usability
Jensen Harris recently cited some Microsoft Office usability research which produced a rather counter-intuitive result: One of the most interesting epiphanies I’ve had over the last few years seems on the surface like a paradox: “help” in Office is mostly used by experts and enthusiasts. How can this be?
design patterns
A recent post by Steve Makofsky reminded me that the excellent UI Patterns and Techniques site is now a book from O'Reilly – Designing Interfaces. There’s technically no reason to buy a book on visual design patterns when you can find the same information online... * GUI design patterns
responsive design
From the “why I don’t read Robert Scoble any more” department: One thing I wish is that Web site developers/designers would look at their site on a small screen with limited bandwidth. So many sites suck really bad. I’m going to call these sites out with increasing
software development
A co-worker and I went over to Scott’s house today at around 1pm PST to pick something up for work. Scott just got a new television, so he demoed it for us, flipping through the channels, comparing HD signals to regular signals and so forth. As we were doing
web development
Every few years, Jakob Nielsen takes websites to task with a Top Ten Web Design Mistakes article. Although things have clearly improved since the original 1996 list, I’m particularly concerned that in the competitive frenzy to get all JavaScripted up for Web 2.0, we may be defeating the
file systems
Don Park recently made an interesting observation about how his family uses the computer: When I observe how my wife and son uses the family computer, I can’t help noticing how little use they have for the desktop. They look bewildered when I open the Windows Explorer. To them,
software development
For better or worse, I’ve been a Microsoft fan since Windows 3.1. Microsoft is far from perfect, but the alternatives were always so much worse. Can you imagine a dystopian future where we’re all running IBM’s OS/2 2004 and Lotus Notes Express? Brr. I get
software development concepts
Philip Chu’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective Programmers is witty, eloquent, and peppered with illustrative real world anecdotes: Upon joining an early-stage startup called Neomar, I found myself in two months of design meetings for a wireless internet portal that was due to launch in six months. Eventually we
html
I’m a big fan of showing the user visual feedback as soon as possible, whether you’re downloading a web page or rendering a windows form. Images already render progressively in a web browser – but you can do even better. Simply save your GIF or PNG images with the
ui/ux design
Ever wonder how you could possibly find something in that complex, ten-tabbed options dialog? How about a search function on the options dialog, as featured in Quest’s Toad for SQL Server: Aside from the fact that it’s completely insane to build an options dialog so complicated that it
user experience
Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Building a Web Site that Works (6mb PDF) is a great reminder of how to build a popular website without becoming a marketing weasel in the process: Big Picture #1: A Web site must do at least one of two things, but probably both:
hardware
I’ve talked about all the essential environmental things a programmer should have: a good chair, at least two monitors, and a great keyboard. One thing I haven’t talked about, though, is headphones. Headphones are probably the most optional item in that list. But if you’re not blessed