usability - Fatal's Journal

Posts tagged with "usability"

Nice tips for web developers who care about mobile users

Thursday, 26. October 2006, 19:43:10

usability, accessibility, mobile, web ...

Roger Johansson posted nice summary about best practices for the mobile web development.

Link target ID: Clearly identify the target of each link.
Pop ups: Do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user.
Scrolling: Limit scrolling to one direction, unless secondary scrolling cannot be avoided.
Use of color: Ensure that information conveyed with color is also available without color.
No frames: Do not use frames.
Tables layout: Do not use tables for layout.
Non-text alternatives: Provide a text equivalent for every non-text element.
Objects or script: Do not rely on embedded objects or script.
Valid markup: Create documents that validate to published formal grammars.
Control labelling: Label all form controls appropriately and explicitly associate labels with form controls.

I can testify that new windows are even more annoying in a handheld browser than in a desktop browser. I use Opera in my Nokia 6680 and it does display a meny of the “windows” that have been spawned, but it’s very difficult to notice that a new window has been opened to begin with. Just don’t do it, unless you really have to.

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Now, Will Firefox Move in Right Direction?

Wednesday, 9. November 2005, 16:27:06

Opera, firefox, tabs, usability ...

Improving Tabbed Browsing article on Mozillazine blog.
My comment here is only one ~~word~~ image:

Here also some cite from response called "Usability of tabbed browsing in Firefox" on 456 Berea St:

The usability studies were done at Google, using a special build of Firefox 1.5b1 that was configured to open targeted links in new tabs instead of in new Windows.
The testing revealed some things that caused problems for many users:

Back button: When a new tab is created, it gets a blank session history, so you can’t use the back button to get back to the page that launched the tab.

Closing tabs: Many did not see the close button, and instead used the contextual menu to close tabs. Some tried closing the entire browser window instead of just the tab.

Stacking order of tabs: When closing a tab that was opened by a targeted link from another tab, the adjacent tab is made active instead of the tab containing the opening link.

The team experimented with some adjustments to the tabbed browsing in Firefox to find out if they would improve usability:

Put close buttons on the tabs

Change the closing order of tabs

Implement an “Open links that would open new windows in tabs” preference