Re: [IxDA Discuss] help text in input fields - bad?
I'm not sure I understand what problem the sliding labels are supposed to solve. I thought putting labels inside input fields was a compromise solution, for placing instructions in forms where few space is available. With sliding labels, the final form occupies the same space than a classic form with labels near to the input fields. So why would you want to use a form with sliding labels when you have the available space to put a complete static form? (I see that the initial state of the sliding label form is cool, and has a more beautiful design. Maybe aesthetics is the primary motivation for this technique?) On 3 February 2010 15:32, Amy Silvers wrote: I recently saw a neat little bit of jQuery that addresses the problem of the instruction disappearing when the user clicks in the field: http://www.csskarma.com/blog/sliding-labels-v2/ demo: http://www.csskarma.com/lab/slidinglabels2/ It slides the labels to the left as soon as the cursor enters the field. It might be distracting, and I don't think it's appropriate for all uses, but the thinking behind it is good. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Browse or Search
2010/1/18 parth wrote: I still wonder what kind of use cases would strongly demand Browsing Artists by Alphabetical order ? There's one use case where Browsing Artists by Alphabetical order is needed: when the user doesn't know the exact spelling of the artist's name and has to find it scanning the list for similar names. There are better alternatives for this use case: a Did you mean...? spell check, and the predictive auto-complete suggestions you said are already provided in your interface. Though the ordered list should always be available as a fall-back (but not necessarily in a prominent place). Although our Search functionality is pretty tight with predictive drop-down with first 3 characters and refreshes as the user types in, we were thinking if Browse Artist by Alphabetical order can give that value in discovering new Artists.. I can't see how Order by Name would be valuable for discovering artists; the only significant information of each artist found by that criteria is, well, their names. This doesn't say much about whether the user would like it or not. Popularity lists and related suggestions (people who like this artist also like...) would be better options for that goal. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The Red Cross donation form
Which particular form are you referring to? They seem to have several online forms at different countries. Is it one of these? http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_options http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.d8aaecf214c576bf971e4cfe43181aa0/?vgnextoid=46f51a53f1c37110VgnVCM103481a10aRCRDvgnextfmt=default http://www.redcross.org.uk/emergencysite/default.aspx?id=88916 I recall seeing an article describing a usability review about that precise site donation's form. I think it was this one: http://www.insightdesignsblog.com/?tag=website-usability ... which mentions an increase in donations after the suggested design was rolled out. Maybe the collection of links in that design (the Ways to Donate) is not that bad? Which are the points that you find pretty weak? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Save vs Save and Exit
I like how the GMail interface handles the case for saving a new message as a draft: a Save now button that gets disabled after the content has been saved (either by the user or autosave). The button is reactivated when the user makes a change to the content. This provides a persistent indicator of the current state of data (saved or unsaved). In case of a recent auto-save, the user can close the window and understand that the data is saved even if there is no Do you want to save? question. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Google added AJAX to Google Translate?
It's fairly recent, they announced it ten days ago in the official Google blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/new-look-for-google-translate.html AJAX means Asynchronous JAvascript + Xml, so if it has javascript and asynchronous server calls in it, you can bet its the real thing. It typically uses the XMLHttpRequest object, but that's not indispensable. 2009/11/25 Aaron Schwartz wrote: Pretty spectacular! This is so much more powerful than request:response paradigm. I didn't know Google even had this, thanks for sharing. Do you know how to tell if it's AJAX for sure? I don't know much about it yet but would expect to see the word ajax somewhere in the page source (javascript does show up there, for example). I'm attending an AJAX lecture next week and looking forward to offering this as an example, but I'd like to know for sure before sharing :) Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Firefox tilting web pages
C'mon people, the implemented feature is not tilting web pages, it's detecting accelerometers as an input device. Link to the original source: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/10/orientation-for-firefox/ This feature is becoming a standard in mobile devices, it just makes sense adding an API to it in a major development platform. It's true that the video showcases a (lame) feature with little real utility, but that's just a proof of concept. A context-aware input device opens new possibilities for physical interactions (think flash games, automatic portrait/landscape switch, GPS/digital compass/map orientation, gestures detection...) How can those be a bad thing? Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Expression Blend 3.0 with SketchFlow Released Today
2009/7/13 Fredrik Matheson fredrik.mathe...@gmail.com: So, has anyone tried EP3 with Sketchflow? What's your experience so far? I've given EB3.0 a quick run. Everything below is the result of a very rough first impression based on few minutes of usage. On first opening, it looks very similar to several Rapid Application Development tools by Adobe to which I'm familiarized. In particular, the layout, tools and icons show a strong resemblance to the Flex IDE - down to the dark default color theme. Said that, the SketchFlow specific functions seem a very much welcome addition for prototyping work. The SketchFlow map is a usable state transition diagram, which is a godsend after trying to create state flows through Visio background pages. The SketchFlow animation panel looks at first like a highly visual comic-strip version of the Flash timeline, enhanced with an recorder that allows creating transition states by interactive demonstration. Overall it seems that it will be a really good way to create simple transition diagrams for navigating the main application or website structure, but I still remain wary about the ease to create more fine-grained complex interactions through predefined or extensible behaviors. Cheers Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Where is the Sign In on Amazon.com?
