I’ve found my use case for an iPad: working without wi-fi. I’m sat on my sofa watching the superbowl and my Internet connection is down. I’m left trying to write blog posts on my iPhone, which, by the speed of my typing, is not going to be fun. At this point, I’d like an iPad. I’d like a laptop which isn’t quite a laptop, it just does what I need it to do. Thanks to lots of apps, ...]]>

I’ve found my use case for an iPad: working without wi-fi.

I’m sat on my sofa watching the superbowl and my Internet connection is down. I’m left trying to write blog posts on my iPhone, which, by the speed of my typing, is not going to be fun. At this point, I’d like an iPad. I’d like a laptop which isn’t quite a laptop, it just does what I need it to do. Thanks to lots of apps, the only thing I couldn’t do on an iPad would be code, and I’m sure that won’t be far away. All I want to do is write a blog post from the comfort of my sofa, without getting cramp in my hands or the battery running out.

The wi-fi only version is an interesting prospect, though wouldn’t solve my current internetless problem unless I could tether the iPhone to it. I wouldn’t be against the 3g version, though the data would have to be allowed to be shared with my current plan, or I simply couldn’t justify the expense.

I’d also love it if it was intelligent enough to use the home sharing feature that iTunes 9 introduced. Music over wi-fi seems like a no brainer to me.

Well, will I get one in April? Maybe. If the price isn’t as silly a conversion as Macs are, it may be worth a look. Otherwise, it looks like i’ll make do with my old laptop

I’ve never really understood the netbook craze. I can see the benefits of having a lightweight, low-power computer that performs 90% of the tasks you use a personal computer for; it just hasn’t appealed to me, or my wallet.

I can understand that it’s a very cheap way to get online (even though they are double US$ the price in the UK), but I’ve been perfectly happy with a 13″ Macbook I bought 4 years ago. I haven’t seen ...]]>

I’ve never really understood the netbook craze. I can see the benefits of having a lightweight, low-power computer that performs 90% of the tasks you use a personal computer for; it just hasn’t appealed to me, or my wallet.

I can understand that it’s a very cheap way to get online (even though they are double US$ the price in the UK), but I’ve been perfectly happy with a 13″ Macbook I bought 4 years ago. I haven’t seen a purpose to re-spend the money that I invested all those years ago on a laptop that can do half as much.

Other things worry me about netbooks though, they’re a stop-gap. Since the iPhone, the dream has been to have a fully-fledged PC available in your hand, that works quickly and has a long battery life. Netbooks bridged a gap by providing a long(er) battery life and smaller screen, but have left it to the big boys to sort out the proper way of interacting with these smaller devices. See my post on netbook touch screen usability for more on how infuriating it gets.

So, in the next two years, netbooks will die completely. They will be replaced by what these users have wanted all along: a tablet PC with a good touch screen interface. For the first year, pretenders to the throne may have to carry a small bluetooth keyboard whilst the niggles are worked out, then the revolution will come, prices will drop and all those people who shelled out their hard-earned money will happily spend again to get a tablet.

If it is not beyond my power, I’d put the whole netbook format on deathwatch. Its death will be prolonged by price, but it will soon fall. The netbook’s time will come, and we’ll be a whole lot better off with its sucessor.

Last weekend I was sat on the tube (London underground to international readers), picadilly line to be exact, heading into central London. A young man got on and sat down opposite me. He got out a little ASUS netbook, turned it on and swivelled the lid to use it as a touch screen. “Awesome”, I thought, “he’s got one of those cool touch screen netbooks running Windows 7, I’d love one of those, it’d be so convenient”.

I watched ...]]>

Last weekend I was sat on the tube (London underground to international readers), picadilly line to be exact, heading into central London. A young man got on and sat down opposite me. He got out a little ASUS netbook, turned it on and swivelled the lid to use it as a touch screen. “Awesome”, I thought, “he’s got one of those cool touch screen netbooks running Windows 7, I’d love one of those, it’d be so convenient”.

