windows
Does anyone remember the Task List from early versions of Windows? From those humble beginnings comes my all time favorite windows applet, the venerable Task Manager. Task Manager was introduced with Windows NT 4.0, and although it has changed little in the intervening nine years, it hasn't
configurability
I’ve recently been experimenting with a few hand-picked desktop utilities, but I am rapidly reaching the point of diminishing returns: the effort required to run and maintain all these utilities is greater than the productivity benefit. Furthermore, if I learn to rely on a highly custom desktop, I’ve
usability
In this 1996 Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen champions writing for the web in an inverted pyramid style: Journalists have long adhered to the inverse approach: start the article by telling the reader the conclusion (“After long debate, the Assembly voted to increase state taxes by 10 percent”), follow by the most
user experience
Shawn Burke’s post Shippin’ Ain’t Easy (but somebody gotta do it) explains why you have to resist change at the end of a project, no matter how justifiable and rational the reasons may be. Even the smallest change has a real risk of introducing additional bugs. The first
security
In an era of instant online worldwide connectivity, protecting users from themselves is a lot harder than it used to be. For one thing, full trust can’t be trusted. And then there are all those dancing bunnies to contend with: What’s the dancing bunnies problem? It’s a
software development
I picked up a copy of The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky. It’s essentially just a collection of Joel’s favorite blog entries from the last few years. But it’s Joel, so you know they’re going to be good ones. In the
passwords
Microsoft security guru Robert Hensing hit a home run his first time at bat with his very first blog post. In it, he advocates that passwords, as we traditionally think of them, should not be used: So here’s the deal - I don’t want you to use passwords,
colorizing
Most developers, myself included, are content with syntax coloring schemes that are fairly close to Visual Studio’s default of black text on a white background. I’ll occasionally encounter developers who prefer black backgrounds. And I’ve even seen developers who prefer the white on blue scheme popularized by
led technology
I recently purchased the DGL-4300 wireless router, mainly because it includes gigabit ethernet, which is still quite rare in routers. It certainly looks cool, as routers go, with its sleek rubbery design and all-blue LEDs. But those blue LEDs – particularly a bank of them, all blinking away – are blindingly bright!
design by committee
In a recent interview, Don Norman warns of the perils of design by committee: You don’t do good software design by committee. You do it best by having a dictator. From the user’s point of view, you must have a coherent design philosophy, and I don’t see
community
Dare Obasanjo recently wrote about the failure of Kuro5hin, which was originally designed to address perceived problems with the slashdot model: [Kuro5hin allowed] all users to create stories, vote on the stories and to rate comments. There were a couple of other features that distinguished the K5 community such as
usability
Philipp Lenssen recently conducted an interesting experiment in usability minimalism where he visually deleted all the unused elements from the web pages he visits every day. Viewing some of Philipp’s native German web pages, I was reminded how powerful conventions can be; the page layout and formatting are strong