C’mon Ahead guys and gals. Couldn’t you increase the contrast just a teeny bit in those navigation boxes on the left?
I can’t read that text at all. And when I mouse over them, all I get is a bold face version of that same dark lettering.
Guess they just don’t want me to use the text-based navigation…
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In a post somewhat related to my “the desktop metaphor is dead” diatribes, my favorite open-source pinko commie has written about how and why the desktop OS is inching its way to irrelevance.
I think I agree. Google and a few other web-based productivity tool vendor are either furiously working on or already releasing beta versions of their software that allow the user to work in offline mode.
The day is coming when you will start your computer thusly:
I truly believe it’s that simple. Of course this is basically the idea behind the network appliance that was touted by many a guru at the turn of the century. It didn’t pan out then for now-obvious reasons: the online productivity apps weren’t mature enough. Well, now they are.
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Turns out there *is* a real article, not just a sidebar, about browser-based desktops on CNET. Here’s the link to the story.
You might also want to check out the comment left on my previous post from a goowy.com guy named Alex (they’re the folks who bring you yourminis.com). He makes some pretty interesting points. Thanks for commenting, Alex!
I still get mildly freaked out when I get comments, especially from people who are somehow related to the topic of the post. It’s the “holy crap, people actually read this?!?” kind of freaked out.
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Browsing my Google IG homepage this morning (man, I *have* to switch over to Netvibes; my Google homepage is sooo lame…), I found an interesting article on CNET about browser-based desktops.
The article itself is very short – it’s more of a sidebar, really – but the pics are worth a gander.
I haven’t played with any of these applications so I won’t make specific comments on any of them. (OK, I lied, I really like the widgety look of YourMinis.) But I’m still convinced that the desktop metaphor is broken, whether delivered on your OS “desktop” or inside a browser. It’s just not sufficient for the large majority of peoples’ needs. See this previous post for some reasons why.
I also recommend checking out Central Desktop. It’s somewhat similar to these “webtop” apps, but appears to be much stronger on collaboration features.
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Readers of UsabilityBlog have probably gotten the impression that I’m a whiny b*tch. I do tend to slag on designs that aren’t immediately learnable.
OK, I’ll own that. I am a bit of a whiner. But it really does cheese me off when products make implicit claims of learnability and usability, but in fact possess neither attribute.
So it’s with all this in mind that I’d like to talk about the incredibly high usability and utility of the GUI’s ancestor, the command line interface (CLI).
CLI: Not “Walk-Up-And-Use”
Let’s be clear about one thing: in most circumstances, a CLI is NOT a “walk up to and use” interface like the touch-screen kiosks at the airport check-in counter. Using a CLI requires that the user possess *some* understanding of both the syntax and command set, AND the general concept of interacting with a computer via a command line interpreter or shell.
But once a person takes the time to learn a particular CLI, they possess the ability to perform tasks and accomplish their goals in an incredibly efficient manner. It’s the old tradeoff, learnability vs. efficiency. It’s not exactly a zero-sum game, but these two attributes are often in opposition.
Let me give you a real-world, personal example of how learning just a little bit about a command line interface provided me with an incredibly powerful, comprehensive, customized, and trustworthy method of regularly backing up my and my wife’s data.
The CLI and I
First, a little bit about my situation and goals: ever since grad school I have been obsessive about backing up my data. I make (somewhat) up-to-date redundant backups of my and Susan’s data files to two large external drives. And yes, I even maintain an offsite backup, although the drudge of carrying that drive from work to home and back again means that the offsite backup is hardly ever as up-to-date as the onsite backups.
Lately, with the pace of work picking up for both Susan and I, I’ve been feeling the need to keep the backup stores as up-to-date as possible. And I had grown tired of running the backups manually.
