*hypf*

sigh A message box telling me what I already know since I initiated the action.

To reproduce:

• Show log.
• Click cancel or press Esc while the log is still loading.

Seems to work as well for other errors (or messages worth showing) in the „Show log“ dialog. The „Update“ dialog, however, shows errors directly in the window, without needing a message box (which I highly appreciate):

I still don't quite know what I should think of this:

First I only read the part that you should write your comments within 15 minutes (or paste them). That alone is sick enough. And yes, there is a  in the top of the page. I just wonder why. The site isn't as comment-heavy as Slashdot, Heise or other large IT sites so the benefit of seeing the latest comments (well, the ones that are at most 15 minutes old) isn't really that great and besides, that could be done without forcing the user into something he wouldn't need to do (Hint: there is this wonderfully hyped Web 2.0 thing called AJAX).

And the second part of the commenting hint is just downright ridiculous. Something on their side is seriously broken if they need that kind of hint. After digging a bit in the source code of that page it turns out that their comment-system is entirely Javascript, at least the validation part. The form points into void and the only thing that will submit something is probably the JS function AddComments() that is called on submit on that form. However, I lacked the motivation to actually look through that, given that I know nearly no Javascript.

Right now a new Firefox update appeared, apparently out of nowhere. So I started up Firefox and waited. And then, right when the Chrome appeared a dialog jumped into my face, hooray. Lesson No. 1 from the usability labs (read many times by now): Unexpected things in the user's view just cause him to get rid of the damn thing as soon as possible and they won't read it.

Anyway, where was I? Ah, right, the dialog that popped into my view:

The fun thing starts right here, though. Who'd suspected that upon clicking „Later“ (which should be pretty clear in meaning as in „Not now, I don't want to be bothered anymore. I'll restart Firefox sooner or later, rest assured.“) just another message box would appear, telling me something I really need to know that instant:

Great. Thanks. If I actually would read that (which I did, yes) the „Later“ button already took more time (and one more click) than simply updating. I really wonder whether this is really necessary.

And one more thing: The message box is of course a XUL-generated one, without one of the nicenesses that message boxes have on Windows: Pressing Ctrl-C did exactly nothing (normal message boxes put their contents in the clipboard upon hitting Ctrl-C).

And just to complement all that: The update didn't work. I suspect me running Windows as non-administrator might be the reason. Sigh. Haven't those people learned? I mean, Vista didn't just drop into the stores yesterday …

UPDATE (2008–03–27): The update didn't request administrative privileges (and thus failed) because the updater.exe program (used to install the update) fails to request it. They rely on Windows to detect that this is an installer-type application and do the magic for them. Definitely not the best way to do this. For completeness: Here's their manifest:

<?xml version=„1.0“ encoding=„UTF-8“ standalone=„yes“?> <assembly xmlns=„urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1“ manifestVersi­on=„1.0“> <assemblyIdentity
version=„1.0.0.0“
processorArchi­tecture=„X86“
name=„Updater“
type=„win32“ /> <description>Up­dater</descrip­tion> <dependency>
<dependentAssembly>
<assemblyIdentity
type=„win32“
name=„Microsof­t.Windows.Com­mon-Controls“
version=„6.0.0.0“
processorArchi­tecture=„X86“
publicKeyToken=„6595b64­144ccf1df“
language=„*“
/>
</dependentAs­sembly> </dependency> </assembly> 

See a <requestedPri­vileges> block in there? I don't. Hey Mozilla guys: Not everyone is an admin.

Pop up blocking is nowadays a pretty essential component of every major web browser. However, what about the pop ups the user actually wants to see? Internet Explorer is pretty ignorant about this, only offering the opportunity to turn off pop up blocking for the session or completely for the site:

So, to revisit a blocked pop up you have to repeat the action that lead to it, be it clicking on a link, let the page load or whatever.

Mozilla Firefox is nicer in this regard as it allows you to select a blocked pop up to open directly from a list. However, as URLs get longer and the first part stays the same, the user faces this:

Try to figure out which pop up you want to see from the list at the bottom.

Currently I can't think of a viable solution, although thumbnails or titles would be great for the user (except he's on dial-up). But since both options involve downloading the page in background and wasting bandwidth that way it's probably not a great idea. But the current solution of being either ignorant or at times pretty unhelpful isn't that great either.

Maybe the whole issue settles down after pop ups become extinct (hey, I still have hope).

Well, I like UI assistance in the usual ways. Many of you probably know the run dialog of Windows:

or perhaps the address bar:

Both exhibit kind of a text box, merged with a drop down list. In initiated Visual Basic circles called a combo box. The point is to simultaneously allow more text input and selection of a predefined or previously entered value. Usually the list drops down while typing but won't get in the way or steal focus, thus being quite unobtrusive. You can, however, use the arrow down key to select an item from the list. And you can hit Esc any time to close the list again.

Yesterday I stumbled over an example of such assistance gone wrong, from a usability perspective. Eclipse offers something called Content Assist in many places, it is context-sensitive, offers usually only the options that make sense in the current context, etc. In general a good feature and nice to have. Until I tried a simple search and replace through my source code:

Short explanation: I typed the „r()“ in the „Find“ text box and hit tab to get to the „Replace with“ text box. Never mind that the find/replace I attempted there didn't work (as I was doing a regular expression search and parentheses are special characters there) the dialog thought the pressing of Tab to be a good time to display content assistance that not only completely covered the text box I was about to type into, but also managed to provide no obvious way to get rid of it.

My natural reaction was to hit Esc. No good, it closed the dialog completely. I fell into this trap about three times until I actually thought about what I was doing there. Anyway, turns out that the content assistance didn't even have focus, for whichever reason. Thus any input I made went straight to the dialog (hence Esc closing it, ok). Clicking elsewhere in the dialog didn't work either, perhaps for the same reason. I gave up trying yesterday and instead just unchecked the „Regular expressions“ check box.

It seems (note: I can only guess) as if Eclipse is trying to display the content assistance for the previous text box, the one where it noticed „Hey, parentheses are special characters, let's display the user some help with them or other common Reg Ex templates“. Hitting Shift-Tab to get to the „Find“ text box and then hitting Tab will get you to the list of suggestions. Turns out that even waiting until it appears will get rid of that annoyance, it actually does, but needs a second or two.

The problem is probably that regular expression search and replace is a feature not used by beginners (who perhaps need the assistance most) but rather by people already familiar with it. And those are much more likely to just type away as they already know what they want to search and replace. So waiting until you display that will cause the list to pop up too late in most cases anyway.

Note: I mentioned above that I did the same mistake (hitting Esc) three times before actually realizing what I was doing. Many people that deal with Usability and Interaction Design note the same: The first thing a user attempts when facing something unexpected is to get rid of it as fast as possible. I seems even people who spend the majority of their time with computers aren't any better than those we usually just look upon scornfully.