TenTonHammer recently sat down with Amy Skopik, UI Designer for Star Trek Online and Craig Zinkievich Executive Producer and got there thoughts on how the games was going.

This Q&A is all about UI for Star Trek Online:

” A fundamental key to making a good MMOG is its User Interface. A poorly fashioned interface will make it hard to enjoy a game, no matter what its other assets, and a good UI will be almost transparent as users start up the game for the first time and begin taking control, almost without thinking about it. We spoke this week to Amy Skopik, UI Designer for Star Trek Online and Craig Zinkievich, Executive Producer to unveil some of the challenges and innovation of STO’s interface. ”

That sounds like a pretty good statement, nothing kills the mood faster than a poor UI. The best games I played started with my Avatar doing what it was supposed to without me thinking to hard about it and for me the best solution would be a PC using a 360 gamepad and there is encouraging news on that front:

In a Q&A with Strategy Informer Craig was asked:  ” You’ve mentioned before that you might like to take STO onto the Home Console – provided you do, it would be the most serious attempt since FFXI – what are your thoughts about this genre and consoles “

Craig Zinkievich:” We definitely would like to see Star Trek Online on the console. We think that games being on multiple platforms including MMO’s are the future of gaming”

Champions also made this claim and it still has not happened but the good news is that Champions seems to work quit well with the 360 gamepad on a PC according  articles I have reed. Forums seem to agree It’s as if the game was designed for a later release on the Xbox 360. Check out  Tobold’s MMORPG Blog he has an interesting article on it. Star Trek Online will use the same engine as Champions and if you go by Craig’s statement to strategy Informer then one has reason for hope. Just to put things in prospective no MMO of Star Trek’s scope has actually made it to the console since FFXI, and many have tried non have succeeded.  Square Enix has recently announced a release date for  FFXIII of March 9, 2010 and it will be PS3 exclusive, but it’s FFXIV the will be Sony’s MMO contender on the PS3 that I’m waiting to see. To Read the Full interview go to TenTonHammer.

Taken from http://scienceblogs.com/chaoticutopia/

It is easy to mistake a programming task to be simple. This is especially true in user interface.

The executive is looking at the “trivial” two fields login screen and innocently estimates it to be a two hours job.

This is a common mistake, similar to some extent to The Three Body Problem in physics. Taking a simple, solvable problem and changing one parameter can result in an exceptionally complex problem. While the two-body problem is integrable and its solutions completely understood, solutions of the three-body problem may be of an arbitrary complexity and are very far from being completely understood. See a nice graphic example.

Login screens are not that complex, but take a look at the next example and see how many open questions\bugs can you come up with ?

Simple Login

1. Is it “Log-in” “Login” or “Log in”?
2. Is it clear that email is equivalent to user name?
3. Do you need a “Cancel” button?
4. Should there be a visible mark for the mandatory fields? Which mark?
5. Seems like a “Forgot My Password” link and screen are missing.
6. Is a Captcha needed to fight bots?


Simple Login Form

7. Is validation done on the client side or the server-side ?
8. How is the feedback given to the user? Where?
9. Security demands that we don’t tell the user what’s the exact problem (missing email or password). Usability does.
10. Where is the sign-up page? Where does Log-Out go out to?
11. “Email” , “eMail” or “email”?


Nice Login Form

12. Do we use SSL for the login but move to clear HTTP for the rest of the application ?
13. Cross browser testing?
14. How shall we do unit testing for the screen?
15. It turns out that validating an email address can be a nightmare.
16. After the user made a mistake, which events clear the warning notification?
17. Shall we support Hebrew? How about the German umlaut?
18. Shouldn’t “email” and “password” be left aligned?
19. Is the colon required after “Login”?
20. Do we want to limit the length for any of the fields? Minimum password strength?

Notice how we got to twenty non trivial questions without discussing the actual user authentication or the graphic design, which can be huge topics on their own.

My simplistic recommendation is to use of the shelf components whenever possible and go through the annoying step we used to call “feature design” even in this agile world we live in.

Sample Login Screen

I am always confused by the word “focus” (in the context of user interface, which embarrasses me very much since I am making a living as a “user interface designer”.)  Now I think I am a little clear about the meaning of it so just a note for myself.

