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dredmorbiusyesterday at 8:34 PM3 repliesview on HN

Funny you should ask, something of a bugbear of mine:

1. Persistence is free.

2. Pixels are cheap

3. Paints are expensive

4. Refreshes are slow

5. Colour is limited to nonexistent.

6. Pagination over scroll.

7. Full refresh (of page or portion) over pan.

8. Reflective rather than emissive.

9. Minimise animation.

10. Line-art or halftones over shade gradients (images).

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31396797>

I've reiterated (and occasionally revised) that a few times, see:

"E-Ink Design Principles for Web and Applications" <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...>

That's source of the above list, gives a bit more explanation and rationale for each choice. I wrote it after failing to find any UI/UX development guidelines myself, and have had some positive responses from it.

And on HN, search for "pixels are cheap" by me: <https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...> (about 15 results, this comment included).


Replies

Groxxyesterday at 10:26 PM

> 10. Line-art or halftones over shade gradients (images).

This is particularly true for eink, because black <-> white is dramatically faster and more reliable (less ghosting) than anything involving any gray. It's why basically all of the "fastest" modes are pure black and white, and why UI shapes are generally pure black and white (though text might have grays).

show 2 replies
thepoetyesterday at 9:50 PM

Thank you for this! This is perfect and what I was looking for while building the UI components for an SDK for Kobo e-ink apps https://github.com/BandarLabs/Cobalt

cyanmoonxtoday at 7:04 AM

> bugbear

Dragon Strike board game who had it