I watched the man use the laptop for  a while, tapping at the screen, using two fingers to scroll on a page and it looked ace; it looked simple. Soon, the experience turned sour.

I watched as the man pulled a stylus out from the side of the computer and starts to tap at the screen. I had thought styluses had been banned by international law since the introduction of the iPhone nearly two and a half years ago. Still, if there are some things that can’t use the OS zoom function then maybe a stylus has to be used.

I then received an even greater shock.

I watched in amazement as the man lifted up the screen to try and use the keyboard. Upside down. A control + something command that was not present in the touch screen menu.

Naturally, as a usability practitioner, I was horrified but continued to watch the bloke struggle. It took five stabs and glances back at the screen to confirm the action was successful. By this time, the man looked thoroughly frustrated with his program’s choice of shortcut. Soon after, he packed up his laptop and got off the train.

What appears to be the moral story, is that no matter how advance your OS is, the applications that you run can still scupper the experience, especially with tablets. There are two solutions to this problem:

1. The iPhone way – touch is the only interaction option. No legacy apps are allowed. It’s an OS designed for touch and for touch only.
2. The full screen keyboard way – Windows 7 may have a good touch screen keyboard, but it isn’t implemented in all apps (the iPhone way). You would need a true full-screen multi-touch keyboard, adaptable to different screen sizes, to make it function correctly.

Hopefully there’s a third way, the Apple tablet way. We’ll wait and see about that…

Did you know, HTML 5, the spec that will be completed in 2022, but with some bits available now, will have a whole new set of form elements designed to make complex forms available natively from the browser. I’ve been to a few talks where Opera’s Bruce Lawson has demoed and talked about these upcoming features that have been implemented in the Opera browser. From an accessibility standpoint it looks great; no longer will screen readers ...]]>

Did you know, HTML 5, the spec that will be completed in 2022, but with some bits available now, will have a whole new set of form elements designed to make complex forms available natively from the browser. I’ve been to a few talks where Opera’s Bruce Lawson has demoed and talked about these upcoming features that have been implemented in the Opera browser. From an accessibility standpoint it looks great; no longer will screen readers have to rely on labels to infer the type of data to be entered into forms. From a developer’s standpoint, you won’t have to code javascript date pickers any more, nor have to rely on javascript for validation.

So, all of this makes it easier to enter data on the web, a great thing. I asked the question this morning, “who enters the most data on the internet?”. The answer is spammers. It is generally thought that 90% of all e-mail sent is spam, and a quick glance at my blog’s spam counter sees 7,300 fake comments caught compared to 56 real comments.

So, why will HTML 5 forms be such a problem? Well, at the moment, spammers use automated tools to crawl the internet, looking for forms to fill in to spread their advertising links or perform XSS attacks. To bypass most validation, the crawlers look for labeled form fields to fill in. Quite simply, HTML 5 forms will make this job easier.

Instead of labelling forms with “e-mail”, there’s now a specific input type <input type=”email”> which validate an e-mail address. Common anti-spam methods of adding a second e-mail field hidden to normal users will be ignored as there is a clear (and CSS visible) e-mail address field.

Forms validation may be useful for the normal user, but it’s even more useful for the spammer. With limits of input fields now being contained in plain text in the input, it makes it trivial for bots to enter correct data.

So, what can be done about this? Well, I’m not sure. There are some anti-spam methods that will still work, for instance timing the entrance to the page and seeing how long it took to complete the form. Very short times are spam, short times are sent for moderation and normal times are approved. There’s captcha, which is inaccessible and then there’s blacklisting, which hasn’t worked for years.

If you have any theories, please share them here. If there’s a solution or something the working group can do to make spam more difficult rather than easier, it should get into the spec sooner, rather than later.