In the WIMP environment, for a pointing device such as a mouse, it’s always clear where the “focus” is: it’s always where you point your mouse towards. In this kind of paradigm, the spatial input is continuous.  But in the context of a non-desktop environment where you use a D-pad; or in the WIMP if you use the keyboard as your current input, it’s not always clear where the input is. The concept of “focus” is used to indicate where the spatial input is currently in the GUI. If a UI element has the focus, I guess it depends on what kind of control it is, it can behave slightly differently. For a button, it means it will react as if it “received a mouse click” if the user presses the enter key; For an editable text field, it means it has a caret cursor inside it and is ready to take keyboard input (if you type something they will go into the text field in focus); For a hyperlink, it does the same thing if you press the enter key as if you click directly on it (normally load the page it links to:).)

Note that the visual feedback and behavior for the keyboard input/”discrete spatial input” paradigm is normally different from that of the mouse input/”continuous spatial input” (and also different from that of the touch input — more on this later). In the picture below, it shows the “Go” button is in focus while the “Search” button has a mouse hover.

Fig 1.

Focus on tab vs. mouse hover

Here is some notes:

1. A UI element can be “disabled” but still receives focus. See figure 2-4.

Fig 2.

"Ok" button is disabled

Fig 3.

"Cancel" button is in focus

Fig 4.

"Ok" button is in focus

2.  In MSDN glossary, it says “input focus” means “The location where the user is currently directing input. Note that just because a location in the UI is highlighted does not necessarily mean this location has input focus.” I guess the scenario is when you are hovering the mouse over an UI element?

3. Touch screen paradigms. As in iPhone, Android opt not to deal focus (showing highlight or any other visuals) in “touch mode“. An interesting reflection is about potentially different interaction paradigms for capacitive touch vs. resistive touch. Can the level of pressure be reflected as whether the UI receives the focus as opposed to take a “click”? Will the “80 percent” of the users be surprised and/or confused?

4. Design guideline for “Input focus location” at MSDN.

5. Besides the keyboard, D-pad, mouse and touch, there is another scenario where the focus can be acquired: that is by code. When a focus is acquired programmatically, the UI behaves as if it’s acquired by a user tabbing the keyboard/D-pad.

6. It’s safe to say for now, the rationale for designing co-existent interaction paradigms is that you should treat the UI as if the user has multiple input/pointing devices at hand (mouse, d-pad, keyboard tabs/arrow keys, fingers). UI shall give feedback respectively to each of the input mechanisms. One input device shall not interfere with the behaviors of the others. For example, tabbing to get another UI element in focus should not result in your mouse cursor changing its current location.

http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/4e05a0ac

The rumors about Google’s redesign are true, and you can try it for yourself with a very simple method.

1. Go to Google.com.
2. Once it loads, enter this code into your web browser’s URL address field:

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

There shouldn’t be any http://google.com in front of that. Just that code.

3. Hit enter.
4. Reload or open a new Google.com page and you will have access to the new user interface.

It’s fast and sweet, although the changes don’t affect all the available sections.

[Gizmodo]

Recently, I read an interesting blog by Jason F. of 37 signals fame on simplicity. He wrote “the dirty little secret about simplicity is that it is most difficult to achieve”. I couldn’t agree more.

I still remember the time when we created about 30 odd variations of User Interface concepts for Ajeva. Each time, when the concept would be ready to be presented to the team, we would discover things which can be further improved or elements which can be eliminated. As we progressed, the process would be more of elimination than adding anything new. The more we thought about making the user interface usable, user friendly, the more we eliminated. We would organize and then re-organize and then again eliminate and then start over….

I do realize now, why many people come to me and appreciate Ajeva and its simplicity. What we finally got an outcome in Ajeva was a very simple and usable user interface which people would find friendly and easy to use.

Now I understand how ‘complex’ the process to attain ’simplicity’ could be. A considerable amount of focussed thinking goes into making things simple.

Thanks Jason, for putting this up…it really made me look upon my work and appreciate every single interface that was rejected. Simplicity really is the most difficult thing to accomplish.

Whats your experience with simplicity? Do let me know your views, experience and insight.

Ever wish the flat touch screen buttons on your phone felt more like physical buttons?

Chris Harrison and Prof. Scott Hudson at Carnegie Mellon have developed a simple technology that turns touch screen buttons into physical buttons by using pneumatics.

The technology consists of a flexible surface area with a hard backing that acts as a mask for the button shapes.  An air chamber behind the backing can be pressurized or depressurized using pneumatic technology, in this case fan-based pumps.

When positive pressure is applied, the buttons pop out.  When the pressure is neutral, the screen is flat.  When negative pressure is applied, the buttons pop inwards.

