Disqus - Latest Comments for Alex

Re: Mmm, looking good :)

Alex — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:42:37 -0000

It's Aperte, but thanks for the kudos :)

Re: Find of the day: Quince: A UX Patterns Explorer

Alex — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:25:43 -0000

Do you have any tips on UI design pattern books (or sites that don't require evil tech?)

For development, I find that design patterns really help structure how I tackle a problem. Wouldn't mind a bit of that clarity for when I dabble into UI stuff...

TIA!

Re: Rhetorical dialog boxes anyone?

Alex — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:53:19 -0000

I've often wondered about the use of single-button dialog boxes (regardless of the text being a question or not).

If you're not giving the user a choice, why notify the user? It's not like he/she can do anything about it with a single button. If it's something important, give the user a choice to avoid the outcome. If it's not important enough to warrant a choice, you might be better off notifying the user via a status bar (or notification popup, but we hate those too). Jure, what does your usability-expertise say on this?

On interesting dialogs, this: http://alextreme.org/gfx/verpl_of_kopieren.png IE dialog is probably as good as I get them (Dutch: Do you want to move or copy files out of this zone? Buttons: Yes / No). It's probably due to a sloppy translator though, not a logical error by the developers themselves.

On the QA tool: perhaps it's simply a better idea to just add a new line to your QA guide to check all dialog boxes for logical questions? I'm all for NLP, but there are likely to be other problems with dialog boxes beyond this example.

Re: How hard it is to run a hardware startup?

Alex — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 08:38:21 -0000

As a stupid non-Slovenian, why is it "Hi-Tech + Slovenia = Problems"?

My impression is that you guys are ahead of the curve and smart enough. Is it reluctance of the potential customers?

The eMenu-idea sounds good, as you're dealing with restaurants instead of large retail chains. If they want to expand to the BeNeLux, give me a call :P

Re: OmniGraffle stencils

Alex — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:14:19 -0000

The Graffletopia 'stencils' look interesting. Pity OmniGraffle only works on OS X :)

What do you think, would this be worthwhile for a OmniGraffle-to-Dia script? Both XML filetypes look decent. /me places on if-I-ever-get-bored list.

Re: OmniGraffle stencils

Alex — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 05:36:46 -0000

Actually, dia supports SVG, you can open them directly. Their native 'shapes' (what OmniGraffle calls stencils) are in XML with embedded SVGs. It's just that SVG doesn't support stuff like connectors (see for an example of their XML: http://projects.gnome.org/dia/custom-shapes ).

Although I really like dia, it takes some work to make something pretty enough you'd want to put in a presentation. Something like a collection of these Graffletopia stencils would go a long way.

Re: The great OK/Cancel button dilemma

Alex — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 04:40:15 -0000

I'm clearly in the Cancel / OK crowd (Gnome-centric). Hitting lower-right to continue seems to me as the natural way to go forward in a process.

On the web I tend to place the continue/OK button in the lower-right, and the go-back/Cancel button in the lower-left. I think this better matches how the web works, as all browsers have go-back/go-forward buttons in the same order.

As an additional bonus, with both buttons far apart users can't accidentally hit the cancel-button and if you have any additional buttons (apply, clear) that don't move the user off the current page you can stick them in the center.

On showing the way that is most natural to users, you could parse the useragent to figure out how to order the buttons :)

(as a side-note, I'm really annoyed by web apps that place the Save/OK button _above_ the form that you're working on. Zimbra and a couple of other email apps suffer from this. Joomla makes it even worse by placing the Save button above the form, right-aligned with other buttons to the right of it. Madness).

Re: San Francisco – initial culture shock

Alex — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:39:52 -0000

Good luck with them 'mericuns! They're a strange bunch, but with a bit of hand-waving and gesturing you should be able to communicate with them. Don't forget to speak English really loud, that way they might actually understand it.

But seriously, enjoy & have a great SF-summer!