Pedestrian crossing frustrations

The new-style pedestrian crossing signs in the UK are the worst example of bad usability I can think of – to wit: they’re bad enough to get people killed.

I can’t remember if I’ve posted about them before, mainly because just thinking about them drives me into an apoplectic rage but Jeremy Keith has just posted about them again.

The first place I saw them was in Sheffield about four years ago (it was an early adopter apparently), but they’re just becoming more and more widespread – it’s pretty obvious that they’re replacing all the existing, excellent signs.

Let’s just spell this out:

• traffic in the UK drives on the left
• to cross a road, you must first look right
• the pedestrian crossing signs are at waist height
• there is only one of them
• they no longer make a loud beeping noise when it is safe to cross
• if there is just one person standing between you and the sign it is impossible to tell if it is safe to cross the road or not
• they are not deployed uniformly across individual cities, let alone the country, which means you have to hunt and peck to find out where your safety indicator is
• nightmare

There is quite genuinely nothing good about these displays. They are harder to see, harder to use, less obvious, give less notification and plainly dangerous.

Quotation Crazy

Quotation Crazy, originally uploaded by Xurble.

I hate the BBC's over use of quotation marks. It's so distracting. Of the 7 'quotes' ^* on this page, I reckon only the Foot and Mouth one really needs it.

The Police chase and Madelein McCann ones are debatable and the others are just bobbins.

Maybe it's just me but I find it so distracting.



* Can you see what I did there?

Facebook apps suck ass

So far so good


Fuck right off

I quite like Facebook. Not because it is intrinsically good, because I don't think it is, but because it has gained sufficient momentum that you have a decent chance of dredging up people from your past and putting you in direct contact with them. It's like a much, much less odious Friends Reunited.

What I do I like is the idea of the applications since they incentivize you to keep interacting with these blasts from your past.

However, the interaction model of applications absolutely blows.

If my friend installs an app that invites a response from me (and there are lots of nice survey and question apps), why do I have to install it too if I want to respond?

Clearly what I want to do in order to answer a simple question is clutter my profile with yet another application, oh and give the developers access to my profile.

It's just asinine. Cut that shit out.

Odeon: when will they learn?

Years ago there was a big hoo-ha about the Odeon cinema's totally inaccessible web site. The eventual line from the cinema was that they were coming up with a new version which would solve all of the usability problems. However they didn't actually do this for a number of years. Their web department was a national joke.

I've just used the Odeon website (which, alongside everything else, doesn't render correctly in Firefox) to book some tickets. The interface to do so is in Flash. Seriously.

They do have a "plain text" version, except that it isn't just plain text, and it should be their default interface - other than a graphic showing you where standard and superior seats are it's exactly the same, but written in HTML rather than a proprietary, inaccessible, poorly written Flash interface. There is nothing stopping them using this as their primary booking interface - it would increase usability, accessibility, improve visual consistency and create a more streamlined, efficient way to book tickets.

Let's make this clear: whoever is in charge of the Odeon website is an utter incompetent. Because of their atrocious booking system this will be my first visit in years. With the thought that I might have to use their website again, it will also be my last for years. If I'd worked on that website I would be absolutely ashamed of myself.

Thunderbird 2.0 Icons

Thunderbird 2.0 Icons
Originally uploaded by Xurble.

I (like everyone else) hate change.

Every time I upgrade a piece of software, if the icon set changes, then as far as I am concerned it is always for the worse.

However within a week I usually can't even remember what the old icons looked like, so I have learned to quell my inner rage and just wait for my memory to fail me.

However in the case of Thunderbird 2 there is one icon that I think must be genuinely worse and that's the mail folder icon.

Just look at it. When closed it looks nothing like a folder. When open it is drawn standing on it's end which were it the real life folder it is aping would mean that all your mail fell out all over the floor.

Rubbish!

Of course given my memory, it's entirely possible that this is what the old one looked like too.

Where is 'No to All'?

My big network copy has crapped out.

I start it again, and I can either waste the time it takes to copy the files that are already copied and risk it crapping out again.

Or I can sit and press 'No' for the hundreds of files that have already copied.

Bastards

Spring Forward

I expected the computer to get this wrong.

I didn't expect time.windows.com to be wrong as well.

Curiously, fixing the hour and hitting 'Update Now' did not revert to the wrong time, so maybe it is just the computer.

For what it's worth, the Mac 'Just Worked'.

It Just Works

I spend my whole time whining about how much I hate this or that application.

So it's a rare pleasure to have something as simple and effective as my Sat Nav.

We bought it, slapped it on the windscreen, pressed the most obvious buttons and drove straight to our destination.