Maybe they have read *this* and wanted to collect their $300,000,000... The $300 Million Button http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button (Short answer: forcing buyers to register cost sales, so that convention doesn't work for stores). Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Password Masking research
Thinking of this as an information problem instead of a security one, what is needed to solve it is something like the hash codes as used in cryptography. You don't really need to show the *whole* password, just enough information derived from it so that the user will notice if there was an error. For an example on how it could work: - Say, the chosen password is HOMELAND. - As a simple hash, remove every second letter: HMLN - Shift each letter one character down: GLKM - For this result to be usable, combine each obtained letter with the nearest vowel: GILOKOMO If the user mistypes the password, a different check-word will be produced. For example: HOPELAMD - HPLM - GOKL - GIOUKOLO *error, the password is wrong. Of course, a real hash function should be used that utilizes *all* the information in the original password, not half of it! The important property of a hash function is that the original information can't be recovered from it, so the password is safe. Much better for security than a plain-text exposed password, isn't it? This process has a small usability problem in that you'll have to learn the check-word for every new used password, but login is such a repetitive procedure that this learning should happen quickly. If you try to patent this procedure, I will claim prior art :-) Diego Moya Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is Auto-Scrolling Good?
Two quick ideas for alternatives: - a zooming user interface would remove the need to scroll. With a zoom out, both origin and target of the drag-and-drop can be viewed at the same time no matter the distance between them. This would lack accuracy in selecting the target position, though, unless some form of semantic zooming is used. - replacing autoscroll with a list of possible targets (list elements, chapter titles...) - hovering over a target would instantly scroll to show that item. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] GUI / CLI / Quicksilver (was Windows -- what would you change in interaction?)
In case that you don't know it yet, you absolutely have to review Humanized's Enso Launcher (www.*humanized*.com). It provides an interface similar to Quicksilver but based on principles developed by Jef Raskin (one of the original Mac designers) which are briefly explained in the Archy wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy ). Enso is an alternate approach to the same problem, allowing the flexibility and consistency of a CLI but with better learnability, feedback and GUI integration. The main benefit of the Unix CLI were that it allows for easy integration of small compontents, each one tailored to make well a single task. But GUIs, being compartmented in separate applications, often reinvent the wheel (i.e. how many different spell checkers do you have between your desktop, web apps office suite? With a CLI you could have just one, and use it at every place where it is needed). People at Humanized write several blogs with many insights into these subjects. On 10/04/2008, Jeff Hendy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Jeff Garbers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To me the interesting thing about Quicksilver is how it *combines* a keyboard-based interface with rich visuals in a really novel way. It's totally different from a traditional command line in how it provides visual feedback on matches and builds commands according to its own simple syntax as keys are pressed. Interesting subject... this actually relates quite strongly to my reasons for starting the history of interaction thread a couple days ago. Inspired by Quicksilver and Don Norman's recent article on the subject, I'm doing my masters research on ways to combine GUI/WIMP interfaces with CLI-esque interaction to receive the benefits of both. I'm in the very early phases of research, and what I'm doing right now is trying to nail down exactly what the benefits of command lines are, what was lost when GUIs took over, and how it the benefits can be brought back. I made a prototype of such a thing, which basically ended up being ugly Quicksilver for Open Office, for a class project and got pretty decent results from KLM-GOMS modelling as well as a real user evaluation. Unfortunately, the code isn't anywhere near stable enough to release, but there are some pictures and charts as well as a 20 page paper for the truly brave here (no nasty comments on the web site design please, I am absolutely not a web developer :) ) http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~jchendy/ate.htm -Jeff Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