Finally, since Susan and I have both become avid podcast consumers, I have noticed that the backup drives are filling up with unwanted podcasts. So my goals are:
Now I’m sure that I could buy a software product that would make periodic, maybe even continuous incremental backups. And I bet that a premium product might even let me specify which data can be discarded. In fact, many external drive manufacturers provide “lite” or even full versions of backup software with their drives. But I build my own external drives from empty enclosures and drives I purchase from eBay or Newegg. So that’s not an option for me.
I first started using computers back in the dark days of DOS 6x, so I know a little bit about Microsoft’s CLIs. Not much, mind you, but just enough to accomplish some rudimentary tasks.
So about four years ago, I started opening up a command line window in Windows 2000 (and later, XP) and entering DOS commands to copy all the data in the directories holding my data (as well as all subdirectories underneath) to another directory. (I always split my laptops’ drives into an OS partition and a data partition, so in essence my D: drive is the first line of defense. It keeps a backup of the contents of my user folder.)
The command I used was xcopy.
Using various options provided by xcopy, I could specify that I only wanted to copy files that had changed, and suppress confirmation prompts (“Are you sure you want to overwrite foo.bar”) as well. Pretty powerful.
I soon grew tired of entering the backup commands manually (yes, I kept the syntax on a post-it on my monitor…), so I put the xcopy commands into a batch file, and then executed the batch file whenever I remembered.
Obviously, I’m much less reliable than a computer, so about two years ago I decided to schedule the execution of the batch file using the scheduler feature of Windows XP. If you want to find it, go to Start / All Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Scheduled Tasks.
So about two years ago, my batch file looked like this:
Filename: Backup.bat
REM Copies Susan’s Favorites to the D:\ drive.
xcopy C:\DOCUME~1\Susan\Favorites\*.* D:\Susan\My_Docs\Favorites /s /d /e /i /r /yREM Copies Susan’s desktop files to the D:\ drive.
xcopy C:\DOCUME~1\Susan\Desktop\*.* D:\Susan\Desktop /s /d /e /i /r /yREM Copies Susan’s My Documents, Outlook data file, and desktop files from the D/: drive to the USB drive backup folder.
xcopy D:\Susan\Desktop\*.* U:\Susan\Desktop /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Susan\My_Docs\*.* U:\Susan\My_Docs /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Outlook\*.* U:\Susan\Outlook /s /d /e /i /r /y
You probably noticed that I used the 8.3 name for the “Documents and Settings” folder. A bit of trial and error taught me that xcopy will indeed preserve long folder and file names at the destination, but doesn’t always recognize long names in the xcopy command itself. So I used the 8.3 name for “Documents and Settings,” which is (usually) “DOCUME~1″.
Podcasts Improve – And Complicate – Our Lives
This little batch file served me well until last summer, when we both started downloading podcasts. This lifestyle change was definitely for the better; as we no longer had to listen to any of the incredibly annoying local radio stations. But it had one unintended effect: every time the backup batch script ran, it would back up all the podcast files that happened to be sitting in “My_Docs\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Podcasts.”
Even though Susan and I erase listened-to podcasts on the source drive, they started piling up on the backup drives. I needed a way to regularly clear out the contents of the podcast folder on the backup drives so the backup devices didn’t become overrun with stale copies of “This American Life” and the Battlestar Galactica podcasts.
So I went prospecting in the Microsoft KB, and found that the RMDIR (“remove directory” or RD) command has some very useful options. For example, “RD D:\Foo\Bar /q /” will delete the folder “Bar” and all its contents, without asking me for confirmation.
I added some RD goodness to my batch file, and this is what I ended up with:
Filename: Backup.bat
REM Copies Susan’s Favorites to the D:\ drive.
xcopy C:\DOCUME~1\Susan\Favorites\*.* D:\Susan\My_Docs\Favorites /s /d /e /i /r /yREM Copies Susan’s desktop files to the D:\ drive.
xcopy C:\DOCUME~1\Susan\Desktop\*.* D:\Susan\Desktop /s /d /e /i /r /yREM Deletes the old podcasts from the backup drives before kicking off the current backup.
