I actually am having trouble finding a decent Design Pattern for a Tree. A tree is a critical user interface element and is being used more and more on applications. Since, I can’t find one, I am going to quickly summarize the pattern I proscribe. Let’s start with the EXT JS Tree. This tree is…
I have been getting a little bit on a roll with the book. I got one chapter approved and another chapter written in first draft form. I like the style of it. I hope the publisher can get me an illustrator. There are tons of pictures and my reliance on Microsoft Clip Art is pretty…
My bosses recently purchased an Ikea couch. I won’t go into all the details, but here is the salient point: The directions did not have a single word. All pictures. I liked it very much. It was international. I found the directions clear and concise. Good job. Interesting, there is an ikeaFans.com website. It says…
Microsoft just released a new upgrade to their Maps site. (I still think its a horrible name, maps.microsoft.com would be smarter) Anyway, it’s a good upgrade. The bird’s eye view is so much better than anything Google Maps has to offer. The Google street view is interesting, but in reality, I use the bird’s eye…
There is an old story that I like, but I can’t find it on the web. It goes something like this: This was back in the days of large servers with big vacuum tubes. A major server stopped working, causing panic in a large corporation. All work ground to a halt. The engineers could not…
Although it was a rocky beginning, (see resolution) I have really fallen in love with EXT, specifically the 2.0 release (currently in beta.) The quality of the interaction design is top-notch. Jack Slocum has the extremely rare combination of talents including programming, visual design, interaction design and CSS. He is able to take the modern…
As a follow up to the Filespots review, someone at Freshlogic asked me to review their competitor called Folders. Although I feel that my expertise should be PAID for, I still can’t help myself. Someone asking me to write a review of a cool new Web 2.0 app? What can I do? Maybe I should…
Recently, I have been getting alot of comments fall into the Akismet net. I am experimenting with a Captcha plugin for WordPress. A captcha forces the user to type in a word before they can comment. Spambots can not read the words, so only human beings can make it work. The one I am trying…
I think Opera has a chance to do something really awesome. Assuming that the technology was possible. They should release a browser with Opera, IE6, IE7, FF and Webkit rendering engines built in. They should enable a <META> tag to indicate on the page WHICH rendering engine to use. Default would be Opera, of course. …
I was looking at Technorati just now. Some really neat features. It has a way to claim your blog on it. So this post does that. I need to link to my Technorati Profile and it should work. I will review the UX of Technorati later when I get a little experience with it.
It appears that Amazon is widely testing a new homepage. I took some screenshots of the old and the new. You can get the new page by deleting your cookies and refreshing the page. Looks like it might even be a 50/50 split. Additionally, they have information about the redesign here. At first, I was…
Last month, my brother and his wife got us a new toaster. Our toaster was old and crusty, but it had a simplicity that I liked. It had a dial for temperature and “toast” lever. You pressed the toast lever and when you heard the bell, BING, the toast was done. It was a small…
Jack Slocum just pointed out a new EXT application called Filespots. This is interesting on many levels. Just from the homepage you can see how they have mirrored the exact Vista windows explorer user experience. The nice folks at Filespots were kind enough to give me a username and password. I immediately started to check…
I recently red an article on Ajaxian about a Craigslist Mashup. Take a look at this thing. This is awesome. I can’t stop using it. It’s so much better than craiglist by itself. It gives the google map, and remembers the last bunch of views. The thing I don’t like is the visual design. It’s…