I'm Leaving iGoogle...wait not yet

The new iGoogle launched and I hate it. iGoogle is my homepage. I keep weather, stocks, mail, and feeds on there...mostly feeds. The new iGoogle destroyed it for me. The old one showed me post titles with a plus box to open up and read the item. This worked well. If I wanted, I could click-thru to the main site, but I rarely did. The new iGoogle chose to do away with the plus boxes and just give me the first two lines of the RSS items. This was terrible. It wasn't enough to read and it made the page an absolute mess of text that was impossible to read. Combine that with the worthless side bar links and I was ready to look for a replacement.

Well, I guess Google is feeling the heat. As of tonight, the plus boxes are back. I can collapse the side bar links and I'm mostly back to normal. I'll stay...for now.

As a temporary workaround, you can change your language preference to UK english and get the old design back. Who knows how long until they roll the new site to the UK version.

The software industry is excited about web apps because they can spin versions whenever they want. New features can launch when ready, not as part of a larger bundle. The problem with this is that it's usually a forced upgrade. With boxed software, I can choose to not have the Office ribbons, for example. With online software, beloved features are killed as the users scream in pain. Will web apps face a sustaining nightmare? Will customers demand old versions stick around forever?

Shapes and Colors

Yes, this is another color blind post.

When the iPhone came out, I complained that their availability chart was poorly designed because it only used color to convey meaning. Even worse, they picked colors that are commonly known as colors that color blind people can't tell apart!

I was delighted to see today that they've made things better. The current availability chart for the MacBook Air uses colors and symbols to convey the meaning. Yay! The world is now a more accessible place.



Thanks to Engadget and TUAW for the source images for the above image.

Hello World - iPhone Style

I'm excited about mobile development again. I'm eagerly awaiting the iPhone SDK and while I wait, I figured I'd at least try some iPhone development in its current, web development, form.

I'll post about what I made in a future post. For now, I just wanted to link to some of the things that got me going.

Apple has some great developer resources, including the iPhone Dev Center. I'm not sure why they hide them all behind a login curtain, but they do. Once you create (or buy) an ADC login, you can access 2 hours worth of videos about iPhone development. The videos range from UI elements to how to simplify your app for smaller form factors. Even if you have no interest in Apple and the iPhone, you might enjoy the usability aspects of the talks. Most of the concepts apply to Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, and other mobile development. If you watch and it all seems like common sense to you, good, you are better off than most developers that build UIs.

If you're ready to start building right away, look no further than iUI. iUI is a great framework to build web based apps that look native to the iPhone. Within an hour, I was able to build a great looking, highly functional, app using iUI. I tweaked the included CSS a bit to include some further button samples I found at the iPhone Dev Center. Thanks go to Joe Hewitt for his work on iUI.

Finally, if you want to follow some discussion and get some links to other apps people have built for the iPhone, head over to the iPhoneWebDev Google Group.

Tick tock on the SDK clock.

Check-in Challenges

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to Florida. As usual, we flew United Airlines. Our checkin process was a little interesting. It sounds like something you'd read on The Daily WTF. For starters United could use a UI overhaul on their automated kiosks. First off, you're given the option of employee/companion travel. I think that's for employees and companions of employees, but it isn't really clear. Second, you're given 4 options to identify yourself, the most common being a credit card swipe. Unfortunately the picture really doesn't convey that message and you have to read pretty close to know which option to pick. Other airlines just have you swipe your card (or passport) from the start.

It was also pretty funny to hear the guy next to me arguing with the United employee about how he didn't need to swipe his card because he'd already paid for the flight. It took them a few minutes to convince him the credit card was for identification only. Call me crazy, but couldn't they use the drivers license that they require as identification to start the identification process? It must be easier to read a credit card than 50 states worth of different data formats.

So, I swipe my credit card and it pops up my wife's name. No problem, we'll just check her in first. We're told that the FAA may delay our flight and we should look for alternates if possible. Ok, look for alternates then. It tells us none are available almost immediately. Why even bother to tell us to try alternates if it knows there are none?

We finish checking in my wife and I slide the card again expecting my info to pop-up. No, it's her again. Please note that the card I've swiped both times is the one with my name on it. Obviously the number is the same, but I'm pretty sure my name is encoded on the card as well because it shows up on the receipt at restaurants. Is this a common problem? Do related people not check-in to the same flight often? Being skilled in tricking crappy software (I write plenty of it myself), I pull out a different credit card which thankfully produces my name for check-in.

So now we are both checked in and waiting for the tags to print for the checked baggage. Why don't these print from the same kiosk? The helpful lady behind the counter asks us if we checked bags. We reply yes. She asks if we pushed the button saying we were checking bags. We reply yes. She tells us nothing is printing so we must not have. Well we did and we were sure we did and we went back and forth a couple of times. Eventually she decides the printer isn't working, but why did she have to even argue with us? If we had screwed up and forgot to tell the computer about our bag, there's nothing we can do at this point anyway, so she should just go about doing what needs done to make things right. That's what I hate about the automated kiosks. We've traded 5 knowledgeable ticket agents for 4 kiosks, 2 goofball agents that appear to be skilled in little more than sticker folding, and a knowledgeable agent that comes and cleans up when the goofballs don't know what to do. Questions like can you change our seats so my wife and I can sit together? stump the goofballs and require the roving expert. Before the kiosks, the ticket agent would just sit you next to the people you were checking in with. Hmm, progress.

