*hypf*

I recently came across the following image:

And I thought it greatly sums up the usual problem. Both users and developers think at vastly different levels of abstraction. To the developer the UI is “just another shell” around the core and most erratic behavior of the UI can easily be explained by the inner workings of another component in the program. To the user, however, the UI is the program. And she just doesn't bother with understanding anything else. For all intents and purposes it's really magic.

Now, above image is a bit small, unfortunately and I didn't find an original creator or a higher-resolution version, so I created a vector version of the image which is attached to this post. Actually, I made two vector versions, one white on black and one black on white, the latter of which should use up substantially less toner when printed:

The font used on the high-res PDFs versions is the free (and pretty) Fontin font.

I attached the Expression Design files as well, if someone wants the “source” files. The Design and PDF files are released into the public domain by me.

I just stumbled over OK/Cancel, a webcomic devoted to HCI, Usability and the like.

Looks like an interesting read so far, especially since every comic seems to be accompanied by an explaining text. This should help people who otherwise don't see a need for usable user interfaces or research in that direction to see the problems UX people face.

The taskbar resides usually at the bottom of the screen (at least for 98.4 percent of users). But as widescreen displays become more prevalent (and since I usually have many windows open) it's tempting to put the taskbar either to the left or to the right of the screen. That has the benefit that you usually have longer window captions visible on each taskbar button, especially when there are lots of windows. And at least for me a wide monitor doesn't add much value over one with an aspect ratio of 4∶3. Things like browsing the web and writing code are inherently vertical activities and don't need as much space horizontal (ok, for IDEs like Eclipse or Visual Studio it's nice to have more space but I'd take more overall resolution over more horizontal resolution any time).

Now the taskbar displays tooltips for window captions that are too long to fit:

It does so for a vertical taskbar, too:

Now here lies the problem. While the tooltip on a horizontal taskbar doesn't get in the way very much since it would only overlay a status bar or similar the tooltip for a vertical taskbar intersects with the window content. This usually happens not in a location reserved for auxiliary purposes but rather in the main view of an application:

This is particularly nagging if you restore a minimized window that was maximized before so it begins immediately right of the taskbar. As seen above the tooltip overlays parts of the content of the window just restored. The tooltip appears about the instant the window comes up after a click so it sometimes appears right into content I'd like to see.

Since websites are usually scanned in an F-shaped pattern many websites have a navigation on the left. And I can see that on some regular software, too. The folder list in my e-mail client is on the left and gets neatly overlayed by the tooltip, for example. Since I restore it usually to look for folders with new mail this is particularly nagging, since I need a moment to get the tooltip out of the way. Doesn't sound much and is probably not nearly significant, but still, it bugs me.

Maybe it gets even worse with Aero enabled since then not the tooltip shows up first but rather the thumbnail view of the window which is even larger.

Probably the taskbar would be better off at the right of the screen, since there is seldom information one wants to scan immediately after restoring a window (at least I think so and can't think of counter-examples right now).

UPDATE (2008–11–08 13:56): Activating Aero seems to be a better option than I thought. The window thumbnail doesn't appear when restoring a window and the thumbnail only appears after the usual time, although after the click and not after hovering the mouse over the button as it does when the Windows Classic theme is active.

I found that elliotth's blog has some pretty interesting articles I skimmed over some of the very old ones and came across the following: Humans pay for context switches too. It certainly made sense in some way, although I think numbering pages backwards is a bit awkward for most people.

However, I wondered whether there might be an easy way to get backwards page numbers in Word. Page numbers are just fields and you can do all kinds of fancy stuff with those. So I poked around. There was just one problem: I couldn't find where to insert a field. And that with the glorious new Office 2007 where everything is neatly organized and no cluttered menus or layers upon layers of dialogs remain (to be fair, the menus are gone, the layers of dialogs are still there, though somewhat hidden for most of the time). This marks the first time I didn't find something I looked for in Office 2007 (which I use since March 2007).

Let's take a look at the why: The Ribbon has a nice tab called “Insert” (which is for pretty much anything that needs insertion, except citations and the like which reside in “References” section [granted, in English it suddenly makes sense, German … not so much]), consisting of the following sections:

Of all those sections Pages, Tables, Illustrations and Symbols make no sense so I skipped them entirely. Headers & Footers might have been something because document and section titles (which frequently go into the header) and page numbers (which frequently go into the footer) are also fields, but nothing there. Links: Well, nothing here, either. Which leaves Text. Where I never bothered to look into the “Quick Parts” drop-down which not only contains the (expected) document title, section title, author, date, etc. fields but also the more general field item:

I found that half a minute before writing this entry but about an hour after looking for it …

Funnily enough, I found it almost instantly in Word 2003:

As for the reverse page numbers, the following gets you page numbers that are counting down instead of up: {= {NumPages} – {Page} + 1}. Note that the opening and closing braces have to be entered using Ctrl+F9.

I came across an interesting series of posts today (via Linux Hater's Blog): Desktop Linux Suckage on Elliot Hughes's blog.

I'm about halfway through the series now. It is fun to read and not as offensive as the usual Linux hater posts (which I don't mind but others do).

I am still a Windows user and will continue to be so but some of the things he points out are not solely applicable to Linux and software on that platform.

Yesterday, shortly after finally setting up my other machine again, I decided to give Winamp another try. I used it as my main audio player back when I still used Windows 2000 but since I switched to Vista I converted to Windows Media Player, because I liked the look and feel of having my music collection with cover images, etc. all in one place. It proved to be somewhat slow on my old Pentium 4 2.53 GHz, though.

Enter Winamp. On Windows Vista. First start, it displays a nice dialog with skin selection (I didn't install any skins, so why that part in the dialog), the possibility to select file associations and whether or not you want to send anonymous usage statistics.

