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Viewing all posts tagged "UI"
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Zoho Blogs » Conversational View in GMail Vs Threaded View in Zoho Mail
Zoho developed an interesting solution to the ambiguity produced by Gmail’s flat threaded view. Not only can you not see who each message comes from in Gmail, but you can’t see exactly who is replying to who in the overall discourse. Zoho Mail’s unique threaded view acts more like a modern forum and solves both of these problems. This view certainly takes up more space, but if you need a more granular view of an e-mail conversation, Zoho arguably has a much better solution.
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I <3 this drop-shadow
It’s this kind of attention to detail—and the founder’s own excitement over it (yes, that david founded Tumblr)—that I love about this service and the people behind it.
And I have to agree: that is one of the most magnificent and photo-realistic drop shadows I’ve ever seen, and it’s on the drop-down menu of a social media app.
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The Energy Saver System Preferences pane (in all its newfound environmentally conscious glory) on my new aluminum MacBook no longer offers the option of picking power setting templates like “Better Battery,” “Normal,” or “High Performance.” Neither does the battery icon in the menubar. Seems like Apple’s done some tinkering all over the supposed custom build of Mac OS X Leopard for these things.
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Tweetie is hailed as one of the best Twitter iPhone clients, and I cautiously agree. It has a gorgeous, iChat-like UI and a healthy dose of features like viewing replies, trending topics, and search. But Tweetie wastes a lot of UI space and its affinity for shifting back and forth through screens really annoys me. Want to visit a link someone tweeted? You’ll have to tap the tweet to shift to a new screen, then tap the link (now that it’s accessible) to shift to yet another screen with a built-in browser.
Look at Twitterrific’s spectacular and condensed—but not cramped—UI. Now look at the reply and star controls that Twittelator embeds on every tweet, minimizing the need to bounce around between screens for functionality. All those saved taps really add up after a while, and so does all the space that Tweetie’s UI wastes.
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”The way Apple stays ahead of the web app trend is by creating native Cocoa experiences that can’t be duplicated in web apps — both on the Mac and iPhone.
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Microsoft: Expect Fewer Phones With Windows - NYTimes.com
Well color me surprised, old dogs can learn new tricks:
The decision by Microsoft comes as phone users are getting more discerning about the ease of use of their phones, and the breadth of capabilities. Microsoft has a particular challenge in that unlike some competitors, it does not control both the hardware and the software. By contrast, Apple designs both the hardware and software for the iPhone, while Palm today announced a new device, the Pre, and also makes the operating system, WebOS.
Translation: After years of unfulfilled promises, there are now smartphones on the market like the iPhone that consumers are buying in droves because they don’t suck. Micorosft has finally noticed its ass is smoking, and one of the best ways to stifle the flame is to fix the problem we’ve all been warning about for years: too many form factors (that only serve niche-within-niche markets anyway) leads to a crummy platform that is a drag to develop for and use.
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Disregarding aforelinked Orkut security silliness, I think the service is actually pretty cool. Orkut exhibits a level of pleasant design that most Google products have lacked in the past, so I decided to check in this afternoon to see how things have progressed recently.
What you see above is a “chat ad” that popped up immediately upon login. The messages arrived a few seconds apart, as if someone was actually chatting at me to let me know about Orkut’s ability to use Google Chat on the site, much like Facebook Chat and MySpace Chat.
I commend this for its creativity, but it almost felt like a popup ad. The fact that it felt like a real person chatting at me added a layer of unsettling creepiness to the experience. Ick.
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Facebook’s application experience is broken.
I get periodic requests from friends who want to add some sort of birthday calendar or notification service to their profile via an app called MyCalendar. Months ago when I noticed the first one, I clicked the app’s name to find out what it was. This brought me not to an app landing page with an explanation or information about the developer, but an “Allow Access?” page that prompts me to install MyCalendar with a warning that it will be able to access “your profile information, photos, your friends’ info, and other content that it requires to work.”
Setting aside questions about why on earth MyCalendar would ever need things like my friends’ photos or any profile information other than my birthday, I clicked on the name of the application in this warning box hoping to actually get to some kind of aforementioned app landing page.
What I saw months ago is what is still there now: no description of what the hell MyCalendar does, what information it pulls from my profile, or even who made it. Just a list of my other friends who have it installed, MyCalendar’s total number of users, and total fans.
