UX Chat

Benny Skogberg

8:12 AM

Just had to get my last tag approval as in "the cloud" :-)

JonW

So no more authorising tag approvals?

Benny Skogberg

No, that's it. Soon I can do like @RogerAttrill - just edit :-)

But I myself will of course approve konturs tag suggestions

JonW

That's part of my morning ritual though. Approving Benny tag wikis! I'm going to have to start doing actual work in the morning.

Ooh, I'm feeling like JohnGB today - hit max rep cap two days on the trot!

Benny Skogberg

I read that wrong as in mourning instead of morning and it got all wrong. But reading it again made me feel better. Maybe I'll do a 500 rep bounty to make approals worthy again? :)

JonW

Still have 10 rep to go.

Benny Skogberg

8:19 AM

I know, and I have a few unasked questions to fire off later in the day :)

@BenBrocka Super tip! I'll use that one a lot!

Benny Skogberg

11:28 AM

Are there more users who can't see these images?

0

A: Would Chrome's "Recently Closed" button in the homepage benefit from having a link to access "History"

I'm taking a wild guess, since it's very hard to find out "why" on anything Google does. However, I think the choice is more useful since it supports how we use the web today. Back in the days (early 1990s) when the web was static, it was simple and easy to look at the history to find out where y...

JonW

Work fine for me

Benny Skogberg

Strange how they say they don't show...

JonW

I assume it's a firewall issue or something. Probably Imgur is blocked (I blame /gonewild for that!)

Pesikar

@BennySkogberg it looks fine from here.

Benny Skogberg

@Pesikar Thanks

/gonewild? Googling

Ooops

JonW

11:33 AM

@BennySkogberg Best not google from work! ;)

Benny Skogberg

@JonW Too late. But we have a liberal policy here :-)

Ben Brocka

How XCOM: Enemy Unknown overcame the accessibility stigma

JohnGB

@BennySkogberg that policy depending on what the wife will put up with?

JonW

@JohnGB that policy depending on what the wife ~~will put up with~~ knows about?

JohnGB

Always true

JonW

11:44 AM

That's why you enable Chrome 'Birthday Party' mode when at home.

JohnGB

What the wife doesn't know will eventually be found out and used in an argument later on to facilitate the most overall damage

There is a birthday party mode?

JonW

You know, the option you enable when you're searching for secret birthday presents and stuff that you don't want your wife to see when she checks your browser history.

At least that's what I assume that mode is for.

Benny Skogberg

@JohnGB Well - I just tell her that it was accidental and point my finger at an moderating IA in England :-)

Ben Brocka

@JonW "I swear I was just googling it because @jonW mentioned it" "Well, okay, that @JonW is a troublemaker after all"

JohnGB

Aaaah, that mode :)

Benny Skogberg

11:46 AM

There is no gonewild.stackexchange.com is there?

JohnGB

You can always suggest one on Area51

:)

Benny Skogberg

LOL

JonW

@BennySkogberg What would that be used for? - "Should I upload this photo of my wife to GW?"

Benny Skogberg

@JonW Sharing is caring - right?

Would probably not be accepted

JonW

@BennySkogberg Of course!

Some evidence of StackOverflow AB testing here:

3

Q: Stackoverflow questions not displaying in chronological order in Chromium webbrowser

When I use Chromium webbrowser to view Stackoverflow the questions in the 'interesting' section do not display in chronological order. In every other browser I tried (IE, Opera, FF, Chrome) the question will display with the latest posted questions above. In Chromium webbrowser the questions will...

Ben Brocka

11:47 AM

@JonW "What software should I use to take pictures of my dong?"

JohnGB

@BenBrocka Why do you need to take pictures of a bell?

Benny Skogberg

@JonW Nice because it can be tempered with today!

JonW

And a new question of my own:

0

Q: Can we see some of the AB testing results that StackExchange run?

Following on from this question: Stackoverflow questions not displaying in chronological order in Chromium webbrowser it would be interesting to see what some of the other AB tests that Stack Exchange have run, what they involved, what the findings were, and whether any changes to the site(s) we...

feature-request testing

2

Right, on that note it's time for a traditional Friday lunch. To the pub!