This is the first in a short series about my blog re-design. I’ll try and cover all the techniques used, including CSS3 and HTML5 usage

When considering the colour scheme for this blog, I looked at my old one quite a bit and decided that I quite liked it. Based on the resolution that blog design should be evolution rather than revolution, I set about finding a suitable palette that matches the silver, yet provides a bit more of ...]]>

This is the first in a short series about my blog re-design. I’ll try and cover all the techniques used, including CSS3 and HTML5 usage

When considering the colour scheme for this blog, I looked at my old one quite a bit and decided that I quite liked it. Based on the resolution that blog design should be evolution rather than revolution, I set about finding a suitable palette that matches the silver, yet provides a bit more of a range of colours.

My first, and only, stop was the wonderful Colour lovers, whose search engine for “electric blue” brought me the keystone to my design. Straight off the back of that I found the “BluBar” palette which gave me the matching colours to create the design.

Off to a great start, I made the whole thing using only those 5 colours and some gradients.

Still, when I came to look upon the design at the end, I was disappointed. The whole site looked very dark, and since the elecric blue was used for borders and links, there was little to catch the eye.

What I learnt, immediately, is that there needs to be another bright colour that can add intensity and be used in the opposite end of the spectrum. So, I started looking for my elusive opposite: electric orange.

There were quite a few results on colour lovers, but I eventually plumped for this one: electric orange (#ee7300) - a darker orange that brightens colours around it without being too brilliant a colour. This is almost exactly the complementary colour (apparently #ffa100 is the theoretical match) but it’s close enough. Just shows that knowledge of colour theory is essential for designers

This new colour will be making its way into my design slowly as I get chance to work on it. I’m still not pleased with the way it looks at 1024*768, there’s a few bugs too and after last week’s rant about css3 multi columns, I think I’ll drop it from the footer.

Watch this space

Of the upcoming CSS3 modules that are coming into common use: selectors, borders, text etc, the multi-column layout module interests me the most. I’ve always been a fan of newspaper style layouts and that was one of the key looks I was going for when re-designing this site. The big problem is that the module just isn’t ready yet.

The facts:

If you’re like me, with an eye on Google Reader even over the holidays, you won’t have failed to notice the upcoming Apple event at which the Apple touch-screen tablet, likely to be called iSlate or the Slate, will be announced. Such is the predictability of this event, given the number of rumours that have appeared, it is now completely without interest. Even the stock market takes more notice of Apple’s rumours, rather than their product announcements.

So, I’ve ...]]>

If you’re like me, with an eye on Google Reader even over the holidays, you won’t have failed to notice the upcoming Apple event at which the Apple touch-screen tablet, likely to be called iSlate or the Slate, will be announced. Such is the predictability of this event, given the number of rumours that have appeared, it is now completely without interest. Even the stock market takes more notice of Apple’s rumours, rather than their product announcements.

So, I’ve gazed into my crystal ball, looked at the last few years of product announcements, and have come up with the major headlines for the next two years of Apple products.

Apple product roadmap 2010-2011

The major events, spread throughout the year, all have very specific themes. January is iLife/iWork and major product announcements, March is a developers preview of new software, WWDC in June is a major product launch, September is a big iPod event and November is pre-Christmas product refresh time. For those reasons, the above list shouldn’t be too surprising to most people in the know.

I’m predicting next year will be the Slate’s year, rather than the iPhone. It’s too soon for a form factor change and it’s got all the features it could have at this time, so 2011 will be the next iPhone update. The Slate will fit into the iPhone’s product release schedule, now being Apple’s flagship product, with yearly updates for the first few years depending on its success. The Macbook Pro line will be somewhat ignored until the end of 2010 when it gains Intel quad cores like its iMac brother. At this time, I believe the first details on OS X 10.7 will come out, probably with a new UI paradigm, potentially merging with the Slate’s modified iPhone OS.

2011 will see “Westmere” Mac Pros, though it’s possible that this will be quite a quiet event, given i7 iMacs are more cost-effective than Mac Pros. An updated iPhone/Slate OS will follow in March, and a second generation Slate in June (which will be the one I’ll get). Some controversy to follow then with a new iPod on the horizon; my thinking goes that the whole product line there needs a kick to keep people buying them, and by this time, technology will be good enough for something amazing. Finally, after that will come Intel i9 iMacs, with those processors being available for Macbook Pros by the end of 2012.