There's a big manual that comes with it but I see no reason to use it.

You can enter an address, you can search for a business by name, you can even browse local resteraunts by food type.

When it's giving the directions it is clear and concise and it even has a choice of US or British english voices.

The screen is crisp and clear and the maps are simple and pretty with nice anti aliased curves and text.

I simply cannot fault it in any way.

Gosh.

When is today?

After reading an interesting article about ID cards it was nice to see this at the bottom: But wait! He's discussing it today? Even though he wrote the article a week ago? Sounds unlikely to me. It sounds like what I really want is an mp3 from last week instead. So, you have to scroll back to the top of the page to find out when "today" is, then find the podcasts blog index, then navigate backwards in time until you find the correct podcast title (Newsdesk) for the correct day, scan the description, and make sure that it's the content you were after. And all for the sake of a correct link. Please Guardian, I like that you're doing all these new and exciting things, but make the little things easier to use, please?

Meaningless marketing jargon

The BBC have decided that the word "podcast" isn't good enough anymore, and so for their BBC Radio News podcast have christened it their "Newspod", which whilst it might sound great in some high-powered caffeinne-fuelled meeting, is completely meaningless out of context, and contains only marginal meaning for those who know what the hell they're talking about.

Losers.

del.icio.us is now an anti-social bookmarking site

del.icio.us have updated their URL bookmark history page, so that now, if for example I look at the history for http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t65486.rhtml on http://del.icio.us/url/bd8e17cc6069d2573d00b525059c9eed, instead of first being told "8 people have bookmarked this, here they are, and here are there comments" it now says "8 people have bookmarked this, and hey, if you want to find out who they are, just, y'know, look around the page, I'm sure you'll find it somewhere".

How completely useless is that? The user discoverability and browsability (i.e. a huge part of the social networking system that del.icio.us has at its core) is now a definite second-class citizen. Congratulations del.icio.us! Even the tags applied to that URL are now more important! That's not retarded at all, honest!

What a fucking joke. I wonder if a Yahoo! UI team started giving recommendations or something, because after all, we all know that they're the masters of clean understandable web applications.

2lmc also point out the fucking useless page titles.

Ben Hammersley is wrong and iWeb is rubbish for consumers

Ben Hammersley defends the fact that iWeb's output is the antithesis of good Web practice:

No one visits Amazon to marvel at their URL structure. No one cares that Google uses last century'’s markup. No one uses Flickr because of the Ajax. Buzzwords won't save you.

Look where the text is when you load a page. And 'cause it's an image it's never going to wrap or resize so I'm forced to fit my browsing habits to the page and not vice versa as it should be. Plus it must be an absolute joy for the partially sighted, they can't scale the text and I'd bet dollars to donuts that screen readers struggle even though the text is hidden in the HTML.

Finally I can't cut and paste so getting that quote out was an exciting hunt through View Source. So on one level he's right, consumers could care less about buzzwords and nice URLs but on the other hand, the experience iWeb is producing is still absolutely rubbish.

Validation porn has had its day. Enough about the brushes already: give me some beauty.

Or you could give me some usamajility!

IE Se7en Part 2

Phil	i can't believe thy've taken away the word "back" on the back button
	it was the only good thing in IE
	i even wrote a firefox extension to duplicate it! :)
	i can't believe it insists on using http:// every time
	ah, it doesn't always
	weird
G	i am having all sorts of bother typing in addresses
	although I can't pin down what the problem is
	ff clearly does *something* nicer than IE
	I just don't know what :)
Phil	heh
	you know the toolbar to the right of the tabs?
G	yeah
Phil	can you get that to be on its own toolbar?
	i can't
G	No
Phil	great
G	Only the toolbars that you turn on and off in the toolbars option are actually toolbars
Phil	i can move it horizontally, but not vertically
	perfect
G	indeedly
	makes for some narrow tab action
Phil	exactly
	what a complete pain the arse
	and whenever you want to go to the first tab, you can't just go to the very left of the tab bar, but X pixels in
	these people have clearly never heard of postel's law ;)
	but then again, the first tab in firefox is indented by about 3 pixels, bu at least you expect that
G	i've just spotted the chevrons on the edge of that toolbar on the right
	Help is off the screen along with all the extra buttons that apps like XML Spy and Fiddler have added
Phil	yes, same here
G	help
	invisible!
Phil	genius!
G	and no help menu either!
Phil	excellent!
G	Also, all the buttons have the little down arrows on them
	but only half of them are smart push ones
	But instintively i aim for the tiny arrow when I don't need to
Phil	yes, it's hard to predict how they work until you hover over it
	or rather, hover, look, pause, think, click
G	The only indication of smartness is a faint vertical line that is only there when you hover
	utter bullshit
Phil	yes, it's shit
	i also can't believe they've taken away right-click customise toolbar
	that's like a decade of muscle memory for every MS app ever
	oh i see, you can right click on the tools to the right of the tabs to get to "customise", just nothing else
	so annoying that the tabs resize, and yet there's no generic "close tab" button on the right of all the tabs
	so if you want to close three tabs in one go, you have to keep moving the mouse
	not just click-click-click
G	not so fussed about that
	safari is like that so used to it :)
	and if there's just 1 x , i prefer it in the tab to on the side
Phil	yes
	but the tab shouldn't resize in that case
	it should always be in a predictable location
	because once you close one tab, the others all resize and the location you think you were going to, moves

