Comments on: Designing For The First Launch http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch Mac & Technology Writings by Daniel Jalkut Thu, 16 May 2013 21:58:44 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Daniel Jalkut http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135709 Daniel Jalkut Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:53:12 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135709 Uli: agreed. This is definitely on my TODO list for the main URL field in MarsEdit’s text editor. Hadn’t thought about doing it in the first-launch window, though. And stealing from Safari’s list could be quite clever indeed.

]]> By: Uli Kusterer http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135707 Uli Kusterer Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:48:08 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135707 One suggestion: Add a “bookmarks” popup button next to the URL field, or auto-complete from Safari’s bookmarks list. AFAIK they’re stored in a standard format, and many people have their own blog somewhere in the bookmarks, so this could save your users lots of typing, and make it even less work for them to get started.

It’s the No. 1 rule in UI design: Don’t force your users to type in something the computer already knows.

]]> By: Daniel Jalkut http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135694 Daniel Jalkut Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:26:16 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135694 (Which is to say, Textpattern *is* supported, but it doesn’t autodetect correctly, because they’re missing the required RSD information.)

Actually Textpattern’s developers have made a great amount of improvement lately to their XMLRPC support, so it might be worth updating to see if they also include improved auto-detection support. You can follow Textpattern’s progress here:

http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic.php?id=24487&p=1

(Note, that thread was started by me :) So it’s not like I’m completely cold and uncaring when it comes to Textpattern :) )

]]> By: Daniel Jalkut http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135693 Daniel Jalkut Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:01:06 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135693 Nick – it just doesn’t make sense from a labor perspective for me to jump through hoops to auto-detect Textpattern, when they could just add a simple RSD tag in their system to make it auto-detect automatically.

It’s quite often the case that when a system doesn’t work perfectly with MarsEdit, it’s 100-times better to fix it in the blog system than in MarsEdit.

]]> By: Nick http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135691 Nick Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:19:54 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135691 Still no Textpattern support? I understand the configurations are a bit ad hoc, relative to more standardized things like, you know, WordPress, but I recommend you look into it. I could see myself getting really into MarsEdit.

]]> By: Daniel Jalkut http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135685 Daniel Jalkut Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:48:24 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135685 Bob: You might want to check out Journler. From what I understand it fits that bill pretty perfectly.

]]> By: Bob Peterson http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135684 Bob Peterson Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:45:34 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135684 The user experience begins before the user downloads the application. How many products have I walked away from because the author’s home page or product page is a list of release notes. I have no clue from that what benefits the product confers on me, nor what features it uses to achieve those benefits.

As for blogless blogging…I’m an old fart (compared to most of you) and I’ve mostly lost my interest in personal blogging (professional blogging is different). However I would like a really easy to use private diary app. And maybe I’d like to publish passages as a personal blog now an then.

]]> By: wrf3 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135674 wrf3 Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:17:27 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135674 I’m in almost the same situation as pauldwaite; I want to start writing a blog, but I don’t want to publish it, yet. The startup for MarsEdit is keeping me from using it.

]]> By: Ed Voas http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135672 Ed Voas Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:03:20 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135672 Two things:

1) We actually call this whole thing OOBE (out of box experience) here. And yes, it’s damn important to get right for all the reasons you mention.

2) On an unrelated note, your first dialog has too much whitespace at the bottom (actually, I think the second one does too). I know it’s because the second dialog has more info, but I’d personally do a animated resize for each screen to make it fit perfectly.

Your Pal,
–Ed

]]> By: Ahruman http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch/comment-page-1#comment-135671 Ahruman Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:40:50 +0000 http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/453/designing-for-the-first-launch#comment-135671 Regarding Steve Nygard’s issue: don’t remove the Go Back button, change it to Cancel. As Brent mentions, many users won’t think to look for a close button in a dialog box (even if it’s modeless, and that distinction is pretty non-obvious in OS X).

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