David Herrold

Firefox 3 “find” UI blunder?

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Software, Usability

I was searching for words within a page today using the new Firefox 3 on a Mac when I ran into what looks like a bizarre user interface blunder.  The “Next” and “Previous” buttons to find your search term on the page appear to be switched from the standard left=back and right=forward configuration.

I think it would be OK in the Japanese version of the browser (because Japanese is read right to left).  However, on all English versions of the browser the buttons should be swapped.

(Now that I think about it, the same goes for Spanish, French, German, etc…)

Am I crazy or is this really odd?

Tags: browser, Design, firefox3, mozilla, Software, UI, user interface

FireFox 3 upgrade for Mac

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Software, Usability

I just finished upgrading to FireFox 3.0 and so far the good outweighs the bad. Some things I noticed immediately are the bookmarks in my toolbar are completely rearranged and outdated.

Several of my bookmark folders were simply replaced by two folders called “Most Visited” and “Places.” It’s almost as if the installation grabbed an old copy of my bookmarks as it upgraded.

That is forcing me to scramble to find some old back-up copies of my bookmarks. And that is a pain. About half my add-ons are working correctly. I consider the following add-ons to be essential for any installation of FireFox: Web Developer toolbar, FireBug, TabMix Plus. TabMix Plus isn’t compatible with FireFox 3.0 yet; nor is Mr. UpTime, TinyURL creator and view source chart. But I can live without those for a while (until the developers update them…hint, hint).

The good news.

The speed is fantastic. The startup and shutdown times for FireFox 3.0 seems at least 3 times faster than FireFox 2.0. Even faster than I expected.

FireFox 3.0 appears to be using less memory (RAM) than FireFox 2.0 used on a regular basis. This frees up more memory for other apps to be open at the same time.

The navigation bar has been slightly redesigned, making the back button (pictured above) larger than the forward button (and also graying out the forward button when it is not needed). This is an excellent example of Fitt’s Law (the time to acquire a target is directly related to the size and distance of the target) in action. Mozilla’s interaction designer probably noted that most people use the back button far more than they use the forward button and adjusted the size to reflect that. Pretty sharp.

Overall, I’d say the upgrade was pretty positive with a few hiccups.

Take my advice and back up your entire machine (on an external source) before upgrading. That way you can simply copy over anything you may be missing (or back out of the upgrade gracefully if something goes awry).

Speaking of Firefox add-ons…what are some of your favorites?

Tags: browser, FireFox, firefox3, mozilla

Decentralize me, please.

Posted by Dave | Filed under Communication, Social Networking, Technology, Usability

Our content is becoming decentralized…and we love it.

Most bloggers I know are tangled up in multiple social networks, photo sharing sites, messaging services, networking sites, bookmarking platforms and a plethora of addictive attention-grabbing web services.

The concept of a “web presence” has changed so drastically over the last several years it’s become difficult to tell people “where” you are online. Blogs or personal home pages used to be our single point of existence online. These were the places we could refer colleagues, friends, family, etc if they wanted to see “our website.”

That’s not the case today.

Our lives are now split into dozens of different networks and spread across the internet like strategically placed digital confetti. We are on Facebook to connect with old friends and meet new ones. We are on LinkedIn to find jobs and stay connected to our business contacts. We are on Flickr to share our lives in photos. We are on Twitter because we have five spare seconds in line at the grocery store and saw something funny we need to share with the world. We are on Del.icio.us to keep track of all the amazing links we find and StumbleUpon to share them with the world.

Like a cheesy Zen proverb, we’re everywhere.

This is both frustrating and fantastic at the same time.

The fantastic part can be found in the amazing services we have access to for free. These services have connected old friends, gotten people out of foreign jails and made grandparents smile at newborn baby photos.

The frustrating part is trying to pull it all together. Some sites are friendly and speak to other sites; but most don’t. More often than not, our collection of platforms and services float like little islands unconnected in any meaningful way. We are forced to keep asking the same friends to connect with us on multiple services.

Some very smart people are working on pulling it all back together, but it still appears to be stuff of dreams at this point.

