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A Few Quick Thoughts On Gmails New Labels Comment

1 hour, 44 minutes ago by Joen gmail, google, interface-design, webdesign, windows

Google just revamped their label system for Gmail, probably because only power users understood how to leverage their potential. The new system is more like Google Docs, which means labels now behave more like folders. Only, you can still file one email in two labels, which you wouldn’t be able to if they really were folders. The result is, as usual, interesting, so here are a few quick thoughts.

Labels (and tags, as they’re sometimes called) really do trump folders, but they’re also harder to understand (as I’ve written about in the distant past). It makes sense that Google wants to democratize them and make them apparent to everybody.
Because the labels now reside right next to your usual email folders — Inbox, Sent mail and so on — their use becomes more readily apparent to people who didn’t use labels in the past. It also becomes clear how married Gmail are to labels; inbox and sent mail are also simply labels that get their content from the all-containing “All Mail”.
There’s now a little handle to the left of your emails consisting of spaced dots in a grid. Which further solidifies that spaced dots in a grid are the international symbol for “draggable”.
Drag and drop seems to work as well as it should. Meaning, you can drag and drop an email on to your junk folder if you want. Or, you can drag and drop the junk mail folder on to the “more tags” folder, should you want to hide that section altogether.
By default, Google will hide your not-recently-used-tags. Or, if you haven’t really used tags at all, create four new tags for you: Personal, Reciepts, Travel and Work.
Normally, hiding stuff is the UI design equivalent of throwing in the towel. However, I feel this is one of the few situations where Googles solution is rather good. After all, labels do have more in common with folders than they do with main navigation and so they deserve to be tuck-away-able just like subfolders are.
Gmail now distinguishes “System Labels” (Inbox, Sent mail, Drafts etc.) from normal labels (or normies as I’ll call them from now on). Both are show-and-hidable.
The whole revamp of the labels system feels like a love affair with folders gone right. Except, there’s still no equivalent to the sub-folder. What if I want to group a chunk of tags? Or do I want that at all? Do we need to group tags? I currently have a total of 36 tags and sometimes I think grouping may be helpful. In the words of Radiohead, I could be wrong.
The fact that I can hide System labels has a few nice side-effects. While I love the fact that all my Google Talk chats are stored in my searchable Gmail, I’ve never actually used the menu link very much. So “Chats” goes in to the “More” box, along with Spam, whose perma-bold font annoys my eye.
Which reminds me again why hiding stuff in interface design is mostly a bad idea. It would be interesting to see into the deeply inner workings of the Gmail interface to get an idea when a tag is classified as not-recent, and specifically, when System labels are hidden. We all remember when Microsoft added application link hiding to their Windows XP start menu to clean up the clutter. It really didn’t work very well.
For users of the Gmail Labs feature called Go To Label which gives you a Quicksilver/Enso search box for going to a specific label, you’ll be happy to know that this features still works and also allows you to go to the Inbox, and other System labels. Maybe it always did?

Overall, the revamp is most welcome. We’ll see with a few weeks of use, if the hiding system really was a good idea. My prediction is: yes.

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Transformers 2 (2009) Mini-Review 4 Comments

4 days, 22 hours ago by Joen movies, review

As a special team of military units and transforming alien Autobots hunt down remaining evil Decepticons on Earth, Sam Witwicky — now on his way to college — finds a shard of the robo-life-giving Allspark. As the consequences unfold, a new threat appears.

This is an incredibly stupid film. Not just fun-stupid, like Universal Soldier but wallowingly stupid like Spiderman 3 or Glitter. So the Egyptian general is called “Salaam“, is he? Really? Shouldn’t you also have called Sam Witwicky’s character John Everyman instead? If this is not an argument for 60 minute movies, I don’t know what is. The amount of scenes you could cut from this film can be measured in parsecs. Barely.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not some intellectualized attempt at pointing out the obvious shortcomings of Michael Bay movies, I actually liked the first one. Where Transformers succeeded in providing mind-numbing fun, the sequel lowers the bar on story in favor of more comedic sidekicks and more action. Sounds good? Surprisingly, it’s not. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is almost as bad as Spiderman 3. In fact, you’d be better off watching Wrestlemania Smackdown, at least there’s a story worth following. Or you could watch House of the Dead, which is shorter, yet features the same amount of cleavage and rotating cameras.

