Can we quantify Cognitive Load?
Answer
Card, Moran and Newell’s Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection (CMN-GOMS) family of models can be used to represent cognitive load. Many are familiar with the KLM-GOMS version, which models the physical steps in a task, but there are also elements and versions of GOMS (e.g., CPM-GOMS) which seek to model the cognitive steps in a task. The raw number of steps, the time to complete the cognitive steps (allowing for parallelism), and the number of levels in a task tree each represent different aspects of cognitive load.
While KLM-GOMS is relatively easily applied with little training, other flavors of GOMS take more expertise and effort to apply, which may account for them not being used as much. Instead of measuring and comparing cognitive loads, it’s easier to analyze a task to identify what cognitive load can be shifted to the computer (e.g., the current page replicates information from another page to reduce memory burden; the page computes and displays differences and percents to reduce mental arithmetic). In this way, we approach the minimal feasible cognitive effort without actually measuring how much it is.
As for the impact of cognitive load, usability seeks to minimize the time, effort, and errors in using a product. Each cognitive step you impose on a user represents a little more time, a little more effort, and a little more chance of error. Shifting these steps to the product UI improves usability as long as the product does it faster and more accurately than the user.
In Illustrator, if you want to fill in areas surrounded by multiple line segments, you can first select all the line segments and use Live Paint Bucket (K) to fill the color. However, if you want to change the opacity of the area, you may find the borders also become transparent, like this:
My question is, is there any way to avoid the border changing its transparency when we change the transparency of its internal area?
Note: there are 3 line segments, with endpoints connected. An extended question, what if one of the line is dashed? This question originally comes from the fact that I want to fill the triangles as the bottom figure shows.
I've created Actions that include scripts (by using Insert Menu Item). I managed to get the scripts to show up in the menu by adding them to the folder ~\Presets\en_US\Scripts in my Illustrator directory.
The issue is that every Illustrator is restarted, the line in the Action that executes the script is gone. I suppose it is because there's a moment while Illustrator is launching before it checks that folder for scripts that it looks like that line is pointing to an item that isn't there.
I know this is an obscure question, but has anyone encountered this? And does anyone know a workaround?
(Or even a better way to assign a hotkey to a script would probably be fine)
Answer
Yes its a well known limitation. There is no good workaround. Adobe has refused to fix this bug for some reason. For a very long time too, read more than 5 years. Ive been told that even very high profile clients have requested this in direct talks with adobe. Believe or not.
You can delete and reload the actions and they will work. You can even write a plugin that does this automatically, but the only way i know how to do this breaks adobes license so i dont do it. You can not map hotkeys for scripts for some reason.
Alternatively you can just use auto hotkey to circumvent the problem.
What tools (ideally affordable ones) would folks recommend for creating a website wireframe? What tools have you used, and did you find them better than pen and paper?
I'm in the process of editing my novel, and realized that it would be much better when narrated in third person. i was a much better person when it comes to writing in third person. Is there a good way to transfer from third to first person? Should I do it? Or is rewriting the only way?
TL;DR: qualitative data collected in a usability experiment seems to contradict the quantitative results of the SUS questionnaire. How can this discrepancy be reconciled?
The following experiment is conducted to evaluate the usability of a web-interface:
So far, the experiment was conducted with 5 participants, then the UI was adjusted to address the found issues. A second round of 5 participants were then invited to go through the same steps.
It is planned to perform another round, with at least 5 participants (to obtain a sufficiently large sample). The current results are summarized below:
You can see that the v2 score is lower than v1.
These findings are puzzling, because:
the changes between v1 and v2 were not ground-breaking, e.g.:
nevertheless, these tweaks did polish the "rough edges" of v1, as it was clear from the observations that there was less friction while participants used the site
In other words, the changes were small incremental steps that should have yielded small improvements. The qualitative results match the expectations, while the quantitative data do not.
Since the overall average of 69 falls in line with the average SUS score of 68, it seems that nothing unusual has happened and we're testing "just an average interface". However, I am not sure how to reconcile the fact that the numbers contradict the humane feedback.
Nielsen says that qualitative feedback is more valuable and numbers can lead you astray. On the other hand, Sauro says that they do report SUS scores based on a sample of 5 users (as well as looks at the history of sample sizes, concluding that a minimum of 5 is reasonable).
