Wednesday, March 22

Poor usability 2: Google Video


I find this one quite evil. If the chosen video "is not playable in my country", it shouldn't have been made available to me in the first place. Out of sight out of mind, right?
About Face 2.0 has something to say too:

Considerate software uses common sense


This one is a fundamental problem with navigation implementations using HTML frames. As you progress on the list and select an item after scrolling down, the scrollbar returns to the beginning of the list every time a refresh occurs. Thus, we're constantly scrolling up and down the list to go through all items. My favorite web aggregator, Bloglines, suffers from the same (quite annoying) problem.
Of course, there is an About Face 2.0 quote applicable:

Considerate software is perceptive
Software should watch our preferences and remember them without being explicitly asked to do so. If we always maximize an application to use the entire screen, the application should get the idea after a few sessions and always launch in that configuration. The same goes for placement of palettes, default tools, frequently used templates, and other useful settings.

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