Around the time Ajax got coined, one of the already-known patterns was 37Signals’ Yellow Fade Effect. As techniques were shared and visual effects libraries emerged, we began to see visual effects become commonplace on the web. I documented four of them in Ajax Design Patterns: One-Second Spotlight, One-Second Mutation, One-Second Motion, Highlight. (I wish I [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Usability'
It starts with a Yellow Fade: The need for a more comprehensive understanding of visual effects on the web
October 8th, 2009 · 2 Comments · SoftwareDev
Signing Up to Websites, 1999-2009. A Montage.
July 2nd, 2009 · 4 Comments · HumansAndTech, SoftwareDev
Following up The New Registration and Login Grammars, I thought it would be interesting to look at how signup forms have changed over the years.
1999
Excite!. Goes so far as to ask you your race, and then a further question about whether you are of Hispanic or Latino descent. Oh, and then your household income! Talk [...]
Making a Bookmarklet: A Challenge on All Fronts
July 2nd, 2009 · 3 Comments · SoftwareDev
Scrumptious, a social bookmarking/comments app I began building recently, has a bookmarklet.
The bookmarklet is added from the demo homepage.
It’s not the first time I’ve made a bookmarklet for a website, the first time being WebWait.
I found the Scrumptious edition more challenging though, for several reasons. This brief article outlines the challenges. Some I’ve solved to [...]
The New Registration and Login Grammars
June 25th, 2009 · 8 Comments · HumansAndTech, SoftwareDev
There is a well-established “grammar” for how we sign up and log into websites. Provide your name, email and password; verify the email; login to the site with username and password until you’re timed out. You know the drill. But a wave of new web apps and protocols is challenging the status quo, breaking the [...]
The official olympics medal tally is broken. Let’s fix it.
August 18th, 2008 · 2 Comments · HumansAndTech
This is how the official olympics medal tally looks:
It’s not only the official tally, but the one linked from google each time you type “olympics” and terms like “australia olympics”. Thus making it an absurdly popular page at this time. As you can see, the design is reedeeeculous. The thing you want to see the [...]
Firefox 3: The Changes…Firefox 4: The Wishlist
June 18th, 2008 · 4 Comments · HumansAndTech, SoftwareDev
Firefox 3.0 ticker tape parade
Today is Firefox 3.0 landing day. Maybe tomorrow as the servers have been down for many hours now. Funny how Twitter is up, but Mozilla is down…it feels like today is the Juneth of 18. Anyway, this is great news as you could wile away a few lazy hours tweeting and [...]
Dogfooding considered solipsistic
March 4th, 2008 · 4 Comments · HumansAndTech, SoftwareDev
Jeff Attwood encourages developers to eat their own dogfood:
I’ve found that much of the best software is the best because the programmers are the users, too. It is UsWare.
It behooves software developers to understand users, to walk a mile in their shoes. If we can bridge the gap between users and ourselves– even if only [...]
Chameleon Clipboards
May 9th, 2007 · 2 Comments · HumansAndTech
It’s no secret that clipboards in all the major platforms suck, hence any number of third-party apps to do things like save multiple buffers (like Vi did in the mid-80s). There’s also initiatives like Ray Ozzie and MS’s Live Clipboard for transferring data between web apps and the like. For many years, Sony researchers have [...]
Rethinking Hollywood OS (Lame Depictions of Computers in Movies may not be so Lame)
April 28th, 2007 · 3 Comments · SoftwareDev
Poking fun at hollywood depictions of computing is an old favourite on the net – compilations of dumb computing scenes outshadow even mentions of anomalies in the star trek universe. Meet The Hollywood Operating System (AKA the Movie Operating System, Movie OS). You know it well:
The Hollywood operating system, or Hollywood OS, refers to any [...]
Tags: Design·HCI·HollywoodOS·Movies·Usability
