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Does touch based mobile phone browsers support multi selection of list?

On desktop based browser application there are elements which allow us to do a multi selection, like below: Multi Select Is there support for this on touch-based phones? How do these kind of devices simulate the CTRL keypress? Read more...

Avoid Ratios For Metrics – Moving Beyond Conversion Rates, Part 1

Recently, I posted a tweet about conversion rates. Conversion rate’s big crime is it focuses purely on pressing the purchase button, independent of the quality of the experience. — Jared M. Spool (@jmspool) May 13, 2012 Immediately, I received several responses, all of them showing the common misunderstandings that people have about conversion rates. The conversion rate has become a standard metric for many online businesses. Read more...

Quick Course On Effective Website Copywriting

   Many dismiss copywriting as something that ad agency people do. Truthfully, all of us need to pay close attention to copywriting if we want to achieve our business objectives. The goal of a “regular” text is to inform or entertain. The goal of Web copy (and ideally your website in general) is to get people to do something—to sign up, make a purchase, or something similar. Read more...

A Foot On The Bottom Rung: First Forays Into Responsive Web Development

   Responsive design is the hottest topic in front-end Web development right now. It’s going to transform the Web into an all-singing, all-dancing, all-devices party, where we can access any information located anywhere in the world. But does responsive design translate well from the text-heavy Web design blogosphere to the cold hard reality of commercial systems? Rumors came through our office grapevine that management was looking to revamp our mobile presence. Read more...

Radio button groups with thumbnails

Please advise which of the following approaches is more usable: Switching images, all captions are visible: All images and captions are visible: Swithing captions, all images are visible: Read more...

Why might right aligned field labels be better?

For the longest time, I've used left-aligned labels in my forms, like this: I did this because I thought having the labels left aligned made it easier for readers to scan the list of labels. Read more...

Facebook’s Faceoff with Google+

In the early battle between Facebook vs. MySpace, Facebook dominated by offering a simple user interface to connect with friends. Backed by explosive success, Facebook has maintained a “we know best” attitude about design through continuous iterations. With the rise of Google+, Facebook has been pressured to address usability concerns expressed by its cynical, albeit deeply ingrained, user base. Read more...

Publication Standards Part 1: The Fragmented Present

In the early battle between Facebook vs. MySpace, Facebook dominated by offering a simple user interface to connect with friends. Backed by explosive success, Facebook has maintained a “we know best” attitude about design through continuous iterations. With the rise of Google+, Facebook has been pressured to address usability concerns expressed by its cynical, albeit deeply ingrained, user base. Read more...

Usability Concerns with Parallax Scrolling

I work for an agency that is very parallax happy. Clients seem to love it, so we keep pushing it. My goal is to build solutions that end-users love, so I've been trying to push more user-centered practices here. It's been an uphill battle. Does anyone have any information from real user studies or articles that speak about the usability of parallax scrolling? I've been unable to find anything of substance by searching. Read more...

Testing with new vs. experienced users

A bit of backstory first: I'm setting up a usability test involving electronic medical records (EMRs). The test has to follow some draft testing guidelines (long pdf) set up by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to identify usability issues that might impact patient safety. These draft standards are still somewhat flexible and open for comment. Read more...

UI suggestion: Where to place MoveUp/Down buttons

It is ugly but I can't find a better place to put Move-up and Down buttons. What is your suggestion? Note: the ORDER of the items inside the spreadsheet is important to user and we save it. These buttons move up or down the items so they define the ORDER. Read more...

Confirmation message when closing a lightbox / modal box

A feature of a website I'm designing requires the user to perform various steps inside a "lightbox" / modal box. This is a requirement, I cannot embed the process inside the main layout. I don't want the user to lose her progress if she is clicking outside the lightbox by chance. I don't want to force the user to use the "close" button either, and even in that case I think the message will do no harm. Hence I think that a confirmation message is the best option. Read more...

Icon idea for "project" [closed]

In our application a project consists of a large group of related files and directories, including project specific settings (e.g. GUI related). Usually, a project icons looks like a folder, but we already use this for directories. Read more...

How To Customize The WordPress Admin Easily

   In this article, we take a break from some of the more advanced ways to customize WordPress, and share some super-easy customization techniques for the WordPress Admin area. If you’re just getting started with WordPress, or have been running with default functionality for a while and now want to dig in with some useful and easy ways to customize your WordPress site, a great place to start is the WordPress Admin area, or backend. Read more...

Backpack Algorithms And Public-Key Cryptography Made Easy

   E-commerce runs on secrets. Those secrets let you update your blog, shop at Amazon and share code on GitHub. Computer security is all about keeping your secrets known only to you and the people you choose to share them with. We’ve been sharing secrets for centuries, but the Internet runs on a special kind of secret sharing called public-key cryptography. Most secret messages depend on a shared secret—a key or password that everyone agrees on ahead of time. Read more...

Can I put the same share buttons on the top and bottom of a post?

I was wondering if there are problems with putting share buttons at the top and the bottom of the post. Reason is that some people share on the top, and others at the bottom. Read more...

Silverlight + Expression Blend = Good UX? [closed]

I am trying to learn more and more about, what I call the 'Science of UX' because I feel it has great value and is becoming an art. Read more...

How would you solve the accidentally-launching problem of the Mac OS dock?

Every so often I accidentally click on an icon in my dock, when I meant to click on the icon next to it. The application chugs into action, slowing down my computer a bit, and I have to wait until it's launched until I cancel it. It's all mildly irritating. I'm sure I can't be the only one to experience this, but Apple don't seem to want to do anything about it. Read more...

Software screenshots on landing page

I have a landing page for a webapp. I heard that showing screenshots of the software might hurt conversions. Read more...

Bringing computer icons into the future: Is it too disruptive to UX? [closed]

Possible Duplicate: Save icon, is the floppy disk icon dead? I just read a humorous post on Gizmodo.com: Computer Icons That Don't Make Sense Anymore. The idea is a lot of icons we use for computer graphics don't apply to modern technology. For examples they use: diskette/floppy as the save button reels/tape as voicemail icon tv icons with bunny ears (antennae) and legs manilla folders for downloads For my question, I'll just focus on the diskette/floppy as the save button. Read more...

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