Free UX tip
Testing out Linkup.com‘s new service I got a slightly unexpected error message; “We couldn’t understand the location london that you provided.”
While I don’t mind that it didn’t understand the word London, it is a shame that it doesn’t offer the user any options that may make their search work. Here it should be trying to help the user, rather than simply telling them that it doesn’t understand.
- “Did you mean…” followed by a list of linked words similar to the search term helps to catch misspellings.
- If the search term is too broad then narrow it, “Do you want London Ontario or London UK?”
- If the service is not available in that area then let the user know.
- Provide examples of search terms that do work.
I have no idea why my search failed in this case, “London, UK” doesn’t work either. In the end I’ve come away from this site not knowing why my search didn’t work and for all I know the service is just broken. One of the golden rules of user experience should be to always help the user recover from an error.
09:52 AM | 0 Comments | Tags: user experience, ux, linkup, error, recoveryEyeTV and Turbo264
Two products from Elgato, EyeTV lets you use your Mac as a PVR and Turbo264 massively speeds up video encoding to h.264. You’d expect them to work together beautifully but this is what I see every time I ask EyeTV to export a recording through Turbo264.
The last operation could not be completed because an error of type -536870176 occurred.
Such a shame that they can’t seem to make two of their own products work together. If only The Tube wasn’t so utterly terrible, maybe if there were a viable alternative to EyeTV, Elgato might get their act together.
I don’t know if this still happens with the new Turbo264 HD, but the fact that it might is putting me off buying one.
12:04 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: elgato, eyetv, tubo264, faulty, software, bugTypinator vs TextExpander
Quick fight out between two applications that do essentially the same thing, which is expand text snippets to become something else:
Round 1 – Does it do what it’s supposed to do?
I bought TextExpander to do one thing, correct my typos. I have a chronic habit of typing semicolons where there should be apostrophes. Words like “don;t” and “can;t”. I set this up in TextExpander, set off writing an email and it failed to catch a single one of my typos. I tried several other triggers all of which worked, but the very task I’d bought it for it failed dismally. I emailed support at the inappropriately named Smile on my Mac and never heard back from them. Result: no
Typinator came free with a MacHeist promotion and has a predefined bundle of common typos which included most of my semicolon related ones. I enabled this bundle and can now blissfully hammer my keyboard with my sausage fingers safe in the knowledge that my typos get caught. Result: yes
Verdict: Typinator wins with a knockout in the opening seconds of round 1. TextExpander is left bleeding on the floor wondering what could have been and I want my money back for the lack of fight it showed.
05:30 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: osx, software, os x, mac, typing, expander, text, typinator, textexpanderSXSW 2009
Just a heads up to let you know that I’m talking on a panel at SXSW again this year, this time on the subject of “Designers and Developers: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?“. It’s a good question and a great set of panellists, we’ll probably be running some kind of agony clinic, so if you’ve got a war raging in your studio at the moment and want some help with the peace process feel free to come and ask us questions.
The panel is 11.30 – 12.30 on Tuesday 17th March.
Add it to your sched.org here.
Firefox bad, Safari badder?
John Gruber accuses Firefox of being a “Bad Mac App”…
It looks like you can customize menu key shortcuts using the Keyboard Shortcuts panel in System Prefs, but the custom bindings don’t work, and the factory shortcuts continue to apply, even though they no longer appear in the menu bar.
He’s obviously never tried to do the same thing in Safari, where though the custom binding do work, the factory shortcuts also continue to apply, even though they no longer appear in the menu bar. So mostly the same as Firefox. Are we going to see some Safari bashing on Daring Fireball? Unlikely.
The reason I know this bug also exists in Safari is that I had to change the next and previous tab shortcuts to match those of Firefox, namely Cmd+Option+Right/Left and I wanted this to disable the utterly stupid shortcut of Cmd+Shift+Right/Left which everywhere else in the OS and in every other app selects text to either the beginning or the end of a line. For some unknown reason Apple decided to make this switch tabs in Safari, however if your caret is in a text entry field, the address bar, the search bar or you have anything on a page selected then this shortcut goes back to its normal, systemwide behaviour of selecting. The stupidity of this decision is easily demonstrated by hitting Cmd+T to open a new tab, and then trying to switch back to the one you were on using Cmd+Shift+Left. You can’t as the caret is in the address bar of your current window. You now have to reach for a mouse, click somewhere making sure to not accidentally select anything and then hit the shortcut.
Before the comments, I know that you can also use Ctrl+(Shift)+Tab but that combo is differently placed between my Macbook Pro keyboard and my Aluminium wired keyboard. And I know that I can use Cmd+Shift+SquareBrackets but the square brackets are easily missed. My arrow keys are Fitt’s Law compliant, I want to use them to change tabs, Firefox got this right, Safari got it wrong.
So is Apple’s own Safari a “Bad Mac App”™ for suffering the same bug as Firefox and ignoring systemwide shortcut conventions?
05:03 PM | 0 Comments | Tags: safari, firefox, browsers, bugs, shortcuts, daring fireball, apple, bug, stupid