Annoyed wasted-ticket-money-sarcasm aside, don’t watch this in the cinema, instead go watch or rewatch Star Trek, which is written by the same writing team. Or, if you are hell-bent on watching robots that talk, go watch Wall-E on the small screen; that’s simply a smarter, better and more expressive movie, even if it uses way fewer words.

What happened to you Orci and Kurtzman? You’ve changed. You used to be cool.

♥♥♥♥♥♥

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Like Tabs In the Rain: How Safari 4s Tabs-On-Top Could Have Worked 15 Comments

3 weeks, 1 day ago by Joen chrome, interface-design, mac, safari, software, usability, windows

It seems the general reaction to Apple pulling out their Safari 4 Beta “tabs on top” feature has been generally positive. The sentiment seems to indicate the feature to be so inferior to the workaday solution of having tabs below the address-bar, that tabs-on-top shouldn’t even be optional for those of use who understand their usability benefits.

I’m writing this post today, to inform you that the problem wasn’t tabs-on-top. The problem was Apples half-assed implementation of tabs-on-top.

In a misguided attempt at being innovative, Apple had decided to build their own take on the tabs (as can be seen in this screenshot). Tab-widths resized for every new tab you opened, trying to use the maximum available realestate (causing quite the flutter when opening tabs). The left-most tab had the close button on it, while the second-most did not (confusing the close tab with close window behavior). Probably most ridiculously, tabs had a little strip on the right side that looked like it would resize the tab window. This was, in fact, the “move only the tab” drag area. Dragging the tab, ironically, dragged the whole window.

For the analytical mind, you might — with the help of drugs — pick up on the idea that each Safari 4 tab was its own window, and that when you combined one window with another, they’d share the titlebar, dividing this new world equally between them. So a tabbed Safari 4 window could simply be thought of, as a group of Safari 4 windows. A noble goal, and no doubt why Apple tried all those oddball UI decisions. Forgivable, because this was a beta version. How much more odd it was, that the feature was pulled altogether when the final version of Safari 4 was released just a few days ago. To re-iterate, tabs-on-top is not even optional.

This really is a pity, and to explain why, please take a look at the current default Safari 4 configuration:

Behold, Apples flagship browser, in all its tab-less glory. Wait, no tabs? That’s right, until you open a tab, you won’t see the tab-bar (unless you change the default settings). How would your mom discover tabs in Safari 4? That’s right, she wouldn’t.

Tabs on top have the benefit of being supremely visible. They are, after all, right at the top. Windows users have the added benefit of having them be right at the top of a maximized window, requiring you to only bump your mouse towards the edge of the screen to select it. Easy peasy. Now all that will be lost. Like tabs in the rain.

It’s not that Safaris current tabs are bad, once the tab-bar is there:

… it’s just that the discoverability is somewhat lower than tabs-on-top.

As an added benefit of tabs on top, you’d get some extra vertical real estate, because the titlebar would be nuked in favor of the title only having to stick to each tab. With tabs below, you have the title shown twice. Which is redundant of course.

So Safari 4 ditched the tabs on top. So what, go back to Google Chrome where you came from? Sure, but not before I poke fun at the visionaries at Apple for chickening out on a good idea. Tabs on top could’ve worked:

Okay so it could also have worked even better than the above mockup, but still, it’s not really rocket science. Invert the tab-bar instead of inventing some high-fantasy “group of windows” metaphor. Each tab has a fixed width (until you have to deal with overflow), and dragging the tab drags the tab (for sorting purposes). Pulling the visible chrome before or after tabs, or even below the tab around the addressbar here and there would drag the entire window. The tab close button (now visible all the time) looks like a close button and not like the Apple stoplight (because it closes the tab, not the window).