At the same time, a t-test says that the differences between the scores of v1 and v2 are not statistically significant.
How could one make sense of these results?
Thank you all for your comments, answers, and time. Although there is only one accepted answer, all the input is helpful. It enabled me to take a sober look at the data, and reduce the "jumptoconclusionness" factor to a lower level.
A note for future archaeologists: the question was edited to include details and statistics mentioned in the comments. It might help to look at the edit history to see the starting point and understand how it ended up like this.
Answer
How can this discrepancy be reconciled?
You have divergent results because the number of participants is small and not representative. There is no randomization or blinding to prevent bias. You're also not calculating the relevant stats. (What are the standard deviation, margin of error, confidence intervals, odds ratios, p values, etc?)
Further, you appear to be doing iterative design, not "experiments". There is nothing wrong with iterative design, but the data you collect are likely irrelevant beyond the current design. They cannot be used to meaningfully compare designs against each other. Even if they could, there aren't enough participants to measure the effect of small changes. But you don't need large numbers of users for iterative design. Just enough to identify improvements for the next iteration.
In an experiment, you'd have multiple designs A/B/C... tested in parallel. Participants would be randomized to the designs (as well as task order). Experimenters would not know which design individual participants were using. Experimenters would not observe participants directly. Experimenters would pre-decide what statistical tests are appropriate. They would not begin processing data until after it had all been collected. Etc. If you were testing drugs, your methodology (as well as insufficient participants) would likely prevent FDA approval.
How could one make sense of these results?
You did a t-test and found no significant difference. The "study" is likely underpowered with only five subjects in each group. Even if you had enough numbers to demonstrate significance, the study needs to be redesigned, and the survey has to be checked for reliability and validity.
The System Usability Scale (SUS) is described by its original developer as "quick and dirty". It appears to have been validated as a global assessment, but it's probably not appropriate for comparison. Imagine there were something known as Global Assessment of Functioning that physicians used to evaluate health. Is someone with condition A and GAF 85 "healthier" than someone with condition B and GAF of 80? Does it even make sense to compare A and B this way?
Even if these problems were all addressed, you are still doing iterative design. I would expect differences between successive iterations to be non-significant. Suppose you were testing drugs. Would you expect significantly different results between 100mg and 101mg doses? What about 101mg and 102mg? Etc. (How massive would n need to be to detect such minute differences?)
What to do... ?
Understand that iterative design is not experimentation. The value of small usability reviews is to screen for problems, not confirm success or produce stats.
Stop collecting (or "misusing") quantitative data when you know you won't have the numbers to demonstrate significance. Stop having "expectations", as it is a source of bias that can lead you astray. Redesign experiments to reduce bias.
... it seems the confidence intervals are so wide, that the intermediate results I got should not be a reason of concern.
That is as "expected".
I'm wading through the vast sea of literature on realized volatility estimation and expected volatility forecasting (see, e.g. Realized Volatility by Andersen and Benzoni, which cites 120 other papers, and Volatility by Bandi and Russell, which cites a slightly overlapping set of 120 papers).
I'm having a tough time finding research that specifically addresses the simultaneous estimation of a broad cross-section of equity volatility from high-frequency returns time-series. I'm looking for something along the lines of Vector Autoregression (VAR), but applying both sophisticated techniques developed for large equity panel estimation (thousands of volatilities and potentially millions of correlations being estimated) and using recent advances developed for efficient estimation using high frequency data.
What papers address the specific problem of forecasting the cross-section of equity volatility from high frequency data?
Answer
As far as I know the short answer is negative: there isn't a well developed theory of how to forecast cross-sectional realized volatility. From the perspective of statistics/econometrics, most of the recent research is still trying to find its way around estimation of cross-sectional realized volatility, and so far even in these area the progress is slow.
Bringing modern techniques to panel data amounts to being able to:
in a multivariate setting where the additional problems of non-synchronous trading and high-dimensionality complicates the analysis, together with the usual hassle that comes with HAC estimators (such as the dimensionality issues that @QuantGuy mentions).
