Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with ui

Online banking screenshots

simplesharps — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:26:32 -0800

What is a good domain name for a site showcasing online banking screenshots? While searching for a new bank I couldn't find one single repository of online banking screenshots, so I'm making one.

I need a great domain name - help me decide! If I can get the .com and .com.au equivalents that'd be great. Site will focus on each banks online banking features and user interface. You'll be able to rate each one, leave comments and upload your own screenshots [personal info removed of course]. That's it.

Thanks!

Looking for a particular admin UI example

micawber — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:24:55 -0800

Looking for good examples of website/cms administration UI. I know what I want, but I can't find it again. I have seen this somewhere but I don't know where - when you are logged into the site, there is a colored bar across the top of the site (which doesn't interfere with navigation) and that gives you access to the administrative functions of the site - however, you still browse the site as a regular user.

Anyone have any ideas of where I could have seen this? It's driving me batty, and I need it for a proof of concept.

But I don't have a sideways scroll button!

saturnine — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:35:02 -0800

Is there a Greasemonkey script to turn side scrolling websites into up-down scrolling websites? I view a lot of photographer's websites. Or, I would, if it weren't for the current fad for putting all the images on one line and making me scroll sideways. [random example]

I don't have a scroll button that goes sideways! I do however, have Firefox with Greasemonkey installed. I've tried to google to find a solution myself, but I'm a relative newbie to using this extension and I don't know where to start. Does anything exist that could help me view these websites and not kill my wrists/eyes in the process? Is it logistically too difficult because of the variations in HTML/CSS etc? Please hope me!

Non-English UI conventions

No-sword — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 05:04:44 -0800

Tell me about UI conventions in a language you speak (and read) fluently that isn't English. I'm looking for native-speaker, or at least highly-fluent-speaker, opinion on UI conventions in languages other than English.

For example, take the UI command "Open". To me it feels like a command to the computer: "Open (a file) (for me)!" And in some languages it seems to be translated that way too, e.g. in Italian OS X at least it seems to be "Apri", which is, I believe, intended as the imperative form of "aprire" (to open).

But in French it is "Ouvrir", which is the infinitive and not an imperative, and Japanese it is 開く ("Hiraku"), which is not imperative. The Japanese seems to be oriented like an action from the user's point of view: "(I shall) open (a file)". I don't know what the feeling behind the French is.

That's where you come in! I am interested in literally anything and everything you have to say on UI translations in your language. What's common? What's awkward? Why does UI take the form it does in your language -- what is the implication of the forms used? Are there differences between Windows and OS X?

Note that I'm not just talking about single-verb UI. For example, still on the "Open" example, you can imagine various kinds of explanatory text: "Open a file", or maybe "Opens a file", depending on what style guide the original author was using. How would these be translated? And so on.

Note that while I welcome specific examples, I'm not really interested in "Here's a link to a 10-language glossary for GNU so-and-so, knock yourself out." I can access the raw information myself pretty easily. What I want is to learn more about the why. Thanks in advance!

What is a good low-noise IRC client?

scharpy — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 10:55:57 -0800

What is a good low-noise IRC client that will notify me of posts to a channel without requiring user intervention to make the notification go away? My work place currently uses mIRC to communicate. When something is posted to our channel, it is usually idle chit-chat, or something similarly negligible, but from time to time it will be some Earth-shattering catastrophe that demands immediate attention.

For that reason I have mIRC set to flash when there are updates, but I end up needing to click on (or alt-tab to) the window about 40 times a day and it's only about 1/20 of the time when I need to read what's being posted in the channel. If I don't click the window or it's location on the taskbar it will continue it's seizure-inducing flashing while I try to do my work.

I'm wondering if there's a IRC client that will do something similar to Outlook 2007 when mail comes in (e.g. a pop-up in the lower right that fades away gently) giving me time to read the message but not requiring user intervention to make it go away.

Why is this happening?

Anonymous — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:09:18 -0800

I got laid off about a month ago in NYC. Applied for unemployment insurance and got approved, no problems. Now I got a letter from the UI agency from my former former employer (2 employers ago) declining my claim and requesting a hearing on the basis that I voluntarily quit. This is true, and I was laid off from the place I worked at after that employer. Why is this happening? I worked for the the former former employer (Employer A) and quit about a year ago. I then started work for Employer B and got laid off a month ago. I've been collecting unemployment. Is this something I should be worried about - or just give them a call on Monday to straighten this all out and think nothing of it? Or do your former former employers really have something to do with your UI?

Gallery of Web Apps?

jacobjacobs — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:15:32 -0800

Is there a gallery like cssmania.com for web applications? Not marketing websites, web application UIs similar to this list from Jakob Nielsen? As an UI designer, I'd love to see a regularly updated blog of well designed applications.

Show me good blog designs.

pineapple — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:08:35 -0800

Form plus function, please. Recommend some blogs that you like for their successful combination of design plus usability. I have been tasked with providing a list of well-designed blogs for review, to a colleague of mine who is heavy on tech skills and light on design, and wants to take a submersion course in those who are doing it right, right now. Content comes first, so we are seeking sites that execute well at pretty-but-quietly-effective wrappers -- instead of design for the sake of showing off one's design's skills.

