Aehso’s Output

A common user interface design concept in software user interfaces is the provision of feedback to the user when a user event (keystroke, mouse click etc.) may take some time to process. Jacob Neilson provides excellent guidelines on this topic in Chapter 5 of Usability Engineering.

Internet browsers have always provided visual cues to the user when documents are being loaded from a remote server. Firefox, for example, provides two visual cues to the user when loading resources:

The spinner in the top right corner

The status and progress bar in the bottom left corner

However we now have web sites such as Google Mail that typically serve a single document. The ‘main’ HTML document uses many Ajax requests to update the existing document content after loading or when events such as user mouse clicks occur. The intent here is to provide a more interactive experience for the user by eliminating full page loads which can be slow and distracting.

However, sending many Ajax requests and dynamically updating the page DOM can still be slow so the requirement to provide feedback to the user remains. Google Mail, for example, displays a little indicator in the top right of the page:

GMail loading indicator.

Google Reader provides something similar:

Google Reader loading indicator.

Wouldn’t it be better if the browser UI provided this feedback? Given that the browser provides the implementation of the underlying XHR (XMLHttpRequest) API it knows when XHRs are in progress. The browser could also enable the Stop button to allow the user to decide to cancel current requests.

Seems like it would be a useful enhancement to me…

aehso ajax, browsers, firefox, usability, xhr

The Dal Lamp (flash image after the jump) is one of those devices that just makes me wonder where we are going with all this technology stuff:

Dal can receive messages sent by your friend via email or via your telephone. The messages are colored animations that can be created for each type of emotions you want to show. A personal language and grammar can be created between two persons: only them knows what the lamp is expressing.

Beautiful concept but I’m having real difficulty thinking of a real practical use (I know, I know, it doesn’t have to have one but it would help!)

Violet are also the company behind the Nabaztag (great flash intros after the jump). This one just has to be seen to be believed. Oddly enough, I can see the appeal if you travel and have young kids that you don’t get to see every evening. If you just like talking devices in your living/bedrooms then you might want one – not for me though.

Strange, strange, place, this wired world…

aehso design, internet

Speed up feed reading with Google Reader by learning a couple of simple keystrokes to avoid ever reaching for your mouse:

Lather:

• Open Google Reader
• Shift-n – Selects your first folder (or feed)
• Shift-o – Opens the folder (or feed)
• 2 – Switches to the (abbreviated) entry list view

Rinse:

• <space-bar> – Expands the first/next feed entry
• j, k – Expands the next or previous feed entry
• n, p – Selects the next or previous feed entry
• o – Expands/collapses the current feed entry
• v – Opens current entry URL in a new tab or window
• s – Stars the current entry
• Shift-a – Marks all unread feed entries as read

Repeat:

• Shift-n, Shift-o – Select & open next folder/feed

Help:

• ? – Opens a popup keyboard shortcut guide

See, no need to use the mouse!

aehso atom, google, rss

ValleyWag kick up a storm, Om is sorry, Mike Arrington is unapologetic. With so much spin in play it’s hard to figure out what even happened.

Jeff Jarvis has a very insightful write up. It also outlines how Federated Media previously approached him to help get Cisco’s name onto a Wikipedia article on their ‘human network‘ slogan. Interesting tactics. (Update: it gets worse for FM and they respond)

Jeff has always had a pretty open and comprehensive about page (for as long as I’ve been reading) but in the blogosphere nobody can hear you cheat until you are caught. A look at Federated Media’s author list is also worth a quick scan. Damn, I read a lot of feeds from that gang!

It all smells, doesn’t it? I’m expecting a mega-iPhoneGate in 3-6 months time (I was hoping not to mention that thing before next week but alas). I mean, c’mon, all that hype, for free? Hilarious!

Update 2: Mark Pilgrim has a fantastic translation of a rather ill-advised comment by a FM VP on the original Valleywag piece.

aehso advertising, blogging, microsoft

From the Google Solar Panel Project:

Google has installed over 90% of the 9,212 solar panels that comprise the 1,600 kilowatt project. Panels cover the rooftops of eight buildings and two newly constructed solar carports at the Googleplex
…
This installation is projected to produce enough electricity for approximately 1,000 California homes or 30% of Google’s peak electricity demand in our solar powered buildings at our Mountain View, CA headquarters.

