Google Chrome: First Impressions

September 2nd, 2008

Well, Chrome is here and so far I’m pretty impressed. Although currently only available for Windows (you can’t actually download the Windows version if your browser identifies you as a Mac user - I had to select a Windows user agent for the download page to let me download it) it’s quite snappy, even running under Parallels. 

I had no trouble loading any pages and even complex pages such as my netvibes.com customized homepage (which is slow to load on other browsers) seemed to load very quickly (and this was in a virtual machine!).

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Posted in Opinions, The web, UI Design | 1 Comment »

OpenID is a mess

July 22nd, 2008

OpenID seems like a nice idea to simplify logins and profiles on the web. The promise: Create an account with one OpenID-enabled service such as Yahoo, Wordpress or others and then you’ll be able to sign in to other OpenID-enabled services.

The reality? OpenID still has some way to go before really becoming seamless enough for the average user to use it. Most of the issues lie with the sites implementing OpenID, but from what I can see they’re pretty systemic Here’s my OpenID experience:

1st attempt: Using my wordpress account to sign up for Skribit

So I decided to sign up to Skribit. They offer OpenID support, so I decided to try that, rather than create a traditional account. First of all you’re asked for your OpenID url. If you don’t know what that is, tough luck. There’s no link with more information on what your url could look like or how you can get one. 

Frustrated, I figure I’ll go to OpenID.org to find out more. OpenID.org looks like a cross between a phishing site and 1996:

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Posted in Opinions, The web, UI Design | 2 Comments »

Fun with Vista!

May 14th, 2008

Yup - the dark side has got me - I’ve installed Windows Vista.

But don’t worry: it’s only replaced my somewhat older XP installation temporarily as part of an assignment for University. And luckily I didn’t need to purchase a license either - Microsoft allows students in my course to apply for free Academic licenses.

So that’s why I found myself installing Vista Business Edition this past weekend.
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Three OS X quirks that confuse the hell out of switchers

April 13th, 2008

OS X is a great OS for “newcomers” and “power users” alike. Almost inevitably it’s OS X’s user-friendliness that (deservedly) gets most the attention - printers just work, BSOD-style crashes are (almost) unheard of and drivers are such a non-issue, they’re practically invisible (they either just work, or they don’t).

But instead of focusing on the good, today we’ll be taking a look at the bad and (shock!) ugly areas of OS X that confuse far too many switchers…
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Posted in Mac, UI Design | 20 Comments »

Mail.app RSS feed UI

March 31st, 2008

Is it just me, or is the button that adds an RSS feed to your Inbox in Mail.app really perplexing at first?

I’d prefer not to have my feeds show up in my inbox as I try to keep the inbox as empty as possible. Instead I just browse the feeds occasionally for interesting articles or news.
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