Images are displayed on the surface using a projector behind the device, turning the surface into a display screen.  Button presses are detected using an infra-red camera pointed at the front of the screen that detects reflections of light from a fingernail.  When your fingernail gets close to the screen, a button press is recorded.  This technology cannot easily distinguish between a finger touching the screen and one merely close to the screen, so a press is not recorded until the finger presses down on the surface and causes a detectable change in pressure in the air chamber.

It is also possible to have the positive and negative forms take different shapes.  Additional parts are added to the mask, except these parts have no adhesive holding the latex down.  When positive pressure is applied, only the mask parts with adhesive are effective.  When negative pressure is applied, all the mask parts are effective.

See this excellent video demonstration.

Applications

Instead of pressing images that look like buttons on your phone, this technology could allow all the dynamically drawn button images on your phone to actually pop out like real buttons.  (One change that would be needed is making touch sensing based on capacitance technology, as current touch screens do, rather than a camera aimed at the screen.)

The pop-inwards feature is also pretty cool.  You could be playing a driving game on your cell phone and have the car’s dashboard pop inwards to appear like a real car’s.  Or, when you displayed the stopwatch on your phone, it could be displayed like a real concave stopwatch.

Limitations

With a single air chamber, all the buttons must popped in or out at once.  However, it is straightforward to create separate air chambers, thereby allowing only certain elements of the UI to pop in or out.

An unavoidable limitation is that the mask itself is static, meaning that new shapes cannot be created dynamically.  The technology only allows controlling whether the shapes pop in, pop out, or remain flat.

Comment: When do you think pneumatic technology like this will turn the flat touch screen buttons on our phones into physical buttons?

1. 2 years
2. 5 years
3. 10+ years
4. Never

Email a Friend

This story about a new Bible software called “GLO” was sent to me by one of my ex-co-workers from 13 years ago!

Check out these videos:

Cool. One thing I would add to this software is resources for allowing people to explain the Bible to their neighbors. Probably the most useful thing would be to evaluate major passages to see when they were written, how closely the passage is based on eyewitness testimony, whether it appears in other New Testament sources, whether it passes criteria like embarrassment and dissimilarity, and whether it is confirmed by archaeology or even non-Biblical sources.

Additionally, commenter Matthew has some concerns:

Translations? Only NIV, which is OK but far from exemplary. For $90 this needs every translation known to man, in most languages. And full text of all historic bibles as well.
Scholarship? An article found through google critiques Glo for not having a panel of scholars advise on the extra-biblical resources offered.

I don’t think this thing is meant as a scholarly resource – they are aiming for a different market.

Debates about the Bible

If you think that talking about the Bible with non-Christians is fun, you might want to take a look at these debates:

• Richard Bauckham defends the reliability of the gospels against James Crossley
• Richard Bauckham defends the divinity of Jesus against James Crossley
• Crossley debated against William Lane Craig before on the resurrection
• Crossley against Michael Bird on the origins of Christianity, (part 1, part 2)

If you like seeing fringe historical skeptics of Christianity go down in flames, check out this post for some historical debates with evangelicals and radical skeptics.

None of this matters.

Both Apple and Microsoft have introduced mice with “multi-touch” sensing.  This is arguably the first substantial improvement to the mouse since it was invented in 1968 by Doug Englebart.  Apple’s product, the Magic Mouse, is commercially available for $69.  Microsoft has 5 prototype mice that are still in the R & D stage.

Regular mice only allow movement via the palm and the clicking of a left, right, and middle mouse button.

Why not detect inputs from all 5 fingers all over and around the surface of the mouse?  Multi-touch sensing technology for touch screens has allowed detection of multiple simultaneous presses all over a display screen.  A multi-touch mouse simply applies multi-touch technology on a mouse.

This article will compare the Apple and Microsoft offerings.

Apple: Magic Mouse

The Magic Mouse is a straightforward application of multi-touch to mousing and is a tame improvement compared with Microsoft’s more radical designs.  The Magic Mouse is based on a regular mouse body but covers the top with capacitive sensors.  These sensors are the same that would be used in standard touch screens, like on the iPhone.

These sensors detect where your fingers are on the mouse and whether you are pressing down on the mouse.  So one of the new things you can do is perform a “click” by pressing anywhere on the mouse.  Also, you can scroll windows both vertically and horizontally by swiping your fingers up and down or left and right, respectively.  Finally, you can scroll through different files by swiping with two fingers.