RD U:\Susan\My_Docs\MYMUSI~1\iTunes\ITUNES~1\Podcasts /q /s
RD S:\Susan\My_Docs\MYMUSI~1\iTunes\ITUNES~1\Podcasts /q /s
RD O:\Susan\My_Docs\MYMUSI~1\iTunes\ITUNES~1\Podcasts /q /sREM Copies Susan’s My Documents, Outlook data file, and desktop files from the D/: drive to the USB backup drive.
xcopy D:\Susan\Desktop\*.* U:\Susan\Desktop /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Susan\My_Docs\*.* U:\Susan\My_Docs /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Outlook\*.* U:\Susan\Outlook /s /d /e /i /r /yREM Copies the same data as above to the secondary backup drive.
xcopy D:\Desktop\*.* S:\Susan\Desktop /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Susan\My_Docs\*.* S:\Susan\My_Docs /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Outlook\*.* S:\Susan\Outlook /s /d /e /i /r /yREM Copies the same data as above to the offsite backup drive (when I remember to bring it home that is).
xcopy D:\Desktop\*.* O:\Susan\Desktop /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Susan\My_Docs\*.* O:\Susan\My_Docs /s /d /e /i /r /y
xcopy D:\Outlook\*.* O:\Susan\Outlook /s /d /e /i /r /y
So there you have it. It’s not rocket science, but it works pretty well for me. It’s usable – provided you have some working knowledge of CLI’s. And I didn’t have to buy a separate application.
What did we learn today kids? First, the command line is your friend. Second, it can save you money.
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Chris Shaw of Userkind passed me a classic error message. You can see it here.
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Windows Live Messenger, your error message is soooo helpful! Thanks! This really helps me solve my problem!
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Slagging on software EULA’s (“end user license agreements”) goes in and out of fashion. Since I’m perpetually the third-to-last guy to hop on a bandwagon, I figured I’d at least be consistent and join this party late as well.
So let’s get right to it: software EULA’s are broken. They’re unusable. And not just for the reasons you might think. Pretty much everything about the EULA experience is horribly, horribly wrong.
Let’s start with the legalese. I’m aware of how and why legal writing has become so impenetrable and difficult to parse. (For more on this, check out this Wikipedia article.) Defenders of the language and style of legal writing point to the need to disambiguate as much as possible and cover all potential contingencies when writing law or a contract. But that argument is specious. Bloated, meandering legalese is created by lazy people who can’t be bothered to express their thoughts and intent clearly and succinctly.
Here’s an example of laziness in action (now *that’s* a contradiction in terms…) that I just encountered while attempting to install a software application I was interested in evaluating. For the curious, I was installing the open source version of SugarCRM, an application for managing customer and sales information. Let me be clear about one thing: I am NOT singling out SugarCRM for extra-special vituperation. They’re just doing what everyone else does. Their EULA experience is really no better or worse than any other vendor’s.
I started the SugarCRM install, and in one or two clicks was presented with this screen:
I don’t typically give the EULA screen more than a nanosecond of thought, but something spurred me to actually check out the license agreement. I started scrolling the text box, but quickly grew frustrated. So I put my pointer in the text box and pressed CTRL+A (“select all”) to highlight the EULA text. I planned to copy it and then drop it into a Word doc.
Surprise… the text didn’t highlight.
Now I know a usability issue when I see it. My curiosity was piqued: just how bad *was* this user experience? So I manually highlighted the EULA text on the first line, and then dragged my pointer downward. Sure enough, the text started highlighting. I figured I’d just keep my index finger down for however long it took to highlight the entire text, then try CTRL+C (“copy”).
The scrollbar indicator was taking an awfully long time to move downward. Then I noticed just how small the scrollbar indicator rectangle was… and I knew this might take a while.
After a solid 2 minutes, I had finally selected the entire block of text in SugarCRM’s EULA screen. Of course, upon pressing CTRL+C I received no indication that the text block had actually copied to the clipboard. But I took the chance, opened up Word, and pressed CTRL+V (“paste”).
When Word stopped grinding, the first thing I did was look at the page count at the bottom left of the status bar.
It said the document was SIXTY PAGES LONG.
Back in the day, I had occasionally seen Word spaz out on a page count; so I hopped to the end of the document then back to the beginning, thinking that the page count would settle down to a reasonable number.
It stayed at sixty pages.
Sixty single-spaced, twelve-point, Times New Roman, one-inch vertical by one-and-a-quarter-inch horizontal margined pages.
Guess how many words?
It has 18,284 of ‘em.
I’ve posted the EULA here so you can revel in its repulsiveness.
So let’s review: the application’s EULA is sixty pages long in Word. The text box on the EULA screen is 470 pixels wide by 135 tall (less if you subtract the gutters). And you can’t easily copy/paste the EULA into an easier-to-read format; you’re expected to read it in this tiny 470-by-135 aperture. Here’s the kicker: it’s written in dense legalese, with seemingly random switches between sentence case and upper case.
Sucks, doesn’t it?
It’s almost like they DON’T WANT you to read it. Typically, the only people who want you to agree to a legal contract without fully understanding it are slimy car salespeople and dishonest mortgage loan officers. Now I doubt that anyone at Sugar actually thinks like that; a quick perusal of their site shows that they’re committed open-sourcers who do much for the development community. In short, they seem like good people.
So why the unusable EULA? Probably the typical reasons: the developer who coded the installer forgot to enable right-click select/copy/paste in the EULA text box. And the Sugar legal team undoubtedly just concatenated the separate boilerplate licenses for the open-source components installed with SugarCRM, then added in a bit of their own liability-proofing text for good measure. In other words, they were lazy. What resulted is an unfriendly, unusable mess.
Now I was even more curious, and I wanted to do some comparative EULA-gawking. So I played around with the next two apps I had occasion to install: Windows Live Messenger and the iTunes 7.1 update.
Microsoft’s instant messenger app had a surprisingly readable EULA, but was a snooze-inducing 12 pages and 6,343 words long. The EULA text box was super tiny at 415 by 100 px, but it did permit both keyboard and right-click select/copy/paste.
I’ve posted the EULA here for your edification and enjoyment.
Apple’s iTunes EULA experience was not considerably better or worse than the other two. While (relatively) brief at five pages/2,091 words, it yelled at me (i.e., was in all caps) at random times. Guess that famed Apple user experience doesn’t extend to the EULA. Here’s a screenshot showing the generous-for-this-crowd text box aperture:
The EULA itself can be found here. It too suffers from a bad case of boilerplate-itis.
This is the part of the rant where I should tell everyone how to create a better EULA experience. So without further ado…here are my recommendations for more usable EULAs:
And while we’re on the subject of readability… I also recommend NOT SHOUTING AT YOUR READER. PEOPLE REALLY DON’T LIKE READING IN ALL CAPS. Sentence case is much more civil, don’t you agree?
So that’s all I have today about the EULA experience. I know several other people have written about the sorry state of software EULA’s, so here’s a few links for you. And thanks for listening to my EULA kvetch.
More about EULAs at:
Boing Boing: ReasonableAgreement.org – the anti-EULA
Ben Edelman: EULAs Gone Bad
EFF: Now the Legalese Rootkit: Sony-BMG’s EULA
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I just loaded two desktop PC applications recently, both of which come from Yahoo!. They could not be any more different in how they treated me and communicated with me during install and beyond.
I think y’all will enjoy this post. Look for it tomorrow. (Promise!)
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No, it *wants* my attention. There’s a difference.
Adobe, you’ve been annoying me and interrupting my train of thought for 9 days now. Enough already.
And the worst part is your demanding tone. Language does matter!
I’m not the only one who thinks so:
This guy agrees.
So does this guy.
And this guy.
And this guy too.
My favorite take on this is the commenter to that last blog who referred to the update manager as an “attention whore.”
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Found this article on installing Ubuntu Linux in my web meanderings. A blogger who looks an awful lot like a young Newt Gingrich decided to rate the difficulty of installing Ubuntu as well as associated configuration tasks like setting up dual monitors, installing Wine (an open API that allows running Windows programs on Unix/X Window systems), getting WiFi to work, etc.
Not surprisingly, installing graphics drivers and a multi-monitor setup was very hard. Ya think? My readers (all three of you) will remember my epic n00b struggles with Linux. Sigh.
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Just read on Slashdot that the UI for the OLPC (“One Laptop Per Child”) is going to be “kid-tested” in February.
Oh. My. God.
They’ve already developed it and they haven’t tested it with kids yet?
Wow. No wonder our field has so much work. It’s dumb decisions like this one that keeps us all gainfully employed, cleaning up after the technologists’ mistakes.
You can take a gander at the OLPC’s UI, code-named “Sugar”, at this YouTube page.
Oh, and happy new year, everyone.
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I just found out that Gower has posted the first chapter of the book I edited.
The PDF of Chapter 1 can be found here: http://www.gowerpub.com/pdf/Usability_Success_Stories_Intro.pdf
I still don’t think you should buy it at 100+ dollars, though. (If you want to know why, you can read my rant.)
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I just read a great post by Joel Spolsky on Vista’s shutdown menu. Turns out there’s FIFTEEN items on this menu. Joel argues that you really only need two:
Anyway, here’s Joel’s screengrab:
I agree with him. His analysis is spot-on.
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I have a problem: I habitually click “reply to all” when responding to emails. I can’t help myself. I do it EVERY time I reply to an email. I don’t know why. But I can’t stop.
As you can imagine, this has caused me no end of embarrassment. Countless times I’ve responded to an email, intending to communicate only with the sender, and shamed myself by writing to everyone on the To: list.
The last time I did this was particularly embarrassing. So I went googling for a “behavior-modification” tool. I found one. It’s a plug-in for M$ Outlook called Reply To All Monitor. Full disclosure: I have no formal or informal relationship with Sperry Software, the producer of Reply To All Monitor.
The plug-in pretty much does exactly what the title suggests. It monitors you as you reply to emails. When it detects that you’ve pressed the “Reply to all” button, it simply pops a confirmation dialog. If you in fact intended to reply to all recipients, you click Yes. If not, you click No, and the plug-in strips out all respondents but the original sender.
Simple. But for me, incredibly useful. It’s by far the best 10 dollars I’ve ever dropped on a software product.
Whoever runs Sperry Software is pretty savvy about email-related behavioral disorders. Check out their product page. They’ve got a plug-in to remind you to include attachments (and who hasn’t forgotten the attachment once in their life?), strip attachments from incoming emails, and more. Nice.
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Today I was trying to enter my hours into the time reporting application on our company’s intranet. Evidently the intranet’s tubes were clogged. (We know the Internet is made of tubes; is my intranet?)
When I tried to log in, I was presented with this message:
“[ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Transaction (Process ID 67) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process and has been chosen as the deadlock victim. Rerun the transaction. Click here to return to previous page.”
Whoah. There’s so many things wrong with this, I hardly know where to start.
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I listen to CNET’s podcast “Buzz Out Loud” every weekday on the way to work. Yes, podcasts have changed my entertainment consumption habits…no more suffering through annoying DJ’s and dumb-ass radio commercials…yaay!
Friday’s show ranted on Amazon‘s new video download service, Unbox. And for good reason. The user experience of Unbox is a textbook example of how NOT to treat your customer.
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Like every other wanna-be semi-guru in this field, I’ve written a book. OK, I really just wrote three chapters, got 10 other people to contribute chapters, and edited their contributions…but still, I think this counts as “I have a book coming out.”
It will be available in September or October of this year. It’s published by Gower, an imprint of the Ashgate Publishing Group.
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