Don't get me wrong. I love the kiosks when they work. If you aren't checking a bag and you aren't traveling with anyone, the kiosks are a breeze. When you need to change anything the kiosks just aren't up to the task yet.

Hey United, simplify please.

Leopard Loves Content Only

Web clips weren't even a feature I was excited about in Leopard. I gave it a try and it is now a must have feature. Too many web sites, especially sports websites, drown the content in ads and other junk on their pages. One example of this is the nba.com TV schedule.

First of all, I'm thankful to the NBA for even having such a page. I haven't found a page that makes it easy to see what NFL games are on TV. I still don't like all of the junk on that page. I just want a quick look to see who's playing in the next few days and on what network.

I now have a clipped version of this schedule in my dashboard. It auto-updates and gives me just the content I want. Thanks Apple.

*BTW, I'm aware that I didn't need leopard to do this, but I rather like not having to seek out the functionality and remember to install it on all of my computers.

Wasted Taskbar Space

A UI discussion broke out at work and I couldn't resist documenting these complaints.

In XP, I put my taskbar on the side because that's the only way I can read any of the descriptive text for running tasks. Without a decent task switcher in XP, I rely on what little text I can see. The problem is that the Start button doesn't change size, even though it has plenty of room to expand with the width I give to the Taskbar. I have a blank area, nearly as big as the Start button, that is worthless, wasted space. Seems to me that Microsoft should just extrude the Start button to fill the space. This saves me time as I don't have to go as deep into the corner to hit the button. It's also easier to hit because it is bigger which allows quick, sloppy mousing.



A similar issue exists in the notification area. I like having the date available on a quick look, but I don't need the day of the week, and I don't need huge empty areas around the information because the column is wider than the info. Compress that down and give me space for one more task entry to show before it switches to a two column display (which again makes the descriptive text worthless).

Lock it Down

Electronics have lots of buttons. Sometimes you don't want to press those buttons. You just want to leave things the way they are. iPods have Hold switches. Phones allow you to lock the keys and unlock with a key sequence. Windows Mobile PDAs allow you to lock and unlock using the touch screen. Modern cars let you lock the window controls. The thing is, these are all mobile devices. Are they the only ones that can use a lock feature?



How about locks for all types of electronics? I want to be able to lock my TV, DVD, and receiver controls. If you have kids, annoying friends, or even drunk uncles, you know that there are plenty of people that want to push your buttons when you don't want them pushed.

Give me a software lock. Put it on the remote next to mute. Put up a small, translucent, lock icon when operations are attempted while locked. Remove the lock when power to the device is interrupted, just in case you lock it and lose that remote :)

The New Apple Keyboard and VI Pain

So far, I've been pleased with the new Apple keyboard...except for VI. I'm a heavy VI user, and if you're familiar with the text editor, you know that you use the Escape key, a ton. That's bad news for the new Apple keyboard. The esc key is now a half-height key, up with the F keys.



This is terrible for my VI usage. I miss the key all the time. Sometimes when I miss, I hit F1 and dim my monitor because that's the brightness down key! Grrrrrr. The esc key on the old Apple keyboard was not only full size, but double wide. I had no problems hitting that one. I'm going to give it a little longer, but I can't suffer when using VI.

Presence Pitfalls

Away messages, busy icons, and green dots. Online presence is becoming common and people are relying on it more and more.

Outlook does a good job of tightly integrating Windows Messenger presence. If the person is in my Messenger client, I'll get presence icons in emails from them. This is nice, but I really don't find myself using it that much. What would really be useful to me is tight integration with the out of office reply.

Summer is the season of vacation. Every week there are a handful of people that I need to work with, but they are on vacation. I know this because the email I sent them came back with an out of office reply. That's great, but that information is just a blink. I read it, delete it, and then forget 2 hours later when they are returning to the office. How come Outlook, especially Exchange connected Outlook, can't integrate that presence? Make that icon work for me. Instead of an away icon, show me the out of office icon. Let me hover over it and see their out of office message.

While we're at it, if I'm sending a message labeled high priority or scheduling a meeting to a known out of office recipient, Outlook should warn me. Finally, you could take this out of office data and generate a report showing who is out for the current week. It would be very helpful. I can barely remember when I'm supposed to be on vacation. I don't know how I'm supposed to remember when you will be.

Note: I'm running Office 2003 at work, so if things have progressed since then, let me know and I'll retract my rant.

Stupid Shopping on the Web

While trying to buy some items at Home Depot, I came across this not-so-helpful message.