It is not clear if the Magic Mouse can detect more than two fingers at a time. Currently, only gestures using one or two fingers are used in Apple’s applications; however, the Magic Mouse is capable of detecting at least five fingers simultaneously.

The video below demonstrates all these features.

Microsoft: Five Prototypes

Researchers at Microsoft developed 5 prototype mice with multi-touch technology.  The researchers used multiple designs to experiment with bolder possibilities.

One of the designs was almost identical to the Magic Mouse.  Prototype three (the “Cap Mouse) also uses capacitive sensors.  It is demonstrated at 1:58 in the following video.  The researchers said that in user tests the similarity between Cap Mouse and existing mice caused testers to use it in a traditional way and not take advantage of all the advantages of multi-touch.

All five are demonstrated in the following video.

Video Gaming

As shown at 1:30 in the video, the second prototype (the “Orb Mouse”) has special features for navigation in a 3D first-person shooter.  The Orb Mouse consists of a standard mouse with an infrared camera mounted inside and pointed at a hemispherical mirror, which allows it to see the entire surface of the mouse.  It can detect exactly where all your fingers are touching the mouse.

Moving the body of the mouse moves your character forward and backward and turns you left and right.  Sliding your fingers sideways on the surface of the mouse causes you to strafe.  Moving your fingers up and down causes you to jump.  Rolling your palm on the surface of the mouse causes you to lean left and right.

In this way, everything you used to need a keyboard and mouse for you can now do with just a mouse.

3D Manipulation

At 4:20, the fifth prototype (the “Arty Mouse” short for “Articulated Mouse”) is used to show multi-touch can make it easier to manipulate 3D objects.  The Arty Mouse has two articulated arms.  It works by having three optical sensors, one under the body as usual and one under each arm.  It does not detect touches on the body of the mouse itself.  The researchers reported that the Arty Mouse received the best reviews from the testers out of all five mice.  It was reported to be the easiest to use and most physically comfortable.

If you move the right arm in and out it spins the 3D object vertically, but if you move the left arm back and forth it spins the object horizontally.  Twisting the two arms around each other will spin the object in the plane.

Scaling

Another interesting application of the mice is scaling images.  This is demonstrated at 3:25 in the video using the fourth prototype (the “Side Mouse”).  The Side Mouse consists of a standard mouse with an infrared camera viewing the sides around the mouse.  It does not detect the position of your fingers on the mouse itself but their position around the mouse.

The video shows how scaling out is performed by pressing down with two fingers and moving them apart.  Scaling in is performed by moving the two fingers closer together.  This is much like on the iPhone, but this mouse would allow you to do it on your computer.

Microsoft Surface on Your PC

At 0:37, the first prototype (the “FTIR Mouse”) is used to show how Microsoft Surface applications can be controlled on the PC with multi-touch.  This mouse detects multi-touch using Frustrated Total Internal Reflection.  Infrared light is shot through a transparent acrylic surface where the user puts his fingers.  When a finger touches the acrylic it scatters the infrared light.  A camera in the body of the mouse detects the scattering and can determine where your fingers are.

The simple demonstration in the video shows how multi-touch detection allows controlling applications for the Microsoft Surface on your PC.  The Surface is a table-size device controlled via a standard multi-touch screen.  With a multi-touch mouse, the Surface’s touch screen control system can be simulated.

COMMENT BELOW: Which multi-touch mouse do you want the most?  Or are they all gimmicks?

Email a Friend

Ok here it is the OFFICIAL Facebook home-screen widget+app for s60 5th devices. After re-installing my firmware it vanished.
This zip file contains the widget and the app but i recomend just installing the sis this seems to sort out both the app and the home screen widget. tested as working on n97mini.

Hope this helps allot of people out as i found it very hard to find any conclusive results while google-ing

Warning: the below version is a bit buggy i have located a cleaner/better working version, i will upload this later on this eve. For now if your desperate, get on over to ipmart-forum and see the face book thread.
Download HERE

Also dont forget to follow me on twitter!

Posted by Wordmobi

Attacking back at the Spammers

Some of my friends and acquaintances know that I am have been experimenting with a new scheme to control spam email.  Like many people, I have had to abandon email addresses in the past due to over-abundance of spam.  When you open a new email address, there is no spam.  But as you continue to use the box, eventually the knowledge that you are actually using a particular email address gets out.  Once your email address becomes known to the spammers there is no sure way to get them to forget it.

