programming languages
Tim Berners-Lee on the Principle of Least Power: Computer Science spent the last forty years making languages which were as powerful as possible. Nowadays we have to appreciate the reasons for picking not the most powerful solution but the least powerful. The less powerful the language, the more you can
user experience
One of my great frustrations with the Mac is the way the maximize button on each window fails to maximize the window. In a comment, Alex Chamberlain explained why this isn’t broken, it’s by design: This is a textbook example of how Microsoft’s programmers got the original
ui design
I bought my copy of Alan Cooper’s classic About Face in 1995. I remember poring over it, studying its excellent advice, reveling in its focus on the hot new UI paradigms standardized in Windows 95 – toolbars, menus with icons, tabbed dialogs, and so forth. Seems quaint now, if not
mobile devices
Let me start by saying up front that I am a fan of the iPhone. The mobile phone market is a sad, pathetic wasteland in desperate need of improvement. I’m hoping iPhone will the collective kick in the pants the smartphone market needs to finally stop making user hostile
advertising
I was saddened to read this blurb from danah boyd’s outstanding “MyFriends, MySpace ” presentation at Harvard: My activist self wanted to believe that the users are aware of [ads], but sadly, that’s not the case. To them, seeing ads means that the service is free. Kids are so
legalese
If you’ve used a computer for any length of time, you’ve probably clicked through hundreds of End User License Agreement (EULA) dialogs. And if you’re like me, you haven’t read a single word of any of them. Who can blame you? They’re mind-numbing legalese. As
user experience
I’m a big fan of incremental search. But incremental search isn’t just for navigating large text documents. As applications get larger and more complicated, incremental search is also useful for navigating the sea of features that modern applications offer. Office 2007’s design overhaul is arguably one of
font rendering
I’ve finally determined What’s Wrong With Apple’s Font Rendering. As it turns out, there actually wasn’t anything wrong with Apple’s font rendering, per se. Apple simply chose a different font rendering philosophy, as Joel Spolsky explains: Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm
information retrieval
I’m currently reading through Peter Morville’s excellent book Ambient Findability. It cites some papers that attempt to explain the search behavior of web users, starting with the berrypicking model: In a 1989 article entitled “The Design of Browsing and Berrypicking Techniques for the Online Search Interface,” Marcia Bates
consumer behavior
James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, writes about the paradox of complexity and consumer choice in a recent New Yorker column: A recent study by a trio of marketing academics found that when consumers were given a choice of three models, of varying complexity, of a digital device,
authentication
Dare Obasanjo’s May 26th thoughts on the Facebook platform contained a number of links to the Facebook API documentation. At the time, clicking through to any of the Facebook API links resulted in a login dialog: It struck me as incredibly odd that I had to login just to
programming languages
Dennis Forbes took issue with my recent post on C# and the Compilation Tax, offering this criticism, pointedly titled “Beginners and Hacks:” Sometimes [background compilation and edit and continue] are there to coddle a beginner, carefully keeping them within the painted lines and away from the dangerous electrical sockets along