Designing a web application, how do you design the main page? By this I mean the page that is displayed to a user after entering the base url, like http://www.foo.com. It would probably depend on a website, but... stackoverflow welcomes us with list of questions, no silly what is stackoverflow landing page, last.fm prestens a kind of ...
We are seeing more and more speech recognition implemented and request for libraries that does good speech recognition. What's the rationale (in term of usability) behind it versus a keyboard or keypad? What reasons would you have to invest in this development? For example, let's take the call centers. A few years ago, almost every call...
I am developing an online site to which access will be sold at college bookstores. Students will purchase a card at the bookstore with an access code that they may then use to register online at our site. I want to make the code as user friendly as possible. I personally hate registering for a product and having to type in a registrat...
There are 30-35 items in a list and it is expected to grow further. What could be the best way to put it on the page? Dropdown list is the first control that comes to mind, but it could easily become a pain as the list grows. What could be the best usability control to present such kind of long list? ...
I've got an application with about 35~ different settings in different categories. What are the best practices to expose this to the client. Secondly is there any VS.NET add-on or library (commercial or not) which can help to speed up this process. Something like "Property Grid" maybe but with a more professional and user friendly loo...
Why on sites like Stack Overflow, Techcrunch, Smashingmagazine, etc. are the page titles (i.e. the text at the top of the page) clickable URLs that redirect to the same page that the user is on? Some examples: I believe that this does not effect SEO as search engines ignore internal links. Is it for usability purposes? ...
Hi, update: Got a beautiful app with exclusive shortcuts for every view, all javascript. I'm gonna look into Fogbugz, i like the hovering shortcut-codes, thanks for the reference. i want to make my site accessible and more usable for visitors. Which keyCodes can I safely use to handle certain javascript actions? With safely I mean: ...
Why are comments different colors in different programs? Is it just aesthetic or is there an actual reason? ...
Hello, I wanted to get a feedback from you guys (and hopefully some references to related information) on a website design/layout. Here is a link to the full size image: http://62.128.51.43/design/layout.png The website is an eBay like service (in a specific niche). I would like to get your opinion about whether or not this kind of ...
In the application I am working with, if the user changes the value in a cell that is say positive to negative and the value is supposed to be positive at all times, the application forces the positive value. Right now, when this happens there is no alert shown to the user. I would like to show a little unobtrusive alert, like the one ...
I need to rollout an application in appliance form factor and have been asked to design a CLI as exposing BASH is problematic from a simplicity/usability perspective. I would like to understand the best practices for CLI development around: Security Configuration backup and restore Making it work not only via IP but also serial port Cr...
I have been asked to package an application in appliance form factor and would like to understand best practices around building a front panel interface. I am looking for guidance around: Design of the UI and menu system Making this type of code portable to multiple types of hardware Having a Java application send status information to...
I see really large footers on some popular sites with a lot of internal navigational links in them (such as Digg). Are there usability studies or at least authoritative opinions on this topic? Should I use large navigational footers in my future projects? ...
This is a question on how to best design the search experience for users of a CMS based system. It's on a intranet system. The users needs to be able to filter the search results based on where the document/information is located, and to have the ability to search/filter on other meta data such as author, creation date amongst other fiel...
We are currently trying to improve our usability in our intranet web app. One of our goals is to declutter certain pages which have large Grids on them. To do this, we have started putting commonly used actions (like Delete, Reset To Zero, Mark As Complete, etc.) in the grids as functions. My initial idea was to find and use icons (...
We are hiring a UX consultant, had a broadstrokes session with the company, liked their work, think the candidates are ok and now want a more concentrated interview with the specific UX consultant that will be embedded into the scrum team. What questions should be asking that could weed out any dead weight candidates. Thanks. ...
I am developing a public website which is the front end to information about medical conditions. After the user does a search (questionnaire based) they are presented with the results which are categorised in to sections and sub-sections. Information items can be assigned to both sections and sub-sections. At the moment sections are...
Hi, I am using eclipse for java programming but lines in the editor look little closer. And I want to change the amount spacing/gap between lines. Is there any option in eclipse that I can use to achieve this effect ? ...
I work in a shop that is mostly .NET based, and we're trying to pick out a content management system to use. This means we mostly likely won't be able to use any of the common open source CMS projects (Plone, phpNuke, anthing not based on .NET, etc.). Since I'm a huge usability nerd (just finished reading The Design of Everyday Things b...
Hi, I'm working on a C++ project on GNU/Linux and I'm looking for a way to test the existence and usability of IBM Informix's library with the Autotools - namely, editing a configure.in. I don't have experience with AutoTools, so basically I'm picking up from the project's configure.in et al. scripts and copying&changing where I feel ne...