(I have already seen this AskMe and this one, but the former was really seeking good content, and the latter is almost three years old -- I plan to peruse it but expect that the designs that were cited for goodness in 2005 have likely changed today. I also checked previous threads with tags "blogdesign"; the responses are obsolete IMO)

Open to all suggestions, but special appreciation will be given to those where the site ticks some or all of the following boxes:

Conveys the blogger's "brand" quickly and effectively

Easy-to-read posts, where the headlines and meta-data are distinct and don't distract from the content

Clever use of categories, tags, or whatever system the author is using to demonstrate the different topics of post

Effective incorporation of graphics and photos

Has the blogger solved content-variety problems without overwhelming the reader? ie. does the site manage to present "regular" blog posts, and also longer essays, and also those micro-sidebar-one-off things?
Some element of timelessness: is the design going to age gracefully? Or is it laden with what will become the Comic-Sans and shiny rounded-corner gradient buttons of its time... immediately dating itself as having been launched in 2008?

Effective handling of advertising, if applicable

Avoids "overdesign," where every element is some custom icon, the header is five inches high and crammed full of visual stimulus, and the decorative fonts are practically unreadable. You know the type.

There is potential for sites-which-are-not-blogs to be worth mentioning here, but the most helpful answers will be ones that understand that we are looking for design that complements a very specific site purpose... which is blogging, or otherwise providing short chunks of outward-looking content on a regular basis. For example, the site designs at Overstock, Etsy and the New York Post might ring all your bells, but would be of little use here.

Your commentary is exuberantly welcomed: why you like it, what works for you about the site, what the blogger seems to have "figured out" that other people haven't. Or what you maybe have gleaned, as a regular blog consumer, about the direction that design is headed. Or blog designs that you don't like, as long as you can articulate why in a constructive way that is relevant to the bullets above (A slamfest isn't productive, and I can certainly find generically bad design myself).

Thanks, MeFites! I look forward to the collective brilliance of your thoughts.

How do I write a software spec?

thegmann — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 15:17:51 -0800

Is there a standard to preparing a software specification for an outsourced UI designer and programmer? I have an idea for a piece of web based software, SaaS style, that I could probably write on my own in PHP/MySQL. I have done some software and web design in my days for some custom projects but it is definitely not my specialty, I learned programming on my own and have never done it as my day job. I would love for my app to have an AJAX-y front end but I don't know ruby nor python or any of these other cool languages and I have no reason to learn them when I can easily outsource the project and effectively put together a team. In looking at different design houses, individuals, teams, etc. I have come to the realization that one of the most difficult things in this whole process is going to be getting my ideas across to them- and I would like to shop it around so I can get a good idea as far as price ranges. As a programmer or designer, what do you like to see from a client that immediately gives you a sense of what they are looking for? What can I write up that I can send to these places that will make them go ah-ha instead of scratching their heads? I've come across the terms RFQ and RFP but I don't know if there is some standard I should be going by?

Pushing the limits of PDFs. First, what are they?

ElfWord — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:39:19 -0800

When it comes to document interactivity, what are PDF files really capable of? Which features are best for creating dynamic displays of information? What are some of the best examples you've seen of interactive PDFs? I'm trying to get a sense of how PDFs, as one of the most standard document formats in the business world, can provide a more dynamic, interactive presentation of a document's contents, rather than just a static "start here, finish here" experience.

Some of the specific things I'd like to know are:
-Is it possible to create an area where more information can be hidden/shown at will, based on reader action? What about user input, so that instead of clicking each time I want to see more information, I check a box at the beginning of the document, or type in a number of extra info pieces I want displayed per area?

-Can the document maker create a PDF that 'calls home' to the web for the latest information? Can the document be saved with the latest info available for offline viewing later? Can this call be based on reader action, or does it have to happen automatically each time the document's opened?

-What about images? Can I let a reader click to see different images in the same space (selecting which scale to see a graph at, for example)?

And, as bolded above, I'd really love to see examples of the best uses of PDF features you know of for document interaction, or dynamic display of information.

Thanks for any insights!

Who designed cnn.com?

Woodboro — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:21:12 -0800

Which agency/individual designed cnn.com?

Ideas for a user interface design of a data mining application?

blueyellow — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 06:03:19 -0800

I'm trying to write my first eclipse RCP application. I would welcome some ideas about how to design the UI, preferably using the RCP building blocks: editors, views, preference, wizards, perspectives... The application is a data mining application for analyzing a set of transactions. Initially the user will load a file of transactions into the application. The user will then be able to view the transactions, but not modify them. Then the main part of the application is the ability to apply various types of data mining algorithms to the data. The user will be able to select which algorithm they want to use, then set the parameters for the algorithm, some of the parameters will be default, and some should be persistent (saveable). They will then run the algorithm, which may take some time and be cancelable, after which the results will be presented. The format of the presentation might span different views, some of which will be the same between different algorithms, and some might be unique. The user should then be able to rerun the same algorithm with different parameter settings and get new results, or run a new algorithm. The system should keep track of the different results though and allow the user to refer back to previous runs, and possibly save the results.

How would you design a UI for this application using eