Mar252012
Posted by
abdu
in
Web Usability
I learned about B_Kam.com, an Egyptian comparison shopping site, through an article on ArabCrunch. I decided to check it out. I wasn’t surprised to find many usability issues with the site.
If you are building a website, you should avoid these common mistakes:
- Forcing iPad users to go to the mobile site version. I used an iPad to go to the site and the first thing I saw was a settings page which was developed using jQuery Mobile, a UI Framework for mobile devices. There was no option to use the full site version. When I chose English and hit ‘Save’, the page didn’t redirect. Treat iPad users as non mobile users. The iPad is not a mobile phone device or treated like one. It has a much larger screen. Many small netbooks have similar sized screens and no site treats them with mobile versions. A users should always be able to switch between the full (desktop) and mobile versions at will. Most smart phones have full browsers HTML5 capable browsers. The fact that a mobile version can have severe limitations where many functionalities are not present does not help.
- Grammar and spelling mistakes. This shows poor quality and unprofessional look. You should have a QA person or a reviewer who checks every page and functionality and test as many edge cases as possible. The text in this dialog box has 3 issues.
More...
Feb282012
Posted by
abdu
in
Productivity | Tip
Like many people, you are probably spending more time than you would like reading emails. Once you open your mail client, you are hooked into starting to read the emails. It takes self discipline to control the time you spend in your mail program. Here are three effective methods I use to limit my email reading time:
- My morning hours are when I am most mentally alert. This means it's the most valuable time for me to be most effective in my software development work. I would rather use this time to finish real work I get paid for than reading emails and following their links. I defer reading email to later during the day. Therefore many times, the first thing I do when get to work, is... actually work.
- Stay away from non work related mail notifications. For example, my Hotmail account is my personal email account. Once I am done reading email there, I close the browser tab which has Hotmail open. That's because the tab bar displays the number of new emails as they arrive. Once you see these notifications, you will be tempted to check them out. So I close it. However, I have Outlook open all the time where I get work ONLY related emails. I absolutely do not share my work email address with anyone or anywhere. That's why my work emails are pure work related only. This way I get no distractions.... and I get zero spam.
- Sometimes I need to check my Hotmail account because I am expecting replies to emails I have sent. I am following tip #1. So I use my mobile phone to check my Hotmail account. With a single touch, the phone's mail app is displaying the emails. I do this to force myself not to read long emails or follow any links in them. I don't like viewing web pages on a small screen. Therefore all I do is scan the subject lines and if I don't see the replies I am expecting, I am done. I don't read anything further or click on any links. It takes just a few seconds and I am not sucked into the web.
I don't follow these tips religiously. I follow them when time is constrained.
Jan302012
Posted by
abdu
in
Tip | Software | Productivity
There are times when I am editing the same web page tens of times in a single work session. The same sequence of hotkeys is repeated over and over. Hit save in the editor, switch to the browser and then refresh the browser. Because I am a huge fan of automating repetitive tasks, I decided there should be a better and more efficient way to do this. First I thought of automating the sequence of the hotkeys. I looked at tools like AutoIt. I created the script but for some reason it never worked from inside Visual Studio.
I later came aware of some auto refresh Firefox plugins like Auto Reload. I have the editor open in one monitor, Firefox open in another monitor and every time I save the web page, Firebox automatically refreshes the page right then. It's a beautiful very simple big time saver solution.
Jan052012
Posted by
abdu
in
Web Usability
I prefer to leave the search keyword in the textbox after displaying the search results. I would have it highlighted with focus. This way it serves it could serve the whole audience. For the user who wants to enter a new word, they can start typing and the old word is deleted. For the user who mistyped a long word, they can fix the mistyping instead of retyping the word.
Jan032012
Posted by
abdu
in
Software | Tip
Most of the time, installing a piece of software under Windows is a straightforward process. Double click on an .exe or .msi file and follow the instructions. It usually works without hick ups.
