User Interface

Yesterday the long awaited Simpsons Season 4 DVD box (German release) arrived and I spend the evening watching some episodes. Great as usual. However, the user interface still sucks, and compared to the previous boxes, it has even become worse.

What would you think, if offered to browse by TableRow or TableColumn? Confused? So was I.

Richard Livsey offers some nice JavaScript on his side, including turning any select box into a two panel multiselect box by just giving it a class and a resizable textarea. I really like the second.

Henrik Olsen summarizes some studies about web user behaviour, conclusing that users don't notice navigation tools but solely the content (via Oliver Wrede). In fact, user don't notice anything not related to their task, not even a gorilla.

Sahanya spotted this funny list of countries on the Kodak websites: While all the countries' names were translated from English to German, the sort order wasn't changed. Now go and find yours!

I usually don't get lost in the supermarket. However, it happened to me when I needed to give the public toilets in Cologne main station a try. A bad user interface design suddenly turned me into a criminal.

Another nominee for the most broken development tool: Actuate Report Designer.

Error messages from outer space: Maximo 5 forwards you to a literature magazine website if you are stupid enough to log in as administrator in the adminstration environment.