Scrollable pull-down menus enable users to access long lists of options without the need to divide the list into smaller units. For example, Firefox’s Bookmarks menu has scroll buttons at the top and bottom of the menu. Moving the mouse over the top button scrolls the menu up; moving the mouse over the bottom button scrolls the menu down. When scrollable menus contain application-defined options as well as user-defined options, the application-defined options should not scroll.
Continue reading ‘Scrollable Menus Should Scroll Items Selectively’
Mozilla has released my Text2Link Firefox extension for public download. Text2Link makes it easy to open web pages and send emails to addresses when their URLs are not marked up as HTML links. Although this is a simple enhancement, it really improves the usability of Firefox, especially when interacting with Google’s image search results which don’t mark up the websites hosting the images.
Continue reading ‘Text2Link for Firefox Goes Public’
Scratch is a visual programming environment for creating interactive stories, animations, games, music and art. Scratch is object-oriented and organises projects into objects called sprites. Sprites have a visual presentation called a costume, sound effects, and behaviour implemented by user-defined scripts. Sprites interact with each other on the stage, another object that has sound effects, behaviour, and a visual presentation called a background. At first glance, Scratch resembles Logo’s turtle graphics. But look deeper and one finds that Scratch’s design is deceptively clever and has the potential to change the way we write software.
Continue reading ‘Scratching a Visual Programming Itch’
Harry Beck’s iconic map of the London Underground is now seventy-five years old, which is surprising because it is as fresh today as it was when the first edition was printed in 1933. The London Underground map is one of those rare designs: functional, beautiful and difficult to improve.
Continue reading ‘Harry Beck’s London Underground Map at 75′
The user interface for printing documents and other content follows the same pattern in most current graphical user interfaces: users preview and print documents by invoking application commands. However, to monitor the status of documents in the printer queue, users must leave the application and use a separate print-queue user interface provided by the operating system. This split in what should be a unified task—printing documents and monitoring their progress—mirrors the split in the underlying implementation: applications are responsible for previewing printed documents and for sending documents to the printer; the operating system is responsible for monitoring the status of the print queue. Whenever software reflects implementation details in its user interface, usability suffers.
Continue reading ‘Rethinking the User Interface for Printing’
The button for turning an electrical device on and off has a simple interaction familiar to anyone who has ever used a flashlight or a television: pressing the on/off button turns on the equipment when it is off; pressing the same button turns off the equipment when it is on. In fact, most electrical equipment works this way. To the detriment of usability, computers are a notable exception.
Continue reading ‘Computer Power Buttons Switch Off Usability’
I’ve set up Windows XP to let me know when updates are available from Microsoft. Although I usually install all the recommended updates, I like to choose when the updates are downloaded and installed. When XP has finished installing a critical update, it informs me with a dialog that asks whether I want to Restart Now or Restart Later. I always click Restart Later—I’ve usually got everything set up as I like it and I’m usually in the middle of a task. The problem is that XP is quite keen for me to restart and displays the message again a few minutes later. I click Restart Later to dismiss the dialog again…and again…and again. Why doesn’t XP take the hint?
Continue reading ‘Humane Interfaces Take The Hint’
Some time ago I read a newspaper article about a tragedy that occurred in a nursing home. Four elderly residents died after drinking diluted dishwasher cleaning fluid rather than the intended blackcurrant cordial drink. This story stuck in my mind not only because it was a tragedy for the residents, their families, and the staff of the nursing home, but also because it is characteristic of so many accidents: a sequence of unintended events pave the road to disaster.
Continue reading ‘Breaking Conventions Can Cause Accidents’
Domainmonster is my favourite domain-name registration website. Aside from the unidentifiable fury object in the logo, the reason I like this website is its user interface for presenting domain-name search results.
Continue reading ‘Monsters Can Be Friendly’
“Why did it do that?” and “what is it doing now?” are, expletives deleted, probably two of the questions most frequently asked by confused computer users. As experienced users, the ability of software developers to reason about what a desktop application or website is doing means that they often have difficulty empathising with users who don’t have the same stock of experience. It’s not the developer’s fault, it’s a natural consequence of being human: we learn from experience. But once learned, knowledge is difficult to forget, temporarily, when we need to look on a design with inexperienced eyes.
Continue reading ‘The Hand-Dryer’s Secret Handshake’
My name is Jeffrey Morgan. I'm interested in making software, websites and physical products easier to use with good design.
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