Clicking the “Go to Application” button simply takes me back to the installation screen that got me into this mess.
I have no idea whether all these people have been duped or spammed into using this app, and the “Contact Developer” link at the bottom produces a Facebook-hosted e-mail form with absolutely no information on who or what I am contacting. No developer name, no company name—just a form pre-filled with my personal e-mail address and a notice that my message will be delivered to “the creator of MyCalendar,” whoever the hell that is.
Facebook’s application experience is utterly and depressingly broken.
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Reason #11 I love using MacJournal to write all my Ars posts: tabs. I can quickly create a few entries with a keyboard shortcut, title them for each of the stories I want to write for the day, then keep my motivation front and center.
Also: the Taco button rules.
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My wife went to bed early tonight because she isn’t feeling well, so I took the opportunity to finally get around to playing Bioshock. It’s been out for over two years and Bioshock 2 is coming, so I wanted to be ready.
This is the first thing I saw after I started Bioshock on Windows Vista SP1 (running via Boot Camp) with all the latest updates. I don’t know if this is Steam’s fault, Bioshock’s developer’s fault, or Microsoft’s fault, but this is ridiculous. Granted the state of gaming is not nearly as great on the Mac, but you never see horse shit like this when starting a game. You double click, and it works. You don’t get prompted with a Visual C++ library license agreement that leads to the installation of what seems like worthless cruft.
Fuck, guys. It’s 2009. Figure it out.
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The “Tabs in the Title Bar” browser trend creates a unique new problem for website usability.
This new style of tabs is used in Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari 4 browsers, and it all but obliterates website names when just a few tabs are open. I have six tabs in this screenshot, and I can barely read more than two words of each site’s title even in the active tab (previously, and in most other browsers, the entire title bar is used to display the name of a site). Granted, my window is set to an arguably slim 900 pixels wide to leave room for concurrently using other apps, but things don’t get much better if I go full screen. Imagine how much worse this is with more tabs, and don’t forget that I am running Glims, a plug-in that, among other features, brings favicons to Safari’s tabs.
From a screen real estate perspective, I love the new title bar tabs because they leave more room for displaying a page’s content. But from a usability perspective, these tabs make it more difficult to quickly figure out the full title of a website, article, or blog post.
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Steven Frank rambles about UI metaphors and usability
Long read, and there is no grand conclusion at the end. But if you are interested in some of the intricacies and debate over current computing and mobile phone UIs, it’s fun:
I find it fascinating that a huge portion of iPhone usability training is done via the TV ads, pre-sale. They’re both marketing and instruction.
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”The webOS’s much-touted notification system is also a revelation, and it gives you the feeling of being constantly connected without being constantly interrupted.
Ars Reviews the Palm Pre, part 1: the BlackBerry killer - Ars Technica
With all of Apple’s foot-stomping about Push Notifications, I’m still pretty amazed that we didn’t see a revamp of iPhone OS 3.0’s alert system on Monday. Palm nailed this, making Apple look like the Microsoft of UI when it comes to the UI of being alerted of various services and events on the iPhone. After users sign up for alerts from just a handful of services, say ESPN, Twitter, Facebook, and IM—each of which interrupt what you’re doing and demand action before you can so much as end a phone call—it will become immediately apparent how badly Apple needs to fix this iPhone UI train wreck.
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After finally wising up and switching to Safari, poor, poor Marco is heart-broken that his predominantly blue Dock is not nearly as legible as it was when Firefox was on the prowl.
Marco clearly must have missed the Panic Sale. Otherwise, he would have a fine copy of CandyBar 3 with which to bend his Dock to his whim.
Also: blogs without comments are a bummer.
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Is it bad that I kinda want to see this film?
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If you love Instapaper as much as this guy, or if you just like it a bit, or even if you don’t...
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Buy This: Sci-Fi Ray Gun Jesus Fish from Etsy seller Zom-Bot Labs.
Vinyl decal. $5. Also...
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I can has Spring?Maddy: Outside!!!Oscar: What is this goo all over the ground?Maddy: Freedom!Oscar: Eewww, and it's sticking to my paws.... ...
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Is “Unless You Are Being Attacked By A Terminator” the new In The Butt? *hopes*
[kuvaton.]
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