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A fun name for boring stuff
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For your Mac OS X Dashboard
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AdventuresA fun name for boring stuff
WidgetsFor your Mac OS X Dashboard
GalleryExamples of my work
Background:
Barcamp talk on visual manipulation
I gave a short talk at the Saskatoon Barcamp tonight. It's very basic, and entirely different without me half drunk providing witty banter, but if you missed it I've put the slides online as a PDF here.
Let me know what you think.
Let me know what you think.
Firefox beta 4 and Fitt's Law
After seeing the big back button in the latest Firefox beta my first reaction was to turn it back to normal size. My second reaction was to consider the usability advantages. My gut reaction was that it was a small improvement in usability at the expense of a lot of screen real estate.
The button in question
My usability problems with the new big button are this:
Luckily the implications of the first two can be calculated using Fitt's Law. I calculated the difference between both buttons from the point in the exact center of the viewport as this seemed the most simple way of getting a reasonable result. Also, it takes into consideration that the larger button alters its viewport, and thus affects its own usability.
On a 1024 x 768 screen I found that the larger button would have a 7% speed advantage. This comes at the cost of about 1% the viewport's area. That's more than I expected - I had predicted a difference of less than 5%, which I would have considered insignificant.
Implications
If clicking the back button normally takes a very slow user user two seconds then the new button will take 1.86 seconds. Over time, for such a labored user, the improvement is probably noticeable. So while I will personally continue to shrink the button on my own, I will have to stop complaining about the uselessness of the bigger back button.
Instead I'll complain about the uselessness of the awkwardly-shaped recess it's in.
The button in question
My usability problems with the new big button are this:
- it is, on average, less than 10 pixels wider than the normal sized back button
- it costs about 10 pixels of vertical space from the page viewport
- the gray recess around it (on the Mac) could be confusing to new users
Luckily the implications of the first two can be calculated using Fitt's Law. I calculated the difference between both buttons from the point in the exact center of the viewport as this seemed the most simple way of getting a reasonable result. Also, it takes into consideration that the larger button alters its viewport, and thus affects its own usability.
On a 1024 x 768 screen I found that the larger button would have a 7% speed advantage. This comes at the cost of about 1% the viewport's area. That's more than I expected - I had predicted a difference of less than 5%, which I would have considered insignificant.
Implications
If clicking the back button normally takes a very slow user user two seconds then the new button will take 1.86 seconds. Over time, for such a labored user, the improvement is probably noticeable. So while I will personally continue to shrink the button on my own, I will have to stop complaining about the uselessness of the bigger back button.
Instead I'll complain about the uselessness of the awkwardly-shaped recess it's in.
An example of the importance of good UI
There are already famous examples of the importance of good interfaces but developers and project leads still tend to ignore the consequences of poor UI. Perhaps, "I'm not working on a nuclear reactor," is a valid excuse, so here is an example that's easier to relate to.
"An employee apparently selected the wrong field," says to me problem #1 is a confusing UI. That the interface even affords the possibility of sending an automated call to every student is second problem, and obviously in combination these issues had significant consequences. I'd love to see the UI for this program, my guess is it's not too pretty.
"An employee apparently selected the wrong field," says to me problem #1 is a confusing UI. That the interface even affords the possibility of sending an automated call to every student is second problem, and obviously in combination these issues had significant consequences. I'd love to see the UI for this program, my guess is it's not too pretty.
No need for Windows now
Finally I can play on PokerStars without running windows. I'm not sure I need Windows on my Mac anymore - even for C# dev at work I just use the mac version of remote desktop. I'm so happy.
How to Use Gmail on Your iPhone
I have both a Gmail and Yahoo Mail account, so I was planning to use my yahoo account with the iPhone to get mail pushed to me. However, my testing shows that push is currently not working. Perhaps it's because I have edge disabled. Whatever the reason, I decided to use Gmail instead.
Gmail has been my main account for several years now. Setting up a gmail account on the iPhone is easy enough - the iPhone has an account preset, you just type in your username and password and then make sure POP access is turned on in with gmail itself. Then I realised that gmail wasn't perfect either: it was sending me back messages I had sent. I scoured the net for solutions and found nothing, so I've written this guide on how to do it properly.
Read the guide
Gmail has been my main account for several years now. Setting up a gmail account on the iPhone is easy enough - the iPhone has an account preset, you just type in your username and password and then make sure POP access is turned on in with gmail itself. Then I realised that gmail wasn't perfect either: it was sending me back messages I had sent. I scoured the net for solutions and found nothing, so I've written this guide on how to do it properly.
Read the guide