The Usual Dosage

An Introduction

The business world is littered with the shattered remnants of broken CSS, inconsistent style implementation, and clunky and counterintuitive usability. The most common cause of this is the ubiquitous philosophy of "it's just a business application; it only needs to work". This misnomer has caused untold hours of lost time, colossal frustration, and developer animosity to the end users.

"My philosophy is simple; if it looks great, it will likely work great."

How can I make this outlandish claim? Simple. If a product is released to users where extra care has been spent on making a thoughtful, usable user-interface, then the most difficult and typically-skipped step has already been accomplished, which would mean, by definition, that the rest of the application most likely works correctly. Algorithms are straightforward and easily testable. Design is subjective and exeedingly difficult to get right.

This is my little place on the web which I use to tout my own web philosophies, share my code samples, experiment with new things, and link to my projects. I've consolidated dozens of disparate sites and interests into a single portal, mainly to make my life easier. Feel free to take whatever you need, but please remember to link back. Thank you.

Javascript Contributions

I wouldn't have gotten far in my career as a UI/UX specialist if not for the amazing contributions of open source Javascript library authors out there. So, with that in mind, I've open sourced (under the MIT license) the libraries that I'm legally allowed to (that is to say, nothing I created for any employer). It's not a long list, but hopefully it'll be useful to someone. Feel free to download, modify, and distribute at will.

Mobilatr^tm

Mobilatr is a JavaScript library that allows a site to completely render itself to look like a native iPhone application. It is as-yet incomplete, but there has been a great deal of development added to it, so feel free to adapt what you need. Demo available (for now) at Thing15 Mobile.
SlideList

The slide list mimics the functionality of an iPhone-type slider, and it binds to a hierarchical JSON model. It supports n-deep nesting, and forward and backward animated navigation. Rather than hold thousands of bytes of data in memory as each list is drawn, the list destroys and rebuilds the lists based on the selection, keeping the overall page size at a minimum. jQuery is required.
StateButton

The State Button is (another) iPhone style "pill button", that togggles based on the selected state. Events are raised on each click, allowing the developer complete control over selections.
Tooltip

I should have titled this "Yet Another Tooltip" as the web is full of them, but I needed something specific so I created this. It will create and destroy a single div on the page (again keeping page size small), and display text or html on hover.

Mobilatr

Slide List

State Button

Tool Tip

Usualdosage Comic

In 2007 I started a webcomic called "The Usual Dosage", a moniker that stemmed from my website. The concept was to illustrate the banal workplace where several programming languages (C#, the comic's 'hero', Lisp, Perl, Python, VB) worked together in the same environment. My original goal was to complete 100 comics, but sadly, work-life balance only allowed me to complete 60. They are very audience-specific, but if you work in an office and write in any of the above mentioned languages, the humor should be rather apropos. The site was created to mock the "Web 2.0" movement, and as such, is rather crude and superfluous. Please understand this was done intentionally, and shouldn't reflect my ability as a designer. Anyway, click here to enjoy a little programmer levity.

Articles

Though I have mostly stopped publishing articles about software development, there are a myriad of sites out there that still host my work. I have only ever submitted articles to The Code Project, but as the web works, multiple cross links and references exist out there that reference my original works. In the process of penning articles, one inevitably opens themselves up to criticism, and, also, particular with works based around software, earns criticism to the datedness of their works. I make no apologies for any of the above. Many of the articles I wrote harnessed the most modern practices of the time, and have since become hopelessly outdated. Regardless, it's my goal to give back to the software development community (as should be the goal of any seasoned developer), so I provide a list of my works here, as-is, with no warranty implied. Take what you will, leave the rest.

Graphic Design

Though I'm not University-trained in Graphic Design, I do fancy myself somewhat of an artist. I've been asked over the years why I haven't sought work in corporate America as a graphic designer, or at least a position within the marketing department of a company and my answer is painfully simple; art doesn't pay. It's a sad truth that most artists are only made famous posthumously, or, they are required to sell out to make ends meet (yes, I'm speaking of the late Thomas Kinkade). Even if it did, my interest toward problem solving and analysis would never let me be content to crank out excessive gradients and reflected shadow PNG images for marketing brocheures. So, I freelance as a graphic designer and artist, which allows me to stay up to date with the latest web technologies while still catering to my artistic drive. I've done everything from web- and print-ready logos to T-shirt designs and posters. Below are simply a few of my favorites, though my portfolio goes back close to a decade. If you're in need of any of these services, please feel free to email me at matt AT usualdosage DOT com.

The Usual Dosage

Mobilatrtm

SlideList

StateButton

Tooltip

Mobilatr

Slide List

State Button

Tool Tip

Mobilatr^tm