Cassidy’s Blog
A barebones place for my thoughts. Some of my writing is also on the elementary blog, and I’ve written a few pieces for Android Police.
elementary at GUADEC 2019 Thu, Sep 5, 2019
Hanging out with GNOME in Thessaloniki, Greece
Cassidy and fellow GUADEC attendees arriving at the Thessaloniki airport GUADEC is the annual GNOME User And Developer European* Conference where contributors to GNOME…
Welcome to the New Blog Thu, Aug 15, 2019
Why we left Medium, and how!
In 2016, elementary moved to a Medium publication to host our official blog. At the time, Medium was touted as a simple, clean, and…
Updates for July, 2019 Sun, Aug 4, 2019
Lots of small updates, and a new blog!
It’s that time again! Time to look back at the past month and see all of the updates that have been pushed out to…
Licensing for our Written Content Thu, Aug 1, 2019
Using Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
You might have noticed something new at the bottom of blog posts lately: We’ve determined that the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license allows the…
Get Settled into elementary OS with Onboarding Tue, Jul 23, 2019
Designed to improve the first-run experience
We’ve never provided a tutorial or “welcome” on your first run of elementary OS before; our Human Interface Guidelines state that users “should be…
Dell Precision 5530 Impressions Wed, Jul 10, 2019
A beastly Linux laptop, with some caveats
I recently raised funds for a new beast of a development machine for my work on elementary OS. After receiving the laptop, installing elementary…
2019 UI Study Results Fri, May 17, 2019
Regarding Custom Styles, Dark Modes, and Night Light
In my time contributing to elementary and GNOME, I’ve become familiar with pleas from users to implement official support for arbitrary themes — while that itself…
The Need for a FreeDesktop Dark Style Preference Fri, May 17, 2019
It’s time for the FreeDesktop to catch up
In the past year or so, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox have begun testing or released a user-set dark…
What’s New in Ephemeral 5 Wed, May 15, 2019
New features and snazzy UI refinements
Today I’m happy to announce the latest release of the private-by-default browser for elementary OS. Ephemeral 5 brought some useful new features, and 5.1…
Developer Tips: GitHub Workflow Mon, Apr 8, 2019
Best practices to make development faster and easier
AppCenter leans heavily into the GitHub-based workflow for developers, ensuring that elementary isn’t recreating the wheel. However, that also means that many handy aspects…
elementary AppCenter + Flatpak Mon, Apr 1, 2019
Preparing for the future
Image from Flatpak.org After several years(!) of observing, exploring, and engaging with various newer packaging formats, we’re excited to announce that elementary will be…
Parental Controls & Metered Data Hackfest Fri, Mar 22, 2019
Working with GNOME on shared features
This week I’ve been in London, UK to attend the Parental Controls & Metered Data hackfest and work alongside folks from GNOME, Endless, Red…
Major Updates to Ephemeral Sat, Feb 23, 2019
What’s new with the always-incognito web browser
In case you’ve missed it, I’ve been actively developing Ephemeral, the always-incognito web browser, for elementary OS. My vision for version 1.0 was simple:…
Accessibility Features Are Just Features Sat, Feb 16, 2019
An OS-wide curb-cutting effort
Photo of an accessible curb cut by Dane Deaner on Unsplash For some time now, Daniel and I have been talking about how accessibility features…
AppCenter Website Updates Mon, Jan 28, 2019
Release notes, prices, and more
In July, we revealed a brand new experience for sharing AppCenter URLs, powered by a new AppCenter website. It’s now been running smoothly for…
GNOME’s New App Icons Drop Pixel-Precision and Hinting Wed, Jan 23, 2019
What it means for elementary OS
Jakub taking photos on an outing from the GNOME London UX Hackfest This week Jakub Steiner, a designer at GNOME—and a friend of mine!—announced…
Privacy and elementary OS Wed, Jan 9, 2019
How we protect your data from ourselves and others
With the release of elementary OS 5 Juno still fresh, I wanted to take a moment and talk about our continued privacy focus with…
Introducing Ephemeral Wed, Jan 9, 2019
The always-incognito web browser
Ever since Firefox Focus landed on Android, I’ve been a fan. It’s an interesting idea of making privacy a habit by default instead of…
AppCenter Spotlight: Fondo Mon, Jan 7, 2019
Find the most beautiful wallpapers
elementary uses Unsplash as a source for many of our wallpapers, and now there’s a native app here to let you easily browse and…
AppCenter Spotlight: Write.as Thu, Dec 20, 2018
Publish a thought in seconds
It’s been a while since we did an AppCenter Spotlight due to the massive Juno release and subsequent updates, but today we’re back with…
elementary OS 5 Juno is Here Tue, Oct 16, 2018
Refinement, Productivity, & an Improved Developer Platform
elementary OS is the fast, open, and privacy-respecting alternative to Windows and macOS. Over the past year we’ve been hard at work putting together…
AppCenter and Content Ratings Mon, Sep 24, 2018
Using open standards to empower users and parents
Today, apps submitted to AppCenter are required to provide Open Age Ratings Service (OARS) data along with their code and other metadata. While app…
Why We Use “Checks” in Checkboxes and Radio Buttons Sat, Sep 22, 2018
Checkboxes and radio buttons are honestly used pretty sparingly in elementary OS, and even more sparingly together. When they are used, it’s fairly obvious…
We’re Back from LAS 2018 Wed, Sep 12, 2018
Sharing knowledge and wisdom in Denver, Colorado
This past week elementary contributors Daniel Foré, Felipe Escoto, Blake Kostner, and I met up in Denver, Colorado for the Libre Application Summit (LAS)….
AppCenter Spotlight: Minder Mon, Sep 3, 2018
Create, develop, and visualize your ideas
Minder with map properties, including layouts and themes Sometimes an app comes out of seemingly nowhere to fill a need and impress, and that’s…