Browsers, browsers everywhere…
Because Firefox 3.6 keeps crashing on the Guardian’s website (started happening all the time after Snow Leopard update but has often been a problem), I’ve now set Chrome to be my default browser, so that when I click on a link in Twitterific, Chrome launches not Firefox.
But because I can’t add plugins to the Beta version of Mac/Chrome yet, if I want to bookmark a link in Del.icio.us I have to copy and paste the link into Firefox to use the quick-add button.
Too many services? Information overload? Or should I just be content to wait for Google to sort out Chrome, Mozilla to fix Firefox or The Guardian to fix www.guardian.co.uk/ ? It’s not as if I’ve paid for any of the services mentioned.
UPDATE: To add insult to injury Firefox just crashed on me again – fortunately just after I clicked save. Phew! 
Site visits
It’s always fascinating to take a look through your server logs or visitor stats. This little old blog gets a tiny number of hits a day but recently that number has been climbing. Interested to see how people are finding me and what they are reading I had a look through my recent visitor numbers.
Interestingly, I’m getting visited by something at one specific IP address again and again but apparently using different browsers and operating systems. One quick IP look-up later and it seems Adobe are hitting me about ten times a day, every day. Either someone there loves trees too or else some sort of bot is coming back again and again.
Adobe don’t have a search engine (as far as I know) so why are they bothering? Have I managed to offend them, or has a page of my site somehow got saved in their browser lab? Enquiring minds want to know! Anyone got any ideas?
Graublau Sans Grabbed
Learning something new keeps the mind active and that’s why working on the web can be so much fun. Just recently I’ve been pushing myself to learn jQuery – no longer shall I rely on the excellent javascript programmers I work with to take care of it for me – lazy boy!
I’ve also been catching up with all the new developments in browser font display that have been taking place recently. And what a lot of fun it is – easy too! If you are viewing this page in the latest version of any fairly modern browser (Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, Opera 10 etc.) you should be reading these words set in the excellent Graublau Sans by fonts.info. I’m not 100% sold on it for this blog yet but time will tell.
I’ve implemented this font change with the css declaration @font-face. For me, this seems to be the simplest, most standards-compliant way forward. Whilst there are other exciting projects in progress (Typekit and FontDeck to name but two), they aren’t free. So now, as well as the standard “img” and “css” folders at root, I now also have a brand new “font” folder! Joy! Simple things please simple minds I guess…?
Unfortunately @font-face does sometimes result in a not-so-nice “flash of unstyled text” (fout) but for personal sites I can live with this. Whether clients will be able to, well that’s a different matter…
For references and thanks, read: more »
Bad user testing beats no user testing
Jakob Nielson offers a great summary of why to do at least some user testing. Even if it’s poor, you’re likely to catch at least a few major errors. I believe that when deadlines are short and expectation high, even chatting through ideas with a colleague has its benefits.
Nielsen initially launched his ‘discount’ ideas on the world twenty years ago this month. So what’s changed in all that time?
It might be hard to appreciate today, but these ideas were heresy 20 years ago… it has come a long way since I launched it to a lecture room of maybe 100 or so people. On balance, I’m happy that I started this campaign and will continue the fight for simpler usability, more broadly applied.
Discount Usability: 20 Years, Jakob Nielsen
Hear, hear!
Read more: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/discount-usability.html
The idea of a tree
I like trees, I’m no tree-hugger but for me they are right up there alongside eating and breathing. Recently I had the fortune to visit Yosemite National Park and Big Sur in California and they have some big trees!
As a kid, I remember being amazed at the way they grow; by adding rings of tissue and expanding year on year. Even more exciting, you can also tell good years from bad by studying the thickness of each band. I’m sure none of this comes as news to you Dear Reader. more »
In Favour of Complexity
I was fortunate enough to attend the sell-out ‘UX London’ conference at The Cumberland Hotel, Marble Arch this year (June 15th – 17th). It was the first conference if its type here in London aimed at user experience practitioners and ably presented by the good folk at Clearleft. There were some big names in attendance – both lecturing and running half-day workshops. more »
Thank you – you have been ignored
The LSE’s website has a handy function – at the bottom of every page it invites you to “Comment on this page”.
It’s handy until you actually make use of it… more »
In a perfect world, no one would be able to use anything*
Fantastic Dilbert cartoons at 90% of Everything this morning.
Dilbert on User Experience:
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2009/05/26/dilbert-on-user-experience/
* The views expressed in this title are Mordac’s alone and do not represent my own…
Google Air-Traffic Graph
Google recently blogged about the routing troubles they experienced a week ago when they incorrectly passed web traffic through Asia, which resulted in “traffic-jams”, slow services and interruptions. more »
How to turn a light off in the dark
Hotel rooms present a variety of novel user-interactions to their often tired and stressed guests. But do travellers really value chic design and high-concept living when all they want to do is turn off the lights and go to sleep? more »