Archive for the 'Usability' Category

Disabled Menus Are Usable

Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Joel Spolsky has a remarkable track record of speaking truth to programmers on his blog: Joel On Software. Occasionally he says something with which I disagree, but usually it’s on a subtle point, or it’s an issue where his passion for doing things one way is motivated by his preferred platforms: Windows and the web. […]

Google Usability

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

Google frustrates me by highlighting in their products some of the best and worst of web usability. Consider Google Maps, which won me over instantly when I first tried it, almost entirely because of the innovative (then) “drag to scroll” behavior you can rely on whenever you see a Google map. They won me over […]

Size Doesn’t Matter

Friday, May 25th, 2007

I’m playing with some design changes for MarsEdit’s main window, and thinking it will probably end up mimicking the classic “Mail source list utility bar” appearance, where a few small buttons appear beneath a source list at the left-hand side of the window. With things in flux while I moved bits and pieces of the […]

Getting Things Done

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

OK … I mean this in the nicest possible way, because I have also considered (and may someday pursue!) writing my own ToDo-type application. But I’d like to offer my revision on a popular joke from academia… Those who can, do Those who can’t do, write ToDo apps. Those who can’t write ToDo apps … […]