Honestly, you could probably try and predict further ahead than that with some accuracy, but forecasts become quite hazy more than two years down the line. Still, if there’s any betting shops out there willing to give me good accumulator odds on this, drop me a line!

I’ve started using Google Wave recently (thanks to a colleague of mine, James McQuarrie) and up-front, I’ll say that I don’t get it. I currently don’t see the usefulness of it in my current situation (I’m working in a team that’s all in the same room). However, I got an invite to the Google Technology Users Group (#gtug) talk on Wave by the Wave developers themselves so I thought I’d go along and see what all the ...]]>

I’ve started using Google Wave recently (thanks to a colleague of mine, James McQuarrie) and up-front, I’ll say that I don’t get it. I currently don’t see the usefulness of it in my current situation (I’m working in a team that’s all in the same room). However, I got an invite to the Google Technology Users Group (#gtug) talk on Wave by the Wave developers themselves so I thought I’d go along and see what all the fuss was about.

They started with a few videos of what the whole thing is about (the pulp fiction one is my favorite) and I was starting to understand that it’s a very fancy collaboration client with lots of other features that are ’still to come’.

And that seemed to be the main theme of the talk: there’s more to come. They were talking about draft mode, extension gallery (paid-for apps too), translation, spell check, more languages, better keyboard shortcut support, mobile web versions (iPhone native app NOT in the works) and open libraries. There’s a lot there and they’ve got a lot of ideas which they “don’t have the resources to do”, and that’s an interesting point.

Yes, it’s really early in the days of Wave, a product which has been “workable” for 5 months now, but they can’t push new features in until their core changes are complete. For this reason, Google haven’t open-source’d the core functionality or built all their API hooks yet, so developers are having to hack around problems.

The Google IO video also mentioned that you’ll be able to build your own Wave servers for private use. These servers will have to contact the main Google Wave servers, and all communications between these two will be cryptographically signed, which is major news. There’s quite a large overhead of performing this and for larger organisations, they may have to shell out for dedicated hardware.

Steph and Lars (the presenters) also talked about e-mail integration. They said they had it working for quite a long time but didn’t like the way that it interfered with other waves, so they dropped it. They’re hoping that the community will build it for them.

They also mentioned that it’s very popular in the USA, Canada, UK, then France and Brazil. China is half way down the list but Korea is nowhere to be seen. For a country that has the highest Internet connectivity per capita that seems very odd.

Finally they mentioned the Client API, and the lack of one. There’s no intention of making one either as they want everyone to use the web interface.

In my opinion, there’s so much more to come and I can see some very good potential uses (apparently lawyers love it). At the moment though, it’s still very early days. There’s so many basic things they’ve still got to work out, test and tweak, and then it’ll be ready for the prime time. Still, will it beat e-mail? I’m not leaving Outlook behind just yet.

Disclaimer: I work for PA Consulting Group, but the opinions above are not those of PA and are entirely my own.

I consider myself quite a forward-looking chap. Apart from the occasional glance backwards to see IE6 still behind me and throw it some pity code every now and again, I try and use the latest technology and techniques whenever I can.

Looking forward then, to HTML 5, I’m met with a lot of optimism. These new elements, accessible web forms, canvas, SVG, are all going to save me a lot of trouble in the future and will generally make the ...]]>

I consider myself quite a forward-looking chap. Apart from the occasional glance backwards to see IE6 still behind me and throw it some pity code every now and again, I try and use the latest technology and techniques whenever I can.

Looking forward then, to HTML 5, I’m met with a lot of optimism. These new elements, accessible web forms, canvas, SVG, are all going to save me a lot of trouble in the future and will generally make the Internet experience better.

I recently had a read of the HTML 5 doctor blog and am excited to see what’s going on. However, reading the Measure up with the meter tag article, my brain did a backflip and my mouth said “Wuh?! How’d they do that?”