For now, many of us simply link all our networks, sites and services somewhere on our blog (as I’m doing in the right sidebar of this site). It’s not ideal, but until someone figures out how to bridge our isolated islands in a meaningful way, it’s what we’re forced to do.

What do you think? Will we end up with connected islands?

Photo by Harris Graber

Tags: Blogging, del.icio.us, facebook, flickr, linkedin, open social, openid, social networks

An Event Apart 2008 - New Orleans

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Design, Development, Technology, Usability, Web design

Wow. I have been drinking from the fire hose of information for the past two days here in New Orleans at An Event Apart. The conference was organized by Jeffery Zeldman and Eric Meyer and according to the website:

“Their new conference wouldn’t be just for designers. It wouldn’t be just for coders. Attendees would gain a deeper understanding of web standards, of course. But they would also encounter a world of emerging best practices and inspiring new ideas.”

I didn’t know what to expect. Would the code be over my head? Would the design be beyond my skills? Would I be able to grasp the conceptual nuggets they would throw? I mean, these people are the best in the industry.

They’re internet famous, right?

As it turned out, each presentation was amazingly clear, surprisingly understandable and completely worth the price of admission. The difference between the presenters at An Event Apart and your run-of-the-mill web experts is an overwhelming sense of passion for their craft. Some of the highlights for me were:

Andy Clarke’s astute observation about how comic book design can be transferred to the web to control pace and user engagement was refreshing, if not brilliant. It was one of those ideas that made me whack my forehead and wonder why I hadn’t thought of that. Andy’s a smart fellow. I added his blog to my feed reader immediately.

Brian Oberkirch, beyond being an extraordinarily nice guy, has an uncanny grasp on what humanizes the web. His talk Thursday afternoon was a lot like eating really good dim sum. I was filled with delicious savory tidbits about how sites can create human connections and positive social interaction with their users. Not shallow marketing, but real connections. The web would be a better place if more people listened to Brian.

I thought Eric Meyer’s CSS presentation, if any, would be the one that stumped me. I am, by no means, a CSS expert; and I feared his material would be tailored for people with more experience. However, Eric did such a good job of presenting his material in a way that made it easily digestible. I took away some very useful tidbits about how to use CSS to debug your markup. Very handy stuff.

I had never paid much attention to how beautiful data & information design could be until Jeff Veen spoke on Friday. His slide showing Google searches throughout the world as pinpoints of light on a globe was amazing. He spoke about data like some artists speak about color or texture. Data is simply another artistic medium.

Robert Hoekman Jr switched things up a bit. He did live usability assessments for people in the audience who needed some help with their sites. Usability issues fascinate me and Robert was very good at recognizing usability issues with a short glance at the site in question. I plan on checking out his book.

What can be said about Jeffery Zeldman that hasn’t already been said? Jeffery is the patriarch of web standards and has been fighting the good fight to make the web a better place for designers, programmers and users alike. He addressed a room full of designers as Yoda addressed his Jedi. Use your powers for good He was also very humble and approachable, something I hadn’t expected.

Here is some additional information about the speakers at An Even Apart 2008 in New Orleans:

Andy Clarke - Author, Transcending CSS
Dave Shea - Co-author, Zen of CSS Design
Cameron Moll - Author, Mobile Web Design
Jeff Veen - Design manager, Google
Brian Oberkirch - Publisher, Like It Matters
Aaron Gustafson - Co-author, AdvancED DOM Scripting
Stephanie Sullivan - Co-author, Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS3
Aarron Walter - Author, Building Findable Web Sites
Robert Hoekman Jr. - Author, Designing the Obvious
Jason Santa Maria - Designer, Happy Cog
Eric Meyer - Author, CSS: The Definitive Guide
Jeffrey Zeldman - Author, Designing With Web Standards

If web design, development and standards interest you then I would recommend checking out An Event Apart. I had a blast and hope to attend again in the future. It was good to hang out with Tim and the rest of my pals from BarCampNOLA in New Orleans.

Hope to see you all again soon.

Tags: aeanola08, An Event Apart, barcampnola, new orleans, nola

Google opens Website Optimizer

Posted by Dave | Filed under Business, Design, Development, Google, Marketing, Usability, Web design

Google released their Website Optimizer platform last week for general use. It has only been available to sites using Google AdWords in the past, but now can be used by anyone to enhance site performance. This is great news for web analytic junkies, usability testers, developers and designers alike.