Benny Skogberg

Sorry @JohnGB I just edited a tag, without approval needed :-)

JohnGB

@BennySkogberg bastard

Now how will I get my approval count up

Congrats on getting to 20k though!

Dan Hulme

11:58 AM

May I hijack the chat for a "what do I call this thing?" question?

Benny Skogberg

@JohnGB Thanks! It was faster than I thought in the beginning of the year.

Dan Hulme

I am short of ideas.

JohnGB

Sure @DanHulme

That's sort of what this is for

That and discussing dong pics of course

Benny Skogberg

Go ahead and we'll se who is first to answer :-)

Dan Hulme

On Android I have home screen widgets. One screen of the app lists the widgets (as image thumbnails).

It's possible to end up with a widget that's configured inside my app, but not actually shown on the home screen.

At the moment, you can get into that state by restoring the app's settings from backup without restoring the launcher app, but in future, I'm going to make it possible to create a widget in that state directly, so you can add it to the home screen later; also, an option to put a widget in that state when removing it from the home screen.

How do I identify those widgets in my list?

It's a kind of "draft" state, but that's not applicable in the restored-from-backup case.

JohnGB

12:07 PM

Who not always show widgets in the main list even if they aren't active yet? Just formate them differently?

Colour, transparency, maybe a ribbon stating 'inactive' or something like that

Dan Hulme

Yes, that's my plan. The question is how to format them differently or label them to make it clear to the user.

Oh, "inactive" is good. I feel I ought to have thought of that one.

I'm worried especially about the restored-from-backup case, because that's not something the user will have done deliberately.

JohnGB

I'm not the design expert, but I would look at making them partly transparent to show that they aren't active yet

but states can easily be shown with ribbons with words. Easy to understand and implement

Ben Brocka

@JonW want

Dan Hulme

@JohnGB It's only easy to understand if you pick the right words :-)

JohnGB

That is true :)

Dan Hulme

12:11 PM

I've been using "unbound" internally, but that would be a poor choice for the GUI.

JohnGB

Yeah, hard to understand why you are into bondage with some and not into bondage with others

Maybe they are just not your type

Dan Hulme

@JohnGB it can't be that, they are all of type Widget

JohnGB

:)

Benny Skogberg

1:30 PM

I want an "Out of office auto reply feature" when I need it - not when I'm away from office, determined before it happened. I don't want to answer this e-mail now! Please Microsoft, can you?

JonW

@BennySkogberg Just manually reply to their email with "I'm currently out of the office and will reply to your email when I return on September 1st" or something.

JonW

1:48 PM

Been playing with this page just now. We like the effect of the mouseover on the panels - thisisfever.co.uk/work.php

Ben Brocka

@JonW Cute. But...they can do that but they can't hide the .php from the URL? Rewrite's not that hard...

Dan Hulme

@BenBrocka You don't even need rewrite to do that.

I like the effect but it doesn't always work

Ben Brocka

@DanHulme Yeah, you can tell it's "faked" if you move around the page a lot. But it's still neat

@DanHulme rewrite's pretty simple. I think even IIS has a way to do it

And most CMS/frameworks let you hide/hide extension by default

Dan Hulme

2:10 PM

@BenBrocka They're on Apache, where all you need to do is turn on content negotiation

JonW

2:50 PM

What's that site like Zerply that's not Zerply but is something else? (Not LinkedIn).

JohnGB

4:11 PM

How is this still an open question?

142

Q: Must-read User Interface Book?

I'm looking for a book that explains the basics of user interfaces and user experiences. I read Beautiful Visualization and Designing Interfaces from O'Reilly and I think they are very good. Can you recommend another one? Why?

resources learning

Dan Hulme

@JohnGB "1. No. 2. Because this question is not constructive."

Ben Brocka

4:47 PM

Proper signage is important

Dan Hulme

But what about visitors who don't speak English? There needs to be a standardized hazard warning logo for nesting geese.

chaiguy

How is ux.stackexchange.com/questions/37545/… not a real question? Are we saying we're not allowed to discuss whether example interfaces are good or not?

user72446

5:54 PM

they dont want you to create a discussion, but to ask in such a way, that a definite answer can be given

user72446

thats how i understand it

rk.

