What is the best unobtrusive CAPTCHA for web forms? One that does not involve a UI, rather a non-UI Turing test. I have seen a simple example of a non UI CAPTCHA like the Nobot control from Microsoft. I am looking for a CAPTCHA that does not ask the user any question in any form. No riddles, no what's in this image. ...
Although I'm specifically interested in web application information, I would also be somewhat curious about desktop application development as well. This question is driven by my work on my personal website as well as my job, where I have developed a few features, but left it to others to integrate into the look and feel of the site. Ar...
How do you test the usability of the user interfaces of your applications - be they web or desktop? Do you just throw it all together and then tweak it based on user experience once the application is live? Or do you pass it to a specific usability team for testing prior to release? We are a small software house, but I am interested i...
So one of the things that has been talked about a few times on the podcast is whether menu items should always be enabled to prevent "WHY ISN'T THIS AVAILABLE!" frustration for the end user. This strikes me as a good idea, but then there's the issue of communicating the lack of availability (and the reason why) to the user. Is there any...
I'm asking this question purely from a usability standpoint: Should a website expand/stretch to fill the viewing area when you resize a browser window? I know for sure there are the obvious cons: Wide columns of text are hard to read Writing html/css using percents can be a pain It makes you vulnerable to having your design stretched ...
I am creating an application for a Windows Mobile computer. The catch is that the device (Motorola MC17) does not have a touch screen or universal keys - there are only six programmable hardware keys. Fitt's law is not applicable here, most Microsoft guidelines are also moot. For now I'm mimicking Nokia's S60 keyboard layout as close as ...
What techniques do you know\use to create user-friendly GUI ? I can name following techniques that I find especially useful: Non-blocking notifications (floating dialogs like in Firefox3 or Vista's pop-up messages in tray area) Absence of "Save" button MS OneNote as an example. IM clients can save conversation history automatically...
Of course the best metric would be a happiness of your users. But what metrics do you know for GUI usability measurements? For example, one of the common metrics is a average click count to perform action. What other metrics do you know? ...
Which is the right order for arranging buttons in a dialog box? ...
I'm not a usability specialist, and I really don't care to be one. I just want a small set of rules of thumb that I can follow while coding my User Interfaces so that my product has decent usability. At first I thought that this question would be easy to answer "Use your common sense", but if it's so common among us developers we would...
Most of our Eclipse projects have multiple source folders, for example: src/main/java src/test/java When you right-click on a class and choose New JUnit Test, the default source folder for the new test is "src/main/java" (presumably the first source folder listed in the project properties). Is there any way to change the default sou...
And if you do, can you give some background information on the implementation and the reasons for implementing this pattern? The pattern is described in more detail in these articles: Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines IUIs and Web-Style Navigation in Windows Forms, Part 1 & Part 2 ...
I've done some research on using tags from social bookmarking sites for web search, but I'd like to learn more about other ways in which users might use tags for information retrieval. Do you use the tags on sites like Stack Overflow for navigation? Do you think of them like filters (narrowing down a large list of questions), or as c...
What things have to be done before I can honestly tell myself my web application is accessible by anyone? Or even better, convince Joe Clark. I don't have any video or audio to worry about, so I know I won't need transcripts. What else do I have to check? ...
What are your best usability testing tips? I need quick & cheap. ...
I'm trying to get a sampling of what people think are the best sign-up forms. Good design, usability. Smart engineering. Helpful feedback. Etc. ...
What are the cases where you'd use a modal popup ? Does it interrupt the user's flow, if it all of a sudden opens up in his face ? Would you avoid modal popups in general ? or when should one be careful of using them ? Edit: To be a bit more specific, the situation here is this : I have a menu on the right, (VisualStudio style) when...
The first time I ever used it was at my current job. Among my coworkers, the feelings toward it for usability are mixed. The other developer doesn't really care one way or the other, as long as Office does everything he needs it to do when writing reports. The top manager likes it because it feels natural, and I feel the same way. But an...
Let me first say, we validate every field on the server side, so this a question about client-side usability. What is the conventional wisdom on exactly when to validate and format html form input fields using javascript? As an example, we have a phone number field. We allow numbers, spaces, parentheses, and hyphens. We want the fiel...
We are changing some of the text for our old, badly written error messages. What are some resources for best practices on writing good error messages (specifically for Windows XP/Vista). ...