In a nutshell, Google’s Website Optimizer allows you to test multiple versions of content (ie. marketing messages, logos, icons, copy, etc) in a live environment to determine which combination of content yields the best results.

Based upon what you are testing, this “result” could mean higher click-throughs, increased product sales, increased product downloads, increased ad revenue, higher traffic to internal pages, etc.

This eliminates the guesswork of testing ad placement, site designs, product purchase flows, etc. You can simply release multiple versions of your content and look at the analytics to determine which one is yielding the best results.

There are certainly other tools to do the same job; but not many are free or this simple. We could certainly do the same thing at the Chronicle, however we would have to use several systems to make it happen. This simplicity of using one system appeals to me.

Here are some links to get you started with Google’s Website Optimizer:

Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer blog
Website Optimizer press release

(via Web Worker Daily)

Tags: analytics, Google, Marketing, Usability, website optimizer

Mozilla mobile browser on horizon

Posted by Dave | Filed under Browsers, Mobile, Software, Usability

Mozilla community (makers of FireFox, Thunderbird, Bugzilla, Camino and other fine applications) have announced their intension to build mobile browsers for both touch screens & non-touch screen phones.

I think they have a great shot at competing directly with the likes of Apple, Palm, Nokia, RIM, Microsoft, etc in the mobile browser market.  Most mobile browsers are lacking in basic functionality of some sort.

• iPhones can’t copy & paste.  It.  Can’t.  Copy.  And.  Paste.  Think about that for a minute.  Palm Treos over 6 years ago could copy and paste.
• Blackberry browser laughs heartily at your mobile CSS while slapping its knee.
• Internet Explorer Mobile is almost as fantastic as Internet Explorer’s desktop version.  D’oh.
• Opera Mini, god bless them, are trying, but not much better than the rest (frequent connection errors have tainted my once-cheery opinion of Opera Mini.)

Most mobile browsers have serious issues supporting JavaScript, CSS, AJAX, Flash, audio, video, etc.  None offer developers tools or plugins to allow any real dissection of a page.  I would LOVE some sort of “Email me page source” and “Email me screenshot” tools.  For that matter, many phones are capable of voice-dialing.

Why not use voice browsing to automatically open a browser and navigate to a preset audio bookmark?

1. “Find Starbucks” - could trigger google maps search
2. “Browse CNN” - open CNN mobile homepage in your browser
3. “Wiki Ben Franklin” - searched Wapedia for Ben Franklin references

There are infinite possibilities when you ponder all the available functionality of a mobile phone.  They are, after all, audio devices first and foremost.  Let’s put the audio to good use.

Speaking of functionality, Google is beginning to use a combination of GPS and cell tower pings to determine where a user is located for their mobile maps product.  It’s not perfect, but pretty accurate and more importantly, it’s combining interesting features of the phone (WAP & GPS) to create an application that is greater than the sum of its parts.

I hope Mozilla pushes the envelope and begins utilizing more of the phone’s capabilities than just a simple browser.

Track the progress of the browser development on Mozilla’s wiki pages:

Touch screen browser wiki
Non-touch screen browser wiki

Location-based preferences for Macs

Posted by Dave | Filed under Software, Usability

Dear Steve Jobs,

It would be really cool if I could make certain preferences location-based on my Mac just like my network settings. You see, Mr. Jobs, I use my laptop in two distinctly different ways.

• At home I use an external monitor to give myself a little more space to work.
• At work I do not use an external monitor.

I enjoy using Leopard’s Spaces to give me a bit more room to breath at work with several applications running at the same time. However, when I am at home, I don’t need to use Spaces because I have more screen space to work with.

I find myself changing my Spaces settings nearly every day when I get home. I put my email, iTunes, Adium, etc in my laptop’s screen and use my external window for FireFox, Coda, Photoshop, etc.

It would be fantastic for my Mac to “know” it was home, just like it does with my network settings, and change my Spaces to my preferred setting while at home. For that matter, it would be great if all my applications had location-based preferences.

iTunes at home uses Airtunes and some external speakers. iTunes at work uses the built-in speakers.

