Playing around with this theme. Why do I change themes all the time? It’s bad user experience to switch that much. I just can’t help myself. I get so bored with the same look. This theme feels nice. Today, California passed a budget and gave huge concessions to a single…
Have you ever experienced a person is describing their product and say, “You can skin it however you want!” I hate when people do this. It’s an obvious assumption that the only thing one might want to do is change the color of the button or text. Here is why it’s…
Trying out a FLV Player plugin for WordPress. This is my presentation from The Ajax Experience, except I am hosting it myself. [hana-flv-player video=”http://commadot.com/test/TAE2008.flv” width=”400″ height=”320″ player=”3″ autoplay=”false” loop=”false” autorewind=”true” /]
Windows 7 has been working well, but the other day it just stopped being happy and refused to launch any Explorer windows (like file manager). It said, “Interface Not Supported” and that was it. Come on Microsoft, please be a little better about your errors and give some information. I…
I think I want to buy a mini-laptop. Recently, I gave the older laptop to the boys to use as their computer. I used their old computer for spare parts to make my mother-in-laws computer come back to life. (Make sure your computer signs it’s organ donor card today) So…
One sign that you are doing something right is the willingness of your customers to reccomend you. Some do this with a statement, some a twitter, and some just by word of mouth. The most powerful testamonial is on video. This is the most personal kind of reccomendation. The person…
I was perusing the design section of the bookstore and noticed something odd. I couldn’t find any B2B (Business-to-Business) application design books. Clearly, it is a different process and skill set than a B2C (Business-to-Consumer) application. Let’s take a case study. Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry have…
Apparently this has been available to watch for a long time and I just didn’t know it. I can’t figure out a way to download the original video source. Hopefully, I can get a hold of that before too long. Original Source Link Listening to my own voice is bizarre.…
What does it mean to be a design driven company? Every company has someone doing design, so why aren’t they ‘design-driven’? Does “Design” and “Usability” mean the same thing? Intuit considered themselves a usability-first company in their products, but I would say (after working their for a year) that they…
For anyone who has ever used a Microsoft product, this will seem familiar. Why can’t Microsoft respect the “Remember My Credentials” checkbox? They never remember anything! Why bother with the box making me think it would work and then just ignore my request. Rather than complain bitterly, I did some…
This has been itching me for a month. On May 30, Google had posted this blog about their original favIcon. I liked it. Simple G. Then they updated in January to the colorful g. Since then it has been distracting me. It doesn’t look like Google to me. It doesn’t…
Coincidentally, I posted a little UX thing about waiting spinners. Today, I see in Ajaxian a link to http://preloaders.net/. Very nice work. These are creative and different. Finally, we are taking steps forward. These are a great start. In general, we need to be creative and use spinners that are unique…
All three kids are coughing with a fever. What’s up with that? It’s like a germ factory in here! Next, Katie will get sick. For some reason, it rarely affects me. When I was a kid, I had to fake being sick the night before and then follow through in…
Wow, what a great game! That one play where the Arizona Cardinals were about to score and Kurt Warner threw an interception blew my mind. That swung the whole game by 14 points. Arizona would have one if not for that one play. The Cardinals outplayed the Pittsburgh Steelers the…