There. Tabs like they’ve been done since BeOS.

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Is There An “OSX Preview”-Like App For Windows? Comment

3 weeks, 2 days ago by Joen mac, software, voxpop, windows

Working on the girlfriends Mac, one of the features about OSX I’ve come to like the most, is the Preview app. It works quite simply: you drag a bunch of files on to the Preview icon, located in the dock. The result, your selected files are added to a “drawer” in a preview window, where you can quickly look through them. This is opposed to, say, Picasa, where you doubleclick an image, and can now scroll through all the pictures in the same folder (which is also cool, I’d just like a way to delimit my images). Additionally, Preview handles many filetypes.

So, is there a similar app for Windows? Or is there a “dropbox” for Picasa, which allows me to preview only a few files in a folder?

So Safari 4 Ditched The Tabs-On-Top Again 13 Comments

3 weeks, 2 days ago by Joen browsers, interface-design, mac, windows

During last nights special Apple event, the final version of Safari 4 was released. And with that, they ditched one of the most interesting new features that was introduced in the beta, tabs on top (here’s a screenshot). Apparently they couldn’t make it userfriendly enough. Pussies.

It’s Invent A New HTML5 Tag Day! 14 Comments

3 weeks, 3 days ago by Joen webdesign

What is HTML5, really? Well, right now, reading this, you’re probably looking at XHTML1 or HTML4. So to explain: HTML5 is the next big thing for the web. Because HTML5 is one more. Or 4 more, if you’re using XHTML.

But wait, there’s more! HTML 5 has a whole lot of things to offer — more tags, for instance! Because despite what the gurus have said the last decade, that separating presentation from content is good, a new tag means a new feature, and HTML5 has new features coming out of every orifice. Leaking tags, almost. Some of my favourite new tags include, but are not limited to:

<nsfw>, for when you want to designate something to be “not safe for work”. For instance, juggling with knives is not safe for work. Unless you work at a circus. Porn is also not safe for work, unless you work at a porn studio. Writing about the Tianenman massacre may also not be safe for work, especially if you work in the chinese government.

<aside>, for when you want to designate something to be beside the point. For instance, if I were to write something like:

“Excuse me, is this MAD Magazine?”

“No, it’s Mademoiselle. We’re buying the sign on the installment plan.”

… that would be totally beside the point, and hence ripe for HTML5.

<menu>, for when you’re working on a website for a kitchen or restauraunt, menu is perfect for indicating to screenreaders when you’re reading a menu aloud. I’ll have the Soup du’Jour, please.

But It Doesn’t Have To Stop Here!

As you can see, HTML5 is a bold new vision for the future. I really can’t wait til 2022, when HTML5 is scheduled to be done. Fortunately that gives us a little lee-way in recommending new tags to the standards boards. Here’s my wishlist:

<hello>, for when you need to indicate a greeting and/or salutation.
<hi>, for when you need to indicate a casual greeting and/or salutation.
<sarcasm>, for use in Digg.com comments.
<rickroll>, for whenever you need to fail at rickrolling someone.
<lol>, for when something is laugh out loud funny!
<roflmao>, for when something is rolling on the floor laughing my ass off funny!!!
<lolcat>, for whenever girls post pictures on the web.
<fubar>, for whenever you need to discuss the viability of new HTML5 tags.
<controversial>, for when you’re writing about atheism or global warming. I predict this tag will be wildly popular.
<first>, for when you intend to post the first comment on a website. I predict this tag will be even popularlier.
<dramaticprairiedog>, for whenever you feel it appropriate to counter a response with a picture of a dramatic prairie dog.

<penny> for your thoughts?

The Questionable Legality Of Web Fonts 9 Comments

June 2nd, 2009 by Joen fonts, webdesign

Font options for webdesigners are increasing these days. There’s the imminent release of Firefox 3.5, which hails the arrival of embeddable fonts of your choice. There’s Typekit, a tool to ease the addition of the former (and some more). There’s sIFR, the so-far most adopted choice, and there’s also Cufon, a novel approach to the subject.

