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
security
Paul Thurrott’s scathing article Where Vista Fails highlights my biggest concern with Windows Vista: Modern operating systems like Linux and Mac OS X operate under a security model where even administrative users don’t get full access to certain features unless they provide an in-place logon before performing any
remote desktop
I’m with K. Scott Allen: the pervasiveness of Remote Desktop functionality in Windows has fundamentally changed the way I work. The fact that it shipped in the Windows XP box – and as a default component of all the server operating systems since Windows 2000 – has done wonders for its
programming languages
I was struck by this quote from a New Yorker article on Muzak: “Our biggest competitor,” a member of Muzak’s marketing department told me, “is silence.” The problem with comparing something to nothing is that nothing is, well, nothing. James Bach elaborates: I was watching Dr. Stuart Reid talk
keyboard shortcuts
Everyone knows how to use the arrow keys to navigate within textboxes. But not many people know there are a slew of handy keyboard shortcuts for editing text in textboxes. And these keyboard shortcuts work everywhere, even in the most basic input areas – including vanilla HTML forms, such as the
user experience
I’ve witnessed the death of the main menu. And toolbars are on their last legs, too. This screenshot* clinches it for me: Granted, very few people would install this many Firefox extensions. But between this and the Office 2003 debacle, it’s patently obvious that the whole menu-and-toolbar paradigm
usability
From Engadget’s review of the iRiver H10: So the first thing we noticed about this player when we opened it up was, unfortunately, a huge orange flyer [. . .] From Larry Osterman’s review of the iRiver H10: My concerns started when I opened the box. To the left of the
usability
I’m currently re-reading the book About Face. I hadn’t revisited this book since I bought the original version way back in 1995. The update, which was published in 2003, is a significant overhaul – and frankly much better than the original. Adding the second author, Robert Reimann, was a