August 2005 Archives

In the past week I've had some real problems minimising applications to the system tray which has made me feel really stupid and now I'm angry. After all, I'm a bloody software engineer and usability specialist and if I can't do something as simple as that then there is clearly something amiss.

The problem is this, some how it's become the norm for the user to have to press the 'x' (close button) to MINIMISE a piece of software to the system tray instead of the '_' (MINIMISE button). Of course this isn't a universal trend so you can never be sure what's going to happen.

The offending software that brought this sharply to my attention is Google Talk, but since then I've noticed it in Gaim, QuickTime and SharpReader... to name a few.

When on earth did it become okay to CLOSE an application to the system tray? When did it become okay for the software developer to tell me that "I didn't really want to close the application, merely hide it from my screen"?

Of course I suppose the "helpful" software engineers were just responding to support emails whinging that some users keep pressing the close button when they mean to minimise the application, but really there must be a better solution then to completely redefine the default behaviour of an application.

The Software Usability Research Laboratory of Wichita State University have published a fascinating research paper entitled Is Multiple-Column Online Text Better? It Depends!, which looks at how multi column layout and text justification can effect readability and comprehension on the web.

In terms of reading speed they reported that;

• for one column of text, left justified is the fastest
• for two columns of text, fully justified is the fastest

Two columns of text, fully justified, was slightly faster overall then one column of text and both were significantly faster then 3 columns.

In terms of comprehension they reported that;

• they "found no significant main effects or interaction for either justification or number of columns for total comprehension"

but "In general, results from these analyses indicate that the fastest readers benefited most from the 2-column justified text, while the slowest readers performed best at the 1-column left justified format. In addition, satisfaction levels were found to be higher for the fast readers at the two-column full-justification condition than the other conditions."

Source: (UsabilityNews.com; Media: Usability News on Page Design for Screens)

A comprehensive resource from Microsoft on accessibility issues.

Microsoft accessibility guidelines

Joe Clark has written an interesting article on (the newly re-designed) A list apart, where he argues that there should be a unified user experience when considering the accessibility of html and PDF documentation.

A List Apart: Facts and Opinions About PDF Accessibility

IBM's accessibility guidelines which cover both desktop and web development.

They also provide information on the issue faced by people with visual, cognitive and motor disabilities.

IBM accessibility centre developer guidelines

Get Tooled Up:'Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with Firefox', Ariadne Issue 44

An excellent essays on the features available through FireFox's Web developer toolbar to asses how accessible your website is.

Zeldman's A List Apart has published a series of articles on creating a custom DTD for XHTML.

Starting with Peter-Paul Koch article JavaScript Triggers which uses custom attributes to create javascript triggers.

This article was then quickly followed up by J. David Eisenberg's article Validating a custom DTD, exploring how to use Koch's code and still keep the page validating.

Most recently the W3C Quality Assurance Team have published an article, More about custom DTDs, to discuss the matter further - including the downside of creating a custom DTD which they argue breaks the spirit of XHTML and therefore the main reason you'd want to validate the document. Instead the suggest creating a "Creating a custom markup language with the modularization of XHTML" and suggest the following article from Shane McCarron, How to create XHTML Family modules and markup languages for fun and profit, as a starting point.

I must admit all this (like bitwise operators) is a bit of a blind spot for me - I'm hoping that these articles will help no end.

Whilst playing with beta 2 of "desktop" (as the Financial Times calls it).

I found this useful user testing approach in one of Jared Spool's UIE email alerts and wanted to put it some where useful.

Feature Article: 5-Second Tests -- Measuring Your Site's Content Pages

Paul F. Marty and Michael B. Twidale have published an article entitled Usability@90mph in the peer review journal first monday.

In the article they introduce a rapid approach for demonstrating (selling?) user testing.

On the whole it's a interesting approach and I can certainly see the benefits from an educational stand point but my over riding worry would be that in this high speed world people would start using their approach as a replacement for real user testing.

In their conclusion Marty and Twidale do point out the dangers of their approach and I'm heartened to see that they recognised the treat to traditional user testing.

n.b. At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, their approach might work well for early stage user testing and could be considered for preserving usability budgets for later stage testing. A way of integrating more user testing into the process perhaps?