I’m refering to a specific part of the article where author Tom Leadbetter shows off some meter tags and the JustGiving web site saying “we could use meter here” (linked image below)

He also shows the code that goes below it, reproduced and corrected for the example here:

<dl>
<dt>Target</dt>
<dd><meter min=”245″ value=”245″ title=”pounds”>245</meter></dd>
<dt>Amount raised so far</dt>
<dd><meter min=”0″ max=”250″ value=”185″ title=”pounds”>185</meter></dd>
</dl>

What I was thinking at this point was, “how on earth is that possible using those tags? Surely that’s not posssible.” So, I set about trying to prove that it was possible…

It’s not

See my attempt to style the meter tag. (works in Opera, Firefox and Safari)

The fundamental issue is that using CSS and HTML5 alone, you do not have access to values of attributes that you can use again to set CSS properties. My main issue is that this is trivial in javascript, as demonstrated on the demo page.

There are some potential CSS modules that can help in this respect, namely CSS Variables and CSS Math. I am also oblivious to the power of canvas and SVG, so if anyone can give me an answer using those I’d be very pleased.

I like the idea of HTML 5 but actually styling these new elements is going to be a real challenge. So, community at large, how do you solve this one?

Update: I submitted this to the W3 CSS Working Group and got some very good responses. Principally, as Bruce commented, I should be using the CSS3 Values attr() element to access values of properties and do the math, then use the generated content module to put the graphic in the right place. Their main concern is that you’d have to use “s/#meter::after/#meter::after::after” as a selector, which isn’t supported by anything right now, and background clipping is a bit dodgy too.

Brad Kemper did a quick mock-up which will work on webkit nightlies. I would update my demo to show what the CSS WG guys were doing, but nothing works, it’s all theory at the moment. Lets hope for more soon.

When I created this blog, I wanted it to be about user interfaces, CSS, and maybe a bit of client script and design. That’s what I do and what I love doing, truly it’s what I got into this business to do. My last few months, however, have been spent dealing with all sorts of other technologies that exist nowhere near the front end.

The technology I’ve been using has actually been quite fun. I’ve been dealing with the

When I created this blog, I wanted it to be about user interfaces, CSS, and maybe a bit of client script and design. That’s what I do and what I love doing, truly it’s what I got into this business to do. My last few months, however, have been spent dealing with all sorts of other technologies that exist nowhere near the front end.

The technology I’ve been using has actually been quite fun. I’ve been dealing with the .NET Entity Framework, which is an auto-generating data access layer similar to LLBLGen or Hibernate for Java. It’s free, works very well and has saved me a heap of time on this project. There are quite a few problems with it though, namely handling of scalar stored procedures, mediocre data model updating and the usual Attach/Detach context problems that it shares with Hibernate. It could do with some “scaffold” functionality too, but I think that’s included in .NET MVC Framework.

I’vealso  been playing with .NET AJAX which works ok, though it’s not as lightweight as doing the posts to another page (or in another language, damned viewstate), it has built-in fallbacks for non-javascript users, which is exactly what you want to do when making a AAA accessible site! I’ve had exposure to iTextSharp, a .NET PDF assistant. I found it very easy to use and getting .NET to populate some PDF form fields was very easy. Having to use Adobe Acrobat Pro to make the PDFs was not as fun

I’ve also been playing with SQL database mail, SQL’s bcp function,  and fighting with Visual SourceSafe and IIS. Yes, I’m working for a client who likes Microsoft

In reality, I’ve been sidelined from what I like doing because I can also do the server-side gubbins. Some days I’d rather not know how to do it, but I’ve now been a programmer for nearly 6 years (!!!) and I’ve realised that I know quite a lot about the entire process of building a system architecture that works (I know the following languages, Java, C#, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, SQL, Objective-C, Haskell, Prolog, and lots of specific libraries like DirectX, OpenGL, jQuery).

My next project looks like it will be iPhone based, so whilst I need to brush up on my Cocoa, I may get back to doing what I love: creating beautiful, usable interfaces that improve the way we work with technology.

I’m looking to complete work on an article on “Designing for Touch” soon. Looking good so far…