Today on Martha Stewart Living Doing Time
- Dressing up those drab prison uniforms
- Beautiful, decorative shivs
- A prison yard garden
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Tog says Fitts
A must read for UI designers, Tog’s A Quiz Designed to Give You Fitts.
Some of the questions I was familiar with, other I could guess, but the one with the most impact for me was Question 6 regarding the bottleneck in hierarchical menus. I had to do a few tests using the Mac and the Windows box on my desk to see the effect that Tog was referring to. It was one of those ‘Aha!’ moments. See, for years I’ve known that I could do many things much faster on my Mac than I could in Windows, and I usually chalked it up to experience, but lo and behold, it goes much deeper, and we learn that indeed the thinking that went into how hierarchical menus in the Mac OS work versus how they were implemented elsewhere is quite different.
My testing was actually a bit difficult, but perhaps more revealing, since the Windows apps I use most are actually not exactly native, one being Mozilla, which uses it’s own UI stuff to some degree, and the other being jEdit, which is a Java-based app. Now, both of these apps exist for Mac OS X, and they both do the right thing in regards to hierarchical menus. To some degree, I think when people wonder why you might pay more to own a Mac, it’s because of key differences and attention to detail like this – things you don’t even realize, which is how it should be.
I’ve been applying some of his tips to things I’ve built in the past, but it’s probably worth paying closer attention to in the future.
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What’s in a (browser) name?
Long ago I mentioned how browsers seemed to be named after cars, and if you look at how things have changed, well, they haven’t…
Let’s see we have:
There’s also Thunderbird, which is actually a mail client that used to be part of a browser suite, so we won’t count that.
This also reveals the real reason why Chimera and Phoenix had to change their names, because even if there are cars with those names, not enough people have heard of them…
(There’s more browser names over at browsers.evolt.org)
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Joel on Mozilla
Joel talks up Firebird, which is a good thing. Why it is a good thing? Because Joel is a Microsoft camper, and Windows developers read his site and seem to generally listen to what he has to say. So this is a Windows guy, who has used IE, saying that it’s time to use Mozilla Firebird.
And that’s why it’s a good thing…
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MS AOL IE NS ARGH!
As for the whole Microsoft/AOL/IE thingy, see the MozillaZine item for lots of links to lots of places.
My big question is, what does this mean for web developers? It looked like we were on the road towards there being more standard-compliant browsers, which would mean less goofy hacks and workarounds for buggy browsers, and it might still mean that, but it’s too early to tell. I agree that it would be stupid for AOL to kill off Netscape now, as it is they could take a small fraction of the $750 million and support Netscape/Mozilla development for years to come, even if it’s just for insurance against Microsoft, and honestly, doesn’t everyone need an insurance policy against Microsoft?
(I know, Mozilla the browser, and Mozilla the organization won’t just disappear if Netscape goes away or AOL jettisons it, but it would be nice to have AOL keep paying for some of it.)
I’ve noticed that on this site, Mozilla has been surpassing Internet Explorer in the stats lately, which I see as good thing. Though I admit with some other sites I’m involved with, the IE numbers are quite high.
Still, I think Microsoft will eventually have to do some sort of development on IE, as it stands now, it’s feature set and lack of standards support is holding back the web. Web designers and developers are wondering what’s up with IE, as we have to create sites that work in that sorry old browser. Yes, IE is the new Netscape 4.x.
Tim Bray blames Microsoft, and I do to… I spent wasted a number of hours this week trying to get IE/Windows to do what Safari, IE/Mac, and all the Gecko-based browsers got right.
Once again, damn you Microsoft!