A verified email address has value, and lists of email addresses are traded and bartered in the spam underworld.  Even a non-verified but potentially valid email address has value.  Sending a piece of spam does not cost much, but it has a cost.  Sending to all possible email addresses (start with aaaaaaaa@aaaaa.com, then aaaaaaab@aaaaa.com, etc) is not viable.  Spammers want an email address that is known or at least likely to work.

You could say that a particular email address has value because it is so much rarer than a completely random email address.  A list of 1000 addresses that reaches 1000 people is the same value as a list of 100,000 addresses that reaches 1000 people.  From a spammer’s perspective, you would like every email address to be valid (reach a person) forever, and have no addresses that go to dead ends.  When people change their email address, there is a cost (albeit small) to the spammer, because the old email address become invalid.  My goal then is to frustrate spammers by filling their lists with invalid email addresses.

The Answer

The value of my email address is due to its relative rareness.  I can decrease the value of a particular email address, by increasing the number of email addresses I use.  The idea is this: I can use thousands of email addresses out of a pool of billions of possible address.  I can use a unique email address for (almost) every occasion.  All of the email addresses deliver mail to me.  Imagine the extreme: I print my business cards with a unique email address on every card.  Anyone who uses the address has no problem sending email to me.

It is possible that in the course of normal email interchange, an email message with that address on it, gets posted to some sort of web page (e.g. email forum archive) and the spammers pick it up from there.   The anti-spam feature is that whenever I start to receive spam on a particular email address, I turn off (disable) the address.

What if a legitimate party was using that address?  What if that is the email address I gave to my mom to use to contact me?  This would block email from her as well.  Part of the scheme has to be keeping a record of who I have given the address to.  When I turn that email address off, I go back to the legitimate person that I gave it to (e.g. mom), and give them a new email address to use.

You might be thinking correctly that this is onerous to have to tell people to use a different address.  But keep this in mind: if I have given unique addresses to each of my hundreds of correspondents, then all of those addresses except this one remain unaffected.  In the past, I have had to abandon entire email inboxes to ALL correspondents, and send them ALL a new address.  Since there is no way I can remember all of them,  I undoubtedly lose a many along the way.  The need to abandon an email address is rare in general, and contacting one person to switch is painful, but far better than contacting all your contacts.

Version 1.0

About 6 months ago I put in place a plan to experiment with.  It turns out that the XPDL.ORG site, which I help run, has unlimited free email forwarding.  So what I did was create new cryptic email addresses, and forward them all to my regular email inbox.  For example:

kds_Why54TzrvyZfgzNqqerf@xpdl.org

Every time I signed up for some sort of online service or account, I would create a new forwarding address. I created a private wiki page where I recorded the cryptic address, who or what I gave the address to, and when I did that.  The idea is that if I ever have to turn that forwarding off, I can get back in touch with whomever I gave it to.

The email address must be long so that it can not be guessed.  For example if I just use “keith1″, “keith2″, etc. it would be too easy for the spammers to guess other valid email addresses.  This could cause me to have to turn off many many addresses inconveniently.  If I make the address long and cryptic, then it is very very hard to guess other legitimate addresses, making those addresses relatively safe.

Most of these email addresses are entered into online forms, and used by those services, without anyone actually having to read them, or type them, so it really does not matter how long and complex the email address is.

It is not perfect…

What about “from” address on email?  On my standard email, I created a new cryptic address as my “from” address every month. It does not matter how long or complicated an email address is when people simply use the “reply” button.  Cycling every month is not perfect because if someone puts that email in their address book, and it also gets on a spam list, I might turn it off, and I don’t know who using that address, so I don’t have any way to let them know a newer address to use.  Creating a new unique address for every email might be better, because this decreases the chance that someone would hang on to an address that also got on a spam list, but that causes other difficulties.

Some services require you to log in using your email address.  If you really want to keep your “real” address private, then you have no choice but to give them and use the cryptic on to log in.  Typing that long and meaningless address is a pain, so in those cases I have to create an address that is easier to remember and type, which unfortunately decreases its security.

Because you are using many email addresses simultaneously, it is possible to start getting multiple copies of a message.  For example, if a message comes to you using address “a”, and you reply to it using address “b”, then both addresses become part of the ongoing email address.  Some email in-boxes are smart enough to eliminate the duplicate, but not all are.

Every time you sign up for a mailing list, you use a unique cryptic email address, but again this can cause message multiplication when the message is addresses to multiple lists which have different email addresses for you.