0

Q: What are we so uptight?

I see many questions which are downvoted and locked immediately, most of them from fairly new users. How about we give them a chance to reframe the question or remove it themselves, rather than locking it down? Considering this is UX.se I feel we should be better than that. I see a question alon...

discussion

Benny Skogberg

7:45 PM

@chaiguy Look at the first comment. It sure is UX rlated, but not a UX.SE question. It's a rant. Look at this bad UX is not a question - it's a statement. That's why I among others closed the question,

Benny Skogberg

8:23 PM

Socail Media Cheat Sheet!

rk.

Benny

Benny Skogberg

Yes?

rk.

I just found some interesting information regarding shut down in windows 8.

Windows 8 doesn’t really shut down when you click the shutdown icon (or go to Power via the Charms bar/Settings). Instead, Win8 goes into a sort of ‘deep sleep’ mode, similar to hibernate. This is one of the techniques the OS uses for fast boots. However, when booting from this ‘deep sleep’ mode, you can’t enter the BIOS via F2. You can get into the BIOS only after a ‘hard’ shutdown (for lack of a better term).

Have you tried entering BIOS on your laptop? I need to verify this personally.

Ben Brocka

Yeah, and restart will do a hard shutdown too

Benny Skogberg

I didn't know that, but I'll try and see what result I get. Nice find @rk.

Ben Brocka

8:31 PM

17

A: Does Windows 8 really shutdown?

Windows 8 is based on a hybrid startup/shutdown process. It doesn't actually turn off the same way as on the previous Windows version(s). Windows 8 shutdown "saves" running services and drivers loaded to something like a hiberfile and resumes it on the next "fast startup". This is well explained ...

looks like it goes through POST, not sure if it blocks BIOS or not, I never tried it

rk.

Yeah, I found it through windowssecrets.com/langalist-plus/… and blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/08/…

Thinking of posting a similar question in a different domain, wanted to know if it is allowed or not. ux.stackexchange.com/questions/4861/graphic-design-resources/… I won't be asking for resource suggestions, but rather polling what people use themselves.

Benny Skogberg

8:52 PM

"If you run shutdown /f /s /t 0" as in easy to use? LOL

Ben Brocka

@BennySkogberg The main thing is...why would you need to do that?

The majority of peopel won't. And when I want to hit the BIOS I almost always restart instead of off + on anyway

rk.

I prefer sudo shutdown -h now :P

Dan Hulme

9:35 PM

@rk. "polling" is generally frowned-upon in all Stack Exchange sites

rk.

@Dan would you consider the question I linked as polling?

Dan Hulme

@rk. It's borderline. I probably would, but I'm not a close-voter on ux. The top answer is a good summary answer, though.

I think the main reason to avoid a poll question is that you get 200 different answers, and they are probably equally valid. In this case, the top answer has a short list of suggestions people can agree on, so it's a lot safer.

rk.

I am looking for a field of answers rather than a single answer.

Dan Hulme

but could it be answered comprehensively in a single post?

maybe the question you want to ask is not a poll, but "where can I find a list of ... "

rk.

9:53 PM

Oh, I don't mean a literal poll. Just the sense of it will be like polling to see "what list people are using"

Dan Hulme

Perhaps this will help. A question, "What cereal do you eat?" is not constructive. Everyone has a different answer, and they're all correct. "I like Sugar Skulls, but my doctor says I need to eat more fibre and less sugar. What cereal should I try?" is probably OK, because there is a small number of correct answers, and one person could write an answer listing them all.

"Where can I find a list of breakfast cereals cross-referenced with nutritional information? I tried Google but couldn't find one" is again probably OK, because there's one answer - though this is a worse question, as it doesn't say what problem you're trying to solve.

Ben Brocka

10:22 PM

Opera confirms it will follow Google and ditch WebKit for Blink, as part of its commitment to Chromium http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/04/opera-confirms-it-will-follow-google-and-ditch-webkit-for-blink-as-part-of-its-commitment-to-chromium/

Tweeted by carlosdomingo on April 5, 2013 at 10:12 PM

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