From Jacob Nielson's "Stop Password Masking": Usability suffers when users type in passwords and the only feedback they get is a row of bullets. Typically, masking passwords doesn't even increase security, but it does cost you business due to login failures. What do you guys think? ...
In some software company, who should be responsible for the UI design: User Designer Manager Boss Depends on company size etc. In UI design I mean not only colors and images, but also control's layout, count, size, style, may be text user see. ...
I'm interested in generating short codes (up to 6 characters) which are unambiguous for human readability: i.e.: 2Z8B5S would be a very bad code because B looks a lot like 8 and 2 looks a lot like Z, etc. A good code would be something like: AE37HT, say. Obviously, I could try to figure it out myself, but I was looking to see if there...
For example, Windows Forms Designer offers to place my controls on the form the way there are 12 pixels between form border and control border. It seems too much to me. Is it standard value? Also, as I understand standard button height should be 23 pixels. Am I right? Is there any documents that state all this? And can I setup this defau...
Most battle-tested, real-world software contains extensive error checking and logging. We frequently employ complex logging systems to help diagnose, and occasionally predict, failures before they happen. We generally focus on reporting the catastrophic failures on the server-side. These failures are important of course, but I think th...
I am probably at the edge of etiquette here since the question is somewhat subjective, and not stricly about programming, but usability - but in the end, what is more important than the usability of the solutions we create? The idea is to "work backwards" from usability to technology: I want to see an impressive Web-GUI (show URL if po...
I have recently become interested in the possibility of actually attempting to contribute to one of the many open-source projects out there. I'm interested in not only gaining development experience, but also gaining experience tweaking UI's, improving usability, etc. I found this and this regarding getting involved, and there are some g...
I'm in the process of developling various applications for whom the end users are both engineers and salesman. Some of the operations and options may not be immediately obvious to all users. All applications are delivered with a PDF and paper manual - but of course nobody reads them! I would like to improve the usability of the applicat...
I'm using gcov for block-count profiling, and I'm finding the output very difficult to read. I am used to lcc and its excellent bprint program, which rewrites the source code, placing the count immediately in front of the block in question. So instead of 6772619: 63: assert(p == pts->limit || !DELIMP(p, delims)); 6772619: 63-bloc...
I am looking for nice looking sites that are good in terms of look and feel as well as usability. ...
I'm having to design & develop UI for a Point of Sale (POS) system. There are obvious features that need to be included, like product selection & quantity, payment method, tender amount, user login (as many users will use one terminal), etc. My question is related more towards the UI design aspect of developing this system. How should...
We're in the process of creating a new API for our product, which will be exposed via web services. We have an internal debate whether the API should be as easy as possible to use (in the price of making more calls) or make it as efficient as possible (rendering it harder to use). For example, here are two issues that came up: Should w...
Yeah, not a question - just a minor usability idea. I often have multiple tabs open at SO, and it'd be nice to see the search term I used on a given tab... just in simple text somewhere in the top section of the UI. ...
We have been trying now for a while to assist the management (of a customer) with the implementation of a a new system that is custom developed by ourselves, to their requirements. Their old system is text based (DOS) and their employees have been using it for years. The new system is Windows GUI and have many advanced features which wil...
I know there was a study somewhere that showed which places users focused on initially when presented with new interfaces, but I can't remember that study, nor remember exactly what behaviors could be assumed for most users of your program. From what I do remember, it came down that users often shoot towards the corners of a software ...
Here's an interesting writeup of using eye tracking software to generate "heat maps" that show where on the screen users spend the majority of their time. Any leads as to good packages for doing this, without paying through the nose for somebody to come in and run the assessment for you? http://www.useit.com/eyetracking ...
G'day, Just listened to Jeff and Joel talk about open source version numbers in SO podcast #59 and it made me think about a problem I currently have where I need to look at various possibilities for implementing a centralised, logging mechanism for a large scale web site. And I mean really large. Really, really large. One possibility i...
Until today I had not realized there was a difference between a list-box (like the HTML Form control drop-down selection box) and a "combo box" which is a combination of the list-box and the text-entry control. So the ComboBox allows the user to enter in a new value and if programed to do so, will append the value to the list of values ...
I know that using "here" for a link's text is considered bad, but if I want to persuade business- or architect-type people, what are the best arguments to use? I know it can have some effect on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but can anyone explain this and any other reasons in more detail? An example: The StackOverflow site can b...
I am working on an Rails app which has an admin section for setting up organisations. The hierarchy of which is: Organisation Area Office Division Department I have used ActiveScaffold to knock together something really quick, but it makes for a pretty horrid UI. To edit/add a department, I have find the organisation in the tab...