Lately I have been installing all kinds of CTP's (Community Technical Preview), which are basically beta software, software which hasn't been fully developed and tested. Installing beta software comes with warnings that they won't run perfectly AND it might break a piece of software which works just fine. There are no guarantees of any kind.
These installation/uninstallation notes can help diagnose and troubleshoot these issues: More...
Dec222011
Posted by
abdu
in
Tip | Web Usability | Rant
It has been a while since a blogged the last time. My excuse is I was just lazy. However today something annoyed me and I had to write about it. I just tweeted three times about it!
I am noticing that with several online chat help desk apps, they want you to type the question along with some other pertinent information before submitting the form and before initiating the actual live chat with a real person. Sounds reasonable. It saves time and money for the operator's company.
But then when you submit the form, you get a reply from the operator "Hi.. my name is xxx. How may I assist you?" What!? I just took 5 minutes formulating a long use case describing the issue I am having and a question and now I have to type that all again!? Did you lose my question!?
More...
Nov142011
Posted by
abdu
in
Rant | Productivity | Tip
I have used both Experts-Exchange.com (EE) and StackOverflow.com (SO) for getting answers to programming questions. I started with SO when it was in the beta phase over two years ago while I was still being a paying member at EE at $12.95/month.
One day EE got me really annoyed with them I decided to quit them. I received an email from EE notifying me that they had suspended my account. This means I can't log in and interact with the site. What was their reason? Something about not closing the questions properly and accepting answers. I had some questions with unaccepted answers.
A few problems with this:
- I never received any warnings that they would take such an action.More...
Oct272011
Posted by
abdu
in
Productivity | Tip
If you have a fledgling startup or you're thinking of starting one, listening about the success and failure of other startup founders can be helpful. Learn what they did right and don't repeat their mistakes. I am personally working on my own part time startup. Contrary to common misconception, you do not need to work on it full time and you do not need external funding. I founded and ran a successful one man web hosting company for 11 years while keeping a full time job and starting a family. It helped that I am a software engineer who can build systems end to end. It can be done. I believe in this so much that I ignore all the skeptics.
To get some extra ideas, motivation and skills, I listen to a few podcasts about startups and how their founders began and flourished. It amazes how some of them made a ton of money from very simple ideas. You can be one of them!
These are the startup podcasts I listen to: More...
Oct172011
Posted by
abdu
in
Software | Product Review | Productivity | .NET
I spend a lot of development time in Visual Studio (VS) and I am a fan of using any product which increases my productivity and makes my work more fun. That's why I use products like Resharper, Tabs Studio & Mole 2010. These are commercial products I purchased. I also use some free add-ons like RightHand Dataset Visualizer which is the best dataset visualizer around. (Even though it's 35M! The author uses third party components which are packaged into a single dll)
Recently I came across a new add-on called BugAid from bugaidsoftware.com. It's an add-on for Visual Studio's debugger inline watch and adds some nice features to it. It's still in beta and this review is based on version 0.5.1206.6134_456.
Some of the features which BugAid adds:
- Star important members. Show properties you're interested in at the top of the watch window including properties from base classes. More...
Oct172011
Posted by
abdu
in
Web Usability
This is a simple common sense tip but once a while I find a text "Click Here" on some web page and I try to click everywhere in the vicinity of that text and there's nothing clickable. I guess the web designer/developer forgot to add the link!
Here's an example from http://phillipsrelief.com/contact-phillips. Bayer , the maker of Phillips, is a global Fortune 200 company.
Nothing is clickable inside this box. I even examined the html behind this box. There are no hyperlinks.
A side note: another issue I found in the home page. A product has a tag promoting a $5 saving. Clicking on the product image brings up a page with more information about the product but nothing about how to save $5. Maybe it's in a sub page beyond the page but am I expected to check every page? I expect a more useful site from a respected global company.
No info on how to save $5.