IE Se7en Part 1

Phil	I'm massively underwhelmed by IE7
	whether the main menu toolbar appears is tab-specific?
	none of the RSS stuff works for me
G	heh
	the only thing I've liked so far is
	right click next to the tabs and select "Restore last tab group"
	gosh
Phil	meh
G	yeah, the whole thing is so underwhelming
	It's like Opera
	it's capable enough
	but why would you?
Phil	they've moved the motherfucking main menu, which completely destroys my spatial understanding of everything above the browser window
G	yes
	Well by default the main menu isn't there at all
	which is interesting
	but shit :)
Phil	yes
	i can't turn it back on by default
	i keep hitting alt+f to get it back
G	It's a toolbar
	"Classic Menu"
Phil	??? where the fuck is that?
G	Tools, Toolbars, Classic Menu
Phil	oh jesus
Phil	mother
	fucker

IE 7 Clear Type

Oh look, it turns on clear type to totally muddy my reading experience on my CRT!

Great.

Bonus points for doing it in my Outlook email as well.

Thanks!

Orrible Pap for Moron Losers

The OPML Editor. Have you used that thing? Jesus christ, it's an abomination of not only usability but design and human cognition.

Stop! Fucking! Bundling!

1 Installer, 1 installation please.

How hard is that?

G	Stupid bastard firefox options screen!
Phil	haha!
G	Privacy Tab -> View Cookies
	Accidently press "Remove All Cookies"
	Where's the cancel button?
	Oh there isn't one
	Close
	Use "Cancel" on options as a whole
	Should have my cookies back no?
	No
	Fuckers!!!!!
	Now I have to log back into every site in the whole world ever!
Phil	oh. my deepest condolences for your loss.
	i know it's a painful time.
G	I ended up looking at slashdot without the +5 filter
	I thought my eyes would bleed
Phil	haha!
	that really sucks
G	usamajility :)
Phil	i can't imagine losing all my cookies
	i think i'd go insane

G	Dave Winer is [redacted]
	I may have mentioned this before
Phil	yes he is
	has anything in particular caused this probably-justified outburst?
G	http://archive.scripting.com/2005/10/08#When:4:23:06PM
	The orange XML icon is an abomination.
Phil	yes
	without a shadow of a doubt
	it's a blight on the internet
G	It's ugly and it doesn't represent what it does *at all*
Phil	hang on - didn't he even admit that the other week when he was posting about a new orange "subscribe" button to be used with Yahoo!!!! ?
	http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/2005/09/26#a970
	"I worked real hard to get the NY Times on the RSS bandwagon, for example, only to have them mark up their page with dozens of "Add this to My Yahoo" icons. Wow. What an eyesore." - fucking hell! the nerve!
G	I wonder what his position on mailto icons is
	"Use the animated gif of a letter being written and jumping into an envelope, stop re-inventing"
Phil	ha! :)
G	Also, he overloads the xml icon on his own site
	1 to point to an OPML file, one to point to RSS
Phil	excellent!
	you mean you can't figure out what to do with an arbitrary XML file?
	you're not worth talking to.
	*spits*
G	Does XML now mean "something an aggregator may or may not be able to handle"
Phil	god knows
	he clearly can't even decide himself
G	And his blog template is shite
	For the "father of blogging" he has an unreadable, no page per article string of conciousness, unclear article boundry, fragile permalink mess.
Phil	wow, he not only overloads the white-on-orange XML icon, he also uses a different icon to link to another OPML file
	yes, trying to navigate his blog is a nightmare
G	Usamajility!

Google's new aggregator

Phil:

http://www.google.com/reader Everyone knows about it now. I have no words for how bad its interface is. Jesus fucking Christ. I'm expecting a lot more photos to crop in Flickr tagged with both "Google Reader" and "this is broken". My two in there should be enough to give you some rough idea. no words.