Ok, the software is smart enough to know that item isn't available and to tell me, but isn't smart enough to not add it to my cart in the first place? How about disabling the "add to cart" for items that aren't available. I guess there could have been a chance that the item became unavailable in the time it took to load the page and for me to add it, but I doubt it.

Symbols for the Colorblind

It's been a year since my last colorblind post, so I thought I'd bring up the topic again. This one is even iPhone related, because I know you can't possibly be sick of hearing about the iPhone. Definitely not.

If you are making web pages, please don't use tiny blips of color to convey meaning. Here is the example of what not to do.


It doesn't take much to fix this problem. Simply add some subtle symbols to the icons to allow those with poor color vision to discern the difference.

Save a pixel, plant a Safari

Safari for Windows is out. Overall, I like it. I don't know if it will overthrow Firefox as my default browser, but I'm giving it some time.


One of the first things I noticed was how tight the top of the browser is. Even with the menu bar that is normally on the top of the screen in OS X, Safari still takes up less space than Firefox and IE. The best part is that it does this without losing much usability. Between Safari and Firefox, menus are 1 pixel shorter. Buttons are 11 pixels shorter, so that's where the savings come from. Will I have more misses when I reach for the button bar? We'll see.

Perils of a Bootcamper

Today, just a tale of woe for those of us that spend time on both sides of the OS fence.

As you know, Watch Now from Netflix requires Windows and IE. So, I'm on the MacBook, booted into XP and half way through a film. A scene of quiet dialog came on and I reach to turn up the volume.



F5. That's an evil key. My MacBook brain thinks volume up. My web browser thinks refresh. Click click. Ohh, look, my movie is gone. It's negotiating to transfer the movie again. Fantastic.

Stupid F5 key. Stupid Watch Now player. Stupid keyboard overlay that doesn't match the actions. Grrrrrr.

Intel Inside...the TV

Mark Cuban has a post up at Blog Maverick discussing HDTVs as PCs. As to computers in the TV, I agree 100%. It just has to happen. Computers are now amazingly cheap and TVs are getting amazingly complex, or at least the stuff they need to display is getting amazingly complex.

Mark did say some things that had me shaking my head though.

Remember when you would buy a new PC every couple years to keep up and you would buy a new TV every decade ? Well thats about to reverse itself. You no longer feel the need to get the latest and greatest desktop PC, but you are about to get in the habit of upgrading your TV every couple years as new and original features and applications are developed for it.

Yes, I remember the computer treadmill. A new one every 2 or 3 years, just to be able to run what was current. There's no way I'm going to do that with TVs, especially TVs that now cost in the thousands, not the hundreds of dollars.

In 3 years the mainstream TV will be 70" and cost less than $1500. In 5 years, it could be 100" for $2500 dollars . Yes, you will make room for it. You will redesign the family room or your bedroom to make room.

I'm guessing Mark's house is a little bigger than mine. There's no way I can fit a 100" tv in either my family room or my bedroom. It might fit downstairs in what can be a home theater room, but even then, 100" is gigantic and you need to sit a long way away from that screen. People aren't going to build bigger houses to hold their bigger TVs. At least, not the masses.

So back to the computer in the TV. Absolutely, I want this. If you've seen an Apple TV, your first thought is Why can't they just cram that in the back of the LCD? I wonder if the current Apple TV is the first in a family of products. It doesn't take much imagination to picture a 30" Apple display with an Apple TV built in.

Apple isn't the only company that can make this happen, but they appear to be one of the few that care. The on screen menus of many of todays DVD players, receivers, and HD tuners look like they were designed by engineers. They navigate like they were designed by engineers. They frustrate the crap out of their users. In case I'm being too subtle, most engineers can't design UIs. The ones that can are usually designers.

Part of the reason they suck so bad is that they're written in low level languages running on very basic display hardware. It takes a lot of effort to make stuff look good with those resources. Contrast that with the Apple TV. It's a full-blown computer running a full-blown OS that can make use of full-blown development tools and techniques. The Apple TV costs $300, but that's not that much more to pay on top of a TV that already costs $3000. I say build it in. You might think this leads to the upgrade path that Mark suggests. I'd like to think the opposite. Build in some general purpose hardware and let folks at it. Look at all of the new functionality that has been built on the Apple TV. Look at the tremendous work done to add functionality to routers with the DD-WRT project. If you open it up (intentionally or not), they will build for it.

Let me run widgets on my TV. Let me cut out the weather warnings with stylesheets for TV. Let me build a channel guide that doesn't suck.

It seems to me that this is what Mark Cuban would want, and I think he does. He wants people to continue to sit in front of their TVs and watch HDNet. To keep them there with compelling user experiences. He even points out some of the ways that features are being added to TVs. However, pay attention to the subscription fees for services like caller-id on your TV though. I don't want a plan for my TV!

So, to sum it up, TV manufacturers need to build up the development capabilities of their TVs. Focus on the experience. Focus on the interface. Do these things and you'll get my dollars.