Fair dues, and good PR to boot. Nice HQ by the way…

aehso environment, google

If you regularly need to cite sets of web pages (URLs) and annotate them with references (perhaps to ask questions or offer opinions) then you should check out Trailfire. It allows you to create a single URL that leads the reader to a subsequent set of pages, each annotated with balloon text with your comments.

No need for screenshots, here’s a trail I just created about Web Service API Keys that spans Amazon, Flickr, Google and Facebook API signup pages. Trailfire also host a trail view/summary page for each trail.

I created the above using their Firefox extension in just a minute – quite nifty! A small UI usability suggestion for the Trailfire folks though – don’t automatically add buttons to the main Firefox navigation bar by default! That is sacred screen real estate that people don’t want to have to clean it up after installing an extension. This also applies for the del.icio.us extension folks by the way! A dedicated Trailfire toolbar that I can hide the 99% of the time that I’m not building trails would be far more appropriate.

aehso firefox, internet, web2.0

Eircom have raised their line rental charge per month to €25.36 (from €24.18). To put this figure in perspective, over €300 of your yearly landline bill now goes to Eircom (unless you are with SmartTelecom), just for keeping that twisted-pair line from your house to their exchange alive. Broadband subscriber growth may be increasing in Ireland but we are being gouged for the privilege.

The timing is interesting, announced on the day that Eamonn Ryan (Green Party) was appointed minister for the new Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Eamonn’s own site contains a number of broadband related resources and the Green Party Election Manifesto on Transport and Communications (2007) suggests carrying out a feasibility study into the State re-taking control of Eircom (Damien Mulley has some good comments). Lets all hope Eamonn gives the issue due attention. This is a critical national resource; it should not be controlled by a foreign owned commercial monopoly.

Meanwhile, the utterly useless ComReg continue to ponder their navels.

aehso broadband, comreg, eircom, green, ireland, irish

From Read/Write Web (comment # 2 was NOT from me):

The core future media concept is the Agav – an Agent-Avatar, which “finds information, people…

I love these videos, Lawrence Lessig (a future US Secretary of Justice) declares copyright illegal, Google buys Microsoft, Google buys everyone and so on. But it has some style so it is worth watching:

The concept of the avatar has been around for centuries, long before Ultima IV – man, that was a blast. This video extrapolates the concept nicely into derivatives of digital properties that most computer users should now be familiar with, now that social networking and MMORPGs are the prevelant forms of online communication.

The evolution of the prosumer will continue. I for one like being a prosumer – or maybe it’s just that I like knowing that I’m a prosumer. I’m not sure, best be aware of these things though…

aehso amazon, avatar, future, google, internet, media, microsoft, yahoo, youtube

Tim Bray bites back at Dare Obasanjo’s recent critique of APP. 

There are places (network TV, Middle Eastern politics) where cluelessness regularly triumphs. Internet protocols aren’t one of them. Sorry, Dare.

Ouch!  I definitely have to re-read the APP specification and play a bit more with Abdera or some-such before deciding (Bill de hÓra’s related post also appears to be worth understanding)…

aehso atom, xml

This should be an easy one for Google to fix but it’s still borken. Since the weekend, Google Mobile Reader on Opera/N800 is failing to render the home page with the following error:

XML parsing failed: xml processing instruction not at start of
external entity (Line: 5, Character: 0)

The offending page content reads as follows:

<!--
Content-type: Preventing XSRF in IE.

-->
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN"
"http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"><html
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><itle>Google
Reader</title>
<meta http-equiv="content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml;
charset=UTF-8" />
<style type="text/css">
...

Err, why is there a comment before the XML declaration? If this is supposed to be valid XML it shouldn’t be there. I’m surprised the various other mobile platforms are forgiving enough to ignore this (or is it borken on them too and nobody has noticed?). Please Google, fix your XML.

(discussion ongoing here)

aehso atom, google, rss, xml