Mr. Jobs, you could make the world a better place and save thousands of man-hours by allowing preferences to be location based. Thank you, and good night.

Tags: Apple, mac, network settings, preferences, Spaces

LinkedIn redesign

Posted by Dave | Filed under Communication, Social Networking, Software, Usability

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

LinkedIn launched a redesign of their site tonight that looks pretty good.  I hit their site while they were launching and it looked like they were having CSS issues.  Turns out they were launching a redesign.

Upon first inspection, the sites looks more user friendly, but that’s more of an instinctual opinion than anything.  It just feels easier to use.

I plan on playing around with it in the near future and posting my comments here.

What do you think?

Tags: linkedin, redesign, Social Networking

Mobile sites: a few of my favorites

Posted by Dave | Filed under Mobile, Technology, Usability, Web design

Mobile LinkedIn is fantastic.

I just noticed today that LinkedIn (my work-related social networking site of choice) has launched an amazing mobile site. It feels nearly as robust as their full-featured site for searching and sending invitations.

I’m always shocked at how some mobile sites can tailor their user experience to give the perception of full functionality (even if that’s not the case).

Google and Yahoo offer many of their mobile applications & searches (calendar, maps, docs, email, etc). Mobile Google Maps has been the most impressive of the lot, in my opinion.

Bank of America allows you to check balances, pay bills, transfer money, etc. with your mobile browser.

Netflix allows you to search for movies and add them to your queue. This seems exceptionally handy if you are chatting with friends and someone mentions a movie you should see. You can immediately add it to your queue while you’re thinking of it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t pimp our very own mobile.chron.com in this blog post. I think we do a decent job of presenting diverse content (weather, news, sports, obituaries, etc) content in a very small space.

Mobile news sites such as the New York Times, CNN, Chicago Tribune, etc. offer some great mobile news user interfaces.

One of my favorite search tools is called Wapepedia. It is a simple mobile interface for Wikipedia.

You can find a lot more great mobile sites at cantoni.mobi.

Do you have any favorite mobile sites you find yourself using on a regular basis?

Tags: Blackberry, iPhone, linkedin, Mobile, Treo, WAP, wireless

Data collection and manipulation for the masses

Posted by Dave | Filed under Development, Software, Usability

I am increasingly impressed with the data collection and manipulation tools that are becoming available on the web for non-programmers. I first noticed Yahoo Pipes about a year ago and just noticed Dapper recently.

Yahoo Pipes allows normal people* to mash up data into combined feeds to create interesting results. Dapper provides the tools to grab virtually any data (regardless if RSS feeds are available or not) and create a feed.

I see unbelievable potential in tool like these becoming popular in the future. They are not really simple enough to bridge the gap into the mainstream population…yet. But the potential is there.

Eventually they will become more widely-used as their user interfaces evolve and more sophisticated under-the-hood as their data manipulation software adapts to virtually any scenario.

Will your grandmother** use it to combine weather reports with he price of cantaloupes at the local market to find regional produce bargains? Probably not.

Will your mother and father use it to find interesting travel deals by combining weather, event calendar, travel and exchange-rate data for an economical and interesting trip to Europe? Maybe…maybe not.

Could you use it to search all the local bargain websites (Craigslist, local newspapers, eBay, etc.) to find the cheapest DVD players within a 10 mile radius. Yep, pretty easily.

If I were a business owner I would create search-agents like this to find nearby products I use in my widget business. I would scrape local and national websites for product data integral to my business. I would also use it to find local widget buyers in the exact same way. It seems like a perfect match for small business owners, but probably not easy enough for the general public to begin using right away. For the most part, the public doesn’t use words like “data” unless they are referring to the STNG android (and even then it’s only nerds).

Within a few years we’ll see many more of these sites go mainstream as users become more and more technically savvy and eager to manage and filter the massive amount of data surrounding them everyday and find exactly what they are looking for.

Could you use tools like this in your everyday digital life or is it more hassle than it’s worth?

* Normal people do not know (or care) about the following acronyms: SQL, FTP, PHP, HTML, RSS, CSS, ETC.
** Your grandmother is probably more concerned with feeding you, than reading your feeds.