Intuition: I do not think this word means what you think it means.
Saturday, April 26th, 2008Jeff Raskin on "intuitive interfaces". c.f. Hume, David.
Archive for the ‘Interfaces’ Category
Jeff Raskin on "intuitive interfaces". c.f. Hume, David.
Gutsy Gibbon: the first real desktop Linux
Thursday, November 15th, 2007Ubuntu 7.10 (codename "Gutsy Gibbon"), released last month, is for me the first really usable Linux, which is saying a lot considering I've made a serious attempt to switch to Linux about once a year for the last six years. The last 3 of those attempts have been with Ubuntu, ...
User interface semantics
Saturday, October 27th, 2007One of the largest deficiencies in most software interfaces lies in their poor use of semantic categorization. This is most clearly seen in windowed applications' menu bars, where organization is done in several different ways (often inconsistently within the same application): organization by hierarchy of action, e.g. "Paste" goes under "Edit" ...
Improved improved Firefox tabbing
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007I've rethought my ideas for better tabbing in Firefox (first mentioned here) and have revised my mockup in Javascript accordingly. The performance of the tab switching and previewing is much better, previews are now seen as the full size of the page, and the 'all tabs' pulldown now causes ...
Portals: window management for those who hate window management (mockups in Javascript)
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007Jeff Atwood discusses the way Mac OS X windows don't really have 'maximize' buttons, and he comes to the right conclusion: better to have overly large windows than to make users futz with the dimensions of their windows. He says: ...Apple's method of forcing users to deal with more windows by ...
Better tabbing in Firefox (mockup in Javascript)
Monday, July 16th, 2007In response to a challenge by Aza Raskin to come up with a better way of tabbing in Firefox---in particular a solution that scales better the more tabs you have---I produced this mockup in Javascript. Be clear that, because of the way the tab previews are done, the performance is ...
Just what Aunt Tillie needs: Vi?!?
Monday, May 21st, 2007This last week I've been getting familiar with Vim. I've dabbled a few times in the past, but this time I'm finally feeling comfortable enough to stick with it. I was quite annoyed with having to hit ESC all the time, but a neat tip is to set this in ...
dtm-ufth_dif2grok-pmdw3
Friday, May 4th, 2007Title translation: 'Don't tell me you find this difficult to understand purple monkey dishwasher (version 3)'. Preston Gralla on O'Reilly Net complains that Linux package names are preventing wider Linux desktop adoption. While I find his claim that Linux will never get there extreme, I do agree this is a significant ...
Thine desktop runneth over
Monday, March 26th, 2007I don't have to be Aunt Tillie to crave a simpler desktop computing experience. Whether I'm using Windows, OS X, GNOME, or KDE, my current work flow gets tangled as I juggle several open folder windows, half a dozen instances of Firefox with 30 tabs between them, a text editor, ...
I hate Macs
Monday, March 19th, 2007Continuing a discussion of desktop UI from the previous post. Be clear that most of what follows applies equally to Windows and the Linux desktops; my point is that Apple popularized these ideas and the others----misguidedly----still follow Apple's lead. Compared to Microsoft, I don't especially begrudge Macs for their existence, and ...