In the six months that I have been doing this, I have not had the opportunity yet to turn off an email address.  This is because it takes time to get on those spam lists, so as far as I know, none of my “new” email addresses that are less than 6 months old are on any lists yet.    So it is really too early to tell.  It is also true that going to the admin interface and creating a new cryptic email address, recording what I am using it for, and then using that in the sign up form, makes signing up for any service quite a bit more trouble.   Sometimes I am too lazy, and just go ahead and use the fixed address because it is easier.

Version 2.0

I just found out about a new service called otherinbox.com.  This is the service that I have been looking for, and it is aimed at exactly this problem.  (Scott Francis: you mentioned this service to me a while ago, but it took me this long to investigate.)

You get an account ($20/year – trial accounts are free) and it gives you an infinite number of email addresses which all go to you.  It has all the capabilities described above, including the ability to block an address at any time in the future.  You can record notes about a particular address to remind you of who you gave the address to, and when.

There is one particular improvement over my old scheme: you don’t have to set up the address in advance.  When signing up for an account at Barnes and Noble I can create a suitably cryptic address on the fly, and it will automatically create the inbox for that address without extra work from me.  Usually such services start by sending an email for you verify that you own the address, so I can go to the otherinbox.com, find that new email address, and set the address to be forwarded.  This is so much nicer to do later instead of having to do it before you sign up, particularly when you are not on line.  You can even make up an address while filling in a paper form with a pencil, and eventually the account is created for you — if needed.

They have a lot of other features for filtering and such.  Email can be forwarded, or picked up directly from their web or IMAP interface.  If you want, you can let the email pile up there, and receive only a digest of the email once a day.  That might be really handy with some of the email lists I am on.

Contemplations

Perhaps this seems like a lot of trouble, to have to set up and manage a bunch of different email addresses so that you can have the option to cut one off if necessary.  To be honest: it is lot of trouble.  OtherInBox looks like a lot less trouble than my initial way, but it is still more trouble than just being able to give out a single address forever.  Some of the need for this might go away if we had widespread cryptographic signing of email messages so we could know who the email came from, but there are many forces working against that.  Signed messages would not help in a mailing list situation when you are exchanging messages with people you do not know.   There are some possibilities that social software will offer some benefits in this area, once they have matured a bit more. So for now given the current infrastructure, this looks like the best hope for combating spam.

When was the last time you found yourself saying, “oh cool…a calculator!!!”

Well unless you have a thing for calculators (a different user experience all together, so I’m told ), then calculators don’t float anyone’s boat, much less write about the User Experience of an online payment calculator. One of the first user interface devices on the WWW was the advent of payment calculators. But why did it take so long to find one with such a user friendly experience???

Take a look at the image below and see what I am referring to. There are the 3 slider bars so you can see in real time what your payments will be for the vehicle, not having to refresh the page each time! No more of the old fashioned method of put in a variable, hit calculate, see what the difference is and then write down notes to yourself to view the payments. With this interface you adjust the variables in real time and the payments are reflected back to the user!

What a great User Experience! As the end user I dont have to write down notes, compare, refresh, enter data, refresh, rinse & repeat. The user experiences instant results with the adjustments and can quickly move on to a purchase.
So what? So what I’m in Human Resources…I’m in the tire kicking business…remember this: if you make the user experience friendly and where the information is readily available not only will the customer be more inclined to buy (and keep you in business) but your job became that much easier!

A great example of a making a product with the end user in mind when they built the device! Good job!

Some more details about the Chromium OS/Chrome OS (following on from this post).

I’ve given some screenshots below. The first shows the Applications panel within the browser. This is a kind of “quick launch” for various web applications, like Gmail, Facebook, YouTube etc. The second pic shows a Windows Live spreadsheet running on Chrome. The third pic shows what the developers are calling “panels”. This allows a web application to run in a small panel on top of another browser tab. For example, you could have a music video or an Instant Messaging session running in a panel in the foreground, whilst browsing normally in the background.

Chrome OS web applications

Spreadsheet running in the browser

Chrome OS web browser panels

I’ve also embedded below a sample of Google’s presentation, showing Chrome OS at work (including that super fast boot time!)

When Chrome OS is officially released (around this time next year), it’s my understanding that you won’t be able to download it and install it on any machine. It will come already installed on specially-tailored hardware. You will, of course, be able to download the Chromium OS version (that is, the open-source version). It is possible the super fast boot times may only be available on the officially sanctioned hardware, however I’d hope that even the Chromium OS version will be faster than many other systems.