There are two main tools for tackling estimation: (1) the pre/post averaging approach of Ait-Sahalia, Mykland, Renault (and others) and (2) the kernel smoothing of Barndorff-Nielsen, Hansen (and others) [the third child, i.e. VAR and its crew, seems on the sideline of late, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong here]. Of these two approaches, only the second has matured a technology (Multivariate realised kernels) that is published (here).
I have a navigation based on categories and certain pages appear under the same categories. That means they appear twice under two different menus. Does anyone see a particular problem with this, usability-wise?
Answer
I am a big fan of this. Redundancy in this case is good; it doubles the chances of the user getting their work done.
Basically, you want to go to some lengths to make sure users know that it's the same item in those two (or more) spots. You might even give the user cross-wise breadcrumbs ("also found under XXX"), though a simple list of categories at the top of the entry (like here on StackExchange) can suffice.
Another concern is if users need to know the status of an item--for example whether they've visited that page--and the status shows up as different in the two places it appears. This can happen due to incorrect design (e.g. if symlink directories on disk, the same page can have two distinct URLs) and is quite confusing.
I’ve always been writing, but never wanted to write something in a world I create. I already know what direction I’ll be taking my fleshed-out characters, but I’m still wondering whether or not I should be writing a story board first or trying to flesh out the world my characters are in.
I can see Pros and Cons from each side and was just curious as to what the general consensus is on what to do first from writers who have already been where I am!
Edit/Update
This is a Fantasy world-build, and I am so appreciative of the comments and advice! You guys have outlined some important details I was definitely missing out on. Thank you so much!
What are the best packages in R or most comprehensive packages in R for option pricing and working with options?
Thanks!
Answer
You may want to browse the Task View for empirical finance, which lists many options-related packages.
As for concrete suggestions: I have worked a lot with RQuantLib in the past, and I have found it a reliable and stable package.
Perhaps I may also suggest NMOF, which I maintain. It provides implementations of a number of models (Black/Scholes/Merton, Merton jump-diffusion, Heston, ...). It also implements the approach of Bakshi/Madan (2000) for pricing based on the characteristic function. The implementation is essentially the one described in this paper on Calibrating Option Pricing Models.
I'm scanning some old text my grandma wrote in a book. I need to remove the background and just keep the handwriting on a white background. I've tried the Magic Wand, but that way a lot of spaces in letters like o, a, e, etc stay in the color of the background. I've got like 50 pages to do, so is there a faster way to just separate this handwriting?
In german we call it »Schnittverzierungen«. There are different kinds of them, the most common one is »Farbschnitt«, where all sides are colored.
Here are some examples:
Answer
You could speak of edge painting or fore-edge painting, or gilt-edged for the golden variant.
I'm trying to use Photoshop for some quick pixel art. I have my 1 px grid set up, and am using the 1 px pencil to color in pixels.
However, if the crosshair is even slightly below center of the target pixel, it will instead paint the pixel below it, and the same goes for the right.
To paint a pixel accurately, I need to have the crosshair in the upper-left of the target.
This gif shows what I'm talking about:
Although I understand the reason for this default behavior, it is annoying for what I am trying to do.
Is there a way to change the pixel target area, so clicking the crosshair anywhere in the grid square will paint that grid square?
Answer
I found the solution. Turning off snap-to-grid fixes this behavior.
I mean under 100k, probably less than 50k because it's a short story. Actually, I'm not sure how many words a short story has so I have two questions. How short is a short story and is it worth the effort to write a short story if your goal is to be published? If all is good can anyone recommend a publisher for short stories (scifi type)?
edit: based on comment. I thought as a book but never really thought about the other places. Maybe the question should be where can a short story hope to get published.
Answer
The standard initial market for a short story is a literary magazine. Famous examples include The New Yorker for literary fiction and poetry. For science fiction and fantasy genres, notable options include Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's, and others. As a general rule more prestigious magazines are able to be more choosy on what they end up publishing. Beyond some of these few links, there are tons of places to find magazines of all sorts to submit to:
From these magazines it might be possible that your short story could go on to end up in something like Pushcart. There's also the annual Best American Short Stories. You can look into short story contests (even narrowing the search to science fiction short stories only).
There are lots of options. Just don't get discouraged by potential rejection letters along the way and keep polishing, editing, revising, and submitting.
