Should links on a web page ALWAYS be underlined? I do not believe this should be a hard and fast RULE! I wrote a comment on my blog awhile back about this after another developer complained that I was not following web standards. It is coming up again, and I want to know what you think. Her argument was that for consistance and usabilit...
Drop-down lists, menus and combo boxes are all very common user interface elements. Users are accustomed to seeing these elements in native applications and sometimes web apps, but there are a few problems with them. You have to aim the mouse. Some menus collapse when you mouse out, and some have submenus that you have to aim at to ex...
I am working on a single sign-on login page using Shibboleth that will be used for a variety of web applications. Obviously we would like to make this page as secure and usable as possible while limiting the effects of phishing scams. What are the best practices to keep in mind when designing a login page? Some questions that have come...
Usability is extremely important, and yet there are so many products that violate a lot of rules. There are several questions on StackOverflow that are about usability (see: link1, link2, link3), however what I feel is missing still is a comprehensive list of usability "tactics": concrete examples of what (not) to do for a web applicatio...
Within an article-oriented page (such as a blog post), the <h1> element (level 1 heading) is commonly used to markup either: the blog title (i.e. the often-large site title at the top of the page, not to the <title> element), or the article title What is the best choice and why? To the site owner, who may want to shout out to the wo...
Is it worth to try to keep your GUI within the system looks ? Every major program have their own anyways... (visual studio, iexplorer, firefox, symantec utilities, adobe ...) Or just the frame and dialogs should be left in the system look 'n feel range ? update: One easy exemple, if you want to add a close button to your tab, usually...
Is user-friendliness an important aspect of the quality of software? For example most of the Microsoft products are quite user friendly, but does that necessarily imply that their quality is superior too. ...
I have a collection of items that the user needs to group/categorize in several ways. For the sake of an example, let's say it's a collection of cars and the user wants to categorize them in the following ways: Color (red, silver, blue, black, etc.) Body shape (hatch, sedan, coupe, stationwagon, etc.) Seats (2, 4, 5, 6, etc.) etc. Ha...
What are some key UI design tips that every developer should know? While there are a number of UI resources for developers (for example, Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers), I'm interested in more of a bullet list that can be communicated in 1 to 2 pages. I'm interested in more tactical, day-to-day UI tips, as opposed...
Imagine you had a group of product categories organized in a nice tree hierarchy and you wanted to provide hackable urls to browse these. You could do something like this /catalog/categorya/categoryb/categoryc You could then quite easily figure out which category you should list the products for (note that the full URL is needed since...
Does anyone have recommendations/experience of how to find people willing to do usability testing of web based apps? I suspect I may need people who might actually be potential users, because mine is a commercial/vertical app which contains some processes and terminology which may not mean much to the average joe/jane. I have a fairly ...
I'm looking into the idea of rolling out the web-based SSRS Report Builder to our end users to allow them to create their own reports against our production application databases. From what I have seen so far, this tool is easier to use than the VS Biz Intel Studio report designer, plus it is easier to install, and deploying the reports...
I'm writing a little web-based utility for my brother who needs to merge columns in a CSV file. I know things like this surely exist somewhere, but a large part of this is that is a fun little exercise. Anyways, I'm trying to figure out the best/neatest way to present the part of the UI where he reorders the columns and chooses which co...
What is best way to allow user to pick date from a mobile device from usability prospective? ...
Is there any reason to avoid using "text-align: justify;"? Does it reduce readability or cause problems? ...
I have a set of radio buttons where a selection is required. In addition, there is an optional text box that shows up next to one of the selections. What would be the best way to make it clear what is required and what is optional? <strong>User Availability:</strong><br> <input value="Available" type="radio"> Available<br /> <input va...
I'm sure you've all seen them. Line of Business UIs that have logic such as: "When ComboA is selected, query for values based on that selection, and populate Textbox B", or "When ButtonC is pressed, disable Textboxes C and D", and on and on ... it gets particularly bad when you can have multiple permutations of the logic above. If pres...
I really want to know if I'm missing anything obvious in the software I'm developing. What User Interface features that you consider important are often missing in most software? ...
What's the best book about web usability and UI design? ...
What is the best method for date of birth selector? 3 text inputs (month / day / year) or one mask input. User MUST use keyboard 3 select boxes. User can use keyboard or mouse. One nice datepicker. I want to know what is the most usable and problem free solution, so user wont be confused at all. ...