Common to all of these methods, however, is the question of legality. Whenever we choose a font which is not in the base Arial/Times New Roman pack, we’re probably using a font which does not explicitly allow embedding on the web.

In essence, when you’re using embeddable fonts, you distribute the precious font vectors across the silver streams of the interverse, freely and therefore copyable. Meaning; the type foundry responsible for your chosen font is unlikely to agree with you, that you absolutely must use Dax Wide for your new corporate website. Because if you do, every visitor to your website will have downloaded a copy of the font.

In fairness, I have yet to see a useful font file be extracted from the Flash files generated for use with sIFR, which is probably the primary reason for its widespread use and popularity. Reading about Cufon, I suspect the same holds true for that technology (please correct me if I’m wrong).

So what options remain, now that in the next few months we’ll finally be able to expand our type-base? Aside from the continued use of sIFR and Cufon, we have two options:

Use a font which specifically allows for @font-face embedding (here’s a list)
Use Typekit, which — I’m told — will work with type foundries to provide classy fonts for your typical needs

These are not bad options, especially because we’re mainly talking body-text here (again, you can use sIFR or Cufon for headlines). More interestingly, however, is the prospect now that the technology is (almost) there. I find it quite likely that we’ll see buckloads of amateurs giving away their spare-time font projects for free under liberal licenses. Some of these fonts are quite good, some of them, like Arial, are just cheap knockoffs of their better-looking counterparts. Nonetheless, an avenue for a sky-rocket trip to font-hall-of-fame will have have opened up, and you and I will reap the benefits.

Fixing The Box Model [Update] 12 Comments

May 19th, 2009 by Joen bugs, code, css, webdesign

As great as web standards are, the standard against which box widths are measured is ridiculous. The details are all explained in this image, but suffice to say the width of a box doesn’t count its padding or borders.

Fortunately you can fix this. Simply use the following CSS:

.box {
	-ms-box-sizing:border-box;
	-moz-box-sizing:border-box;
	box-sizing:border-box;
	-webkit-box-sizing:border-box;
}

This changes the box model behavior, so that borders and paddings are part of the width you apply. This is especially useful when styling form fields such as textarea and input.

[Update]: As it turns out, the above works for IE6 and IE8, but not IE7. So for IE7, you still have to serve a separate stylesheet.

WPML Usability Review Comment

May 15th, 2009 by Joen plugins, usability, wordpress

WPML is a Wordpress plugin that adds multi-language features to Wordpress. Of the many I have tried so far, it is not only the best of the bunch, it is the plugin with the most potential. To speed things up, I offered the WPML developers a usability review, and it’s now been published on their website.

Star Trek (2009) Mini-Review 5 Comments

May 13th, 2009 by Joen movies, reviews, startrek

Reviews are spoilerfree but beware of comments.

Star Trek chronicles the early adventures of James T. Kirk as he strives to find his place in the universe following the untimely death of his father at the hands of the renegade Romulan Nero.

Like the best Bond movies, Star Trek drops you square in the middle of the action, and within the first 10 minutes establishes itself as an entirely new, and exhilerating trek to the stars. As we follow George Kirks heroic last endeavours to save his wife and unborn son, we are shown that Star Trek doesn’t have to be about weird foreheads, odd beeps and campy uniforms, because what matters is the human interaction. You may actually weep before the movie has even begun.

Star Trek is a triumphant reboot and sequel, all in one. It puts hamfisted Hollywood franchise restarts to shame with a plot, a cast and a story that thrills and engages, even if you’re not — like I must confess myself to be — a Trekkie. Unbelievably, J.J. Abrams and his writing team Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman has managed to reinvigorate a 40 year old franchise, keeping the style and spirit intact, dropping countless squeamingly delicious references to past movies and shows. You’ll see wierd foreheads and odd beeps, and cheer at it. Incredibly, even the new music by Michael Giacchino is sufficiently remeniscent of past scores, while delivering new hummable tunes.

Star Trek is a movie that should have been impossible to make. Yet here it is, and it’s a masterpiece.