security
If you’ve used the internet at all in the last few years, I’m sure you’ve seen your share of CAPTCHAs: Of course, nobody wants to use CAPTCHAs. They’re a necessary evil, just like the locks on the doors to your home and your car. CAPTCHAs are
user experience
Is it really necessary to qualify everything in Windows Vista with the “Windows” namespace? Hey, guess what operating system this is! At least the Vista start menu lets me do a containing search, so if I start typing ‘fax,’ the menu dynamically filters itself to show only items containing what
usability
Although I like Notepad2, it has some pathological alert dialog behavior, particularly when it comes to searching. Here’s an alert dialog I almost always get when searching a document: Thanks for the update, Notepad2. I really wanted a whole modal alert dialog to tell me this important fact. And
human-computer interaction
Fitts’ Law is arguably the most important formula in the field of human-computer interaction. It’s... Time = a + b log2 ( D / S + 1 ) ... where D is the distance from the starting point of the cursor, and S is the width of the target. This is all considered on a 2D
xml
Here’s a helpful article that documents common pitfalls to avoid when composing XML documents. Nobody wants to be called an XML Bozo by Tim Bray, the co-editor of the XML specification, right? There seem to be developers who think that well-formedness is awfully hard — if not impossible — to get
programming concepts
Reginald Braithwaite’s favorite interview question is an offbeat one: sketch out a software design to referee the game Monopoly.* I think it’s a valid design exercise which neatly skirts the puzzle question trap. But more importantly, it’s fun. Interviews are a terror for the interviewee. And they’
laptop
So my much-anticipated Asus W3J laptop arrived a few days ago. To recap, my requirements for a laptop were: * Core Duo * 5 pounds maximum weight * Dedicated video hardware * Removable optical drive Laptops have outsold desktops since 2003, depending on whose data you believe. And today’s laptops are definitely converging
software development concepts
Ian Griffiths recently wrote a proof of concept WPF browser for the MSDN online help. One of the improvements cited is multi-column text: This is why WPF offers a column-based reading experience. We know from experience in the print world that breaking text into columns can make it much easier
user experience
People keep rediscovering the article Don Norman posted a few months ago criticizing what he thinks of as Google’s faux simplicity: “Oh,” people rush to object, “the Google search page is so spare, clean, elegant, not crowded with other stuff.” True, but that’s because you can only do
user experience
I recently happened upon Tom Raftery’s blog. I’m sure Tom’s a great guy, but what’s up with all the visual noise on his blog? I count 24 pieces of flair in the bookmark section alone. STAN I need to talk about your flair. JOANNA Really? I
design
In Never design what you can steal, I praised this amusing guerilla redesign of Jakob Neilsen’s useit.com – which is widely derided by the design community for its radically bare-bones layout. Well, the design guerillas are at it again. This time, they’ve set their design eye on Craigslist:
usability
I was lucky enough to attend a week-long Human Factors International session on usability a few years ago.* As a developer with a long term interest in getting to the human root cause of so many programming problems, I loved it. One of the freebies from the course was this