It may not be for everyone, given that all data is stored on the internet, but the developers emphasize that Chrome OS is aimed solely at netbooks. It is not meant to replace your main computer.

My client, a world class and award winning agency are looking for supplementary resource on a web and mobile company, you will be responsible for building services for software and web. The product strategy requires user experience concepts, user interface concepts and detailed specification documents for design and tech teams. You will have experience of working with clients on visual mock ups for mobile interfaces – or delivering robust user experience documentation for mobile.

This role is based in cool Berlin during the week, you will work with a very cool team, on a really well established web brand.

Drop me an email  for more details.

Be Kaler Blake

0207 420 3539

be@wearefutureheads.co.uk

Salary: Up to £48K + Benefits

Term: Full Time

Location: Central London

To lead the visual design of a portfolio of high profile consumer and trade-facing websites for a division of a large publishing group.

This is a challenging role for a talented web designer with a real breadth of experience in online design for a range of high profile brands. The lead designer will inspire and manage a design team to produce first class interface designs which take an already established brand to new levels. You’ll work closely with multi-disciplinary teams across Commercial, User Experience, Project Management/Business Analysis and Development and will be seen as an authoritative design expert within the organisation. In addition to your design skills you’ll have leadership and stakeholder management abilities and a good commercial awareness.

This role will work between offices in London and Brighton so it’s essential that applicants can easily reach both locations.

Gill Arnold

020 7420 3538

gill@wearefutureheads.co.uk

What is scanning?

Scanning is used to view documents by the majority of web users. Web users do not read documents in entirety. The eye scans the document looking for important information quickly. Techniques used to take advantage of this include;

• Lists – This is a list.
• Bold text – Darker text that stands out.
• Hyperlinks – Links to other pages, content, media, or interactivity

Headings – Large font, bold

Subheadings – Same as heading but slightly smaller.

We always scanned.

Evolutionary development led to the process of scanning. Scanning is an efficient way for us to process information quickly. The English language, using roman based characters can show us an example of this process.

We don’t read words as individual letters. Instead we scan the word quickly and associate it with a retained word. Usually, all that is required to read a paragraph is that the first and last letter in each word be correct.

Ardncciog to rhecasreh at Cgaridmde Usrievtiny, it dneso’t metatr in waht oerdr the lrteets in a wrod are, the olny inpoertmt tnhig is taht the fsirt and lsat lteetr be at the rghit pcale. The rset can be a ttaol mses and you can sltil raed it wthiutt a pbolrem. Tihs is bscueae the hmaun mnid deos not raed eervy lteetr by iltesf, but the wrod as a wohle.

Any experienced native English reader should be able to make sense of the paragraph.

Reading jumbled words, more detail.

Web eye-tracking studies.

Jakob Nielson is a guru in the science of User Interface. His group has done numerous studies on how users scan the web with their eye. A dominant scanning technique was found throughout the study.

The F-shaped pattern. Shown below is a picture of the heat register of a human eye scanning a webpage.

This is important to understand, as content placement, can decide how effective it is.

F-shaped pattern, more detail.

Impact and Challenges.

As a potential web content writer, I have many things working against me. The user may not give me;

• Time – Very short chance to catch their eye.
• Dedication – No commitment. Can leave my article at any time.
• Patience – Efficiency is important. Long pieces will not be read in entirety.
• Full attention to my text – The web user expects savvy media rich content, not just plain text.

It is important not to over-use scan ability techniques. Doing so, will cause frustration for the user. Understanding the way we view web pages can lead to great new media content.

Article Notes

The Cambridge University logo is copyright and property of Cambridge University. The Nielson Norman Group logo is copyright and property of The Nielson Norman Group.

Galternatives is a tool which allows users to use the GUI to update the /etc/alternatives files, deciding the default applications for Unix/Linux system from a list of programs that are fulfilling the same or similar functions

The /etc/alternatives defines default applications for the traditional Unix/Linux system – such as, the default application to browse the web,to send IM’s, etc.

Install
You can install galternatives using:
$sudo apt-get install galternatives
After it is installed, you can run it using:
$gksudo galternatives

ScreenShots

I’ve made significant progress on my prototype iPhone app since my last post. I’m continuing to learn something new during each coding session. This post contains my learning nuggets and a few code snippets that I hope you’ll find useful.

Table View Development

I’m developing a productivity app, so it makes heavy use of UIKit’s UITableView classes. Here’s a few key things to remember as you develop your UITableViewController.