Fun thing here is: After wading through that dialog Winamp requests administrative privileges. Twice! And once every time you start Winamp again. I just wonder why. Neither file associations or anything else I found in the options Winamp would do needs administrative privileges. Nothing. Granting the request once (as was needed for Eclipse 3.3 to work properly) didn't change anything, Winamp still pesters me every time I start it.

And since I only have one keyboard, one mouse and one monitor here I either have to switch input devices or use Remote Desktop Connection. I went for the latter, for the most part and I figured since some command line work and music playing doesn't need many colors I could well use 8 bit color depth.

Well, turns out that Winamp likes to crash with only 256 colors. I don't know whether the music if should play is that colorful, but it reproduceably died right at startup. Only when I changed to a higher color depth the problem went away. Weird.

And as a side note: Winamp's media library is (at least to me) much more confusing than the Windows Media Player one and not exactly faster, so maybe I drop Winamp again.

UPDATE (2008–09–04 18:24): The UAC thing is solved now. There is a well-hidden option “Restore file associations at Winamp start-up” that was responsible for that. Unticking the box solves the issue. However, I have to stress that maintaining file associations is something you can do without adminstrative privileges.

I ordered something last Monday and it got sent to me meanwhile. In the mail that said that the package is on its way I found the following sentence: “If you are satisfied with our service you can give us feedback here” followed by a few links. I always wonder what such feedback and evaluation systems are good for. Well, one benefit is obvious: Customers have a measurement for credibility of the seller. But is it worth bothering every single customer with evaluating the seller?

In my opinion all this is more a nuisance than pleasant. The rule for buying something should be that everything works out fine, so why do we need an explicit evaluation in that case? Angered customers tend to spend more time venting their displeasure, I think. But if I bought something and have no reason to complain I don't visit thee sites and give feedback, possibly writing some 500 characters every time. There is nothing to say, everything went off without a hitch – so what should I possibly write (e. g. Amazon forces to write a comment when giving feedback)? What could possibly be said against defaulting to “Both sides are pleased” and just using the feedback system in the case you were displeased?

I think the customer shouldn't be bothered more than necessary. And certainly unnecessary exercises should be avoided, especially if they do not directly relate to what you really want to do (buying stuff). I usually ignored such requests for feedback simply because I don't want to be bothered with it.

I still don't quite know what I should think of this:

First I only read the part that you should write your comments within 15 minutes (or paste them). That alone is sick enough. And yes, there is a  in the top of the page. I just wonder why. The site isn't as comment-heavy as Slashdot, Heise or other large IT sites so the benefit of seeing the latest comments (well, the ones that are at most 15 minutes old) isn't really that great and besides, that could be done without forcing the user into something he wouldn't need to do (Hint: there is this wonderfully hyped Web 2.0 thing called AJAX).

And the second part of the commenting hint is just downright ridiculous. Something on their side is seriously broken if they need that kind of hint. After digging a bit in the source code of that page it turns out that their comment-system is entirely Javascript, at least the validation part. The form points into void and the only thing that will submit something is probably the JS function AddComments() that is called on submit on that form. However, I lacked the motivation to actually look through that, given that I know nearly no Javascript.

Right now a new Firefox update appeared, apparently out of nowhere. So I started up Firefox and waited. And then, right when the Chrome appeared a dialog jumped into my face, hooray. Lesson No. 1 from the usability labs (read many times by now): Unexpected things in the user's view just cause him to get rid of the damn thing as soon as possible and they won't read it.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, right, the dialog that popped into my view:

The fun thing starts right here, though. Who'd suspected that upon clicking “Later” (which should be pretty clear in meaning as in “Not now, I don't want to be bothered anymore. I'll restart Firefox sooner or later, rest assured.”) just another message box would appear, telling me something I really need to know that instant:

Great. Thanks. If I actually would read that (which I did, yes) the “Later” button already took more time (and one more click) than simply updating. I really wonder whether this is really necessary.

And one more thing: The message box is of course a XUL-generated one, without one of the nicenesses that message boxes have on Windows: Pressing Ctrl-C did exactly nothing (normal message boxes put their contents in the clipboard upon hitting Ctrl-C).

And just to complement all that: The update didn't work. I suspect me running Windows as non-administrator might be the reason. Sigh. Haven't those people learned? I mean, Vista didn't just drop into the stores yesterday …

UPDATE (2008–03–27): The update didn't request administrative privileges (and thus failed) because the updater.exe program (used to install the update) fails to request it. They rely on Windows to detect that this is an installer-type application and do the magic for them. Definitely not the best way to do this. For completeness: Here's their manifest:

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8” standalone=“yes”?> Updater See a block in there? I don't. Hey Mozilla guys: Not everyone is an admin.

Pop up blocking is nowadays a pretty essential component of every major web browser. However, what about the pop ups the user actually wants to see? Internet Explorer is pretty ignorant about this, only offering the opportunity to turn off pop up blocking for the session or completely for the site:

So, to revisit a blocked pop up you have to repeat the action that lead to it, be it clicking on a link, let the page load or whatever.

Mozilla Firefox is nicer in this regard as it allows you to select a blocked pop up to open directly from a list. However, as URLs get longer and the first part stays the same, the user faces this:

Try to figure out which pop up you want to see from the list at the bottom.

Currently I can't think of a viable solution, although thumbnails or titles would be great for the user (except he's on dial-up). But since both options involve downloading the page in background and wasting bandwidth that way it's probably not a great idea. But the current solution of being either ignorant or at times pretty unhelpful isn't that great either.

Maybe the whole issue settles down after pop ups become extinct (hey, I still have hope).