1. Set a table cell’s text elements from your model in thecellForRowAtIndexPath method
2. Set a cell’s row height by implementing the heightForRowAtIndexPath method
3. Change the appearance of a cell’s label text (textLabel and detailedTextLabel) by setting the corresponding property.

cell.textLabel.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:[UIFont labelFontSize]];
cell.textLabel.textColor = [UIColor grayColor];

4. Respond to row selections in the didSelectRowAtIndexPath method. The code for inclusive and exclusive selection is in Apple’s iPhone Table View Programming guide here.

Manipulating Dates

Displaying dates requires the use of the NSDateFormatter class.

1. Avoid learning the hard way, case matters in your date format strings, e.g., yyyy-MM-dd. Here’s a good post that covers the problem.
2. Computing dates (or what Apple refers to as calendrical calculations) is a bit too verbose from me. Here’s how to calculate the top of the hour.

NSDate *today = [NSDate date];
NSCalendar *gregorian = [[NSCalendar alloc] initWithCalendarIdentifier:NSGregorianCalendar];

NSDateComponents *minutesComponent = [gregorian components:NSMinuteCalendarUnit fromDate:today];
NSDateComponents *secondsComponent = [gregorian components:NSSecondCalendarUnit fromDate:today];

NSDateComponents *componentsToSubtract = [[NSDateComponents alloc] init];
[componentsToSubtract setMinute:0 - [minutesComponent minute] ];
[componentsToSubtract setSecond:0 - [secondsComponent second] ];

NSDate *topOftheHour = [gregorian dateByAddingComponents:componentsToSubtract toDate:today options:0];

Internet Access

For applications accessing internet resources, here’s a few tidbits:

• To indicate network activity, it’s easy to add spinner or UIActivityIndicatorView to a view. However, if the main thread is too busy, it will not appear.
• The result of a URL connection (or NSURLConnection) is a binary NSData object, convert it to a string by invoking initWithData in NSString.
• Parsing JSON objects is a breeze with the JSON Framework for Objective-C. By the way, for server-side Java, check out Flexjson, works like a charm.

Parsing Newlines

Is parsing newlines as simple as searching for “\n”? No, take a gander at this code from Apple’s documentation:

- (NSMutableArray *) parseRawString: (NSString *) rawString  {
	int unsigned length = [rawString length];
	int unsigned paraStart = 0, paraEnd = 0, contentsEnd = 0;
	NSMutableArray *array = [NSMutableArray array];
	NSRange currentRange;
	while (paraEnd < length) {
	      [rawString getParagraphStart:&paraStart end:&paraEnd contentsEnd:&contentsEnd forRange:NSMakeRange(paraEnd, 0)];
	      currentRange = NSMakeRange(paraStart, contentsEnd - paraStart);
	      [array addObject:[rawString substringWithRange:currentRange]];
	}
	return array;
}

Lastly, Google search and stackoverflow are your friends. If you get stuck, Google it, you’ll most likely find the answer in stackoverflow or the iPhone Dev SDK forum. (However, always read Apple’s iPhone programming guides first).

Well,that’s all I have for now, happy programming!

• The eLearning Coach » User Interface Design For eLearning

I really agree with Connie Malamed that the user interface and design should be clear to reduce unnecessary mental processing. The designers and developers are supposed to follow the logical and obvious conventions and think more from the audience’s perspectives.

Recently, I have been designing the courses for the customers. The project manger put much emphasis on the user interface. However, I think she just tries to please the client, because she is the person to pay the money, instead of really thinking about the learners. For example, as needed in the course, I give two images of young and aging skin. Although I have been aware of the fact that the interface of smoothness and quality is a vital thing to pay attention to, in my opinion, to show the big difference that the learners are able to tell is also essential. Therefore, I pick up two images that are not very attractive, but I think they are instructional and meaningful for learners (retailers). Unexpectedly, my idea was severely rejected by the PM.

Since Chinese is composed of many different symbols, lots of things should be considered when doing the typesetting for an online couse. This is something that I found out when starting my work as an instructional designer in Taiwan. For example,  any punctuation cannot be put at the beginning of a sentence. Every symbol should be in alignment and consistent. A phrase could not be seperately arranged because it might influece learners’ reading and don’t look neat. Some types of font cannot recognize a certain number of Chinese symbols. I have spent a bunch of time adjusting these tiny problems.

There are so many different things problems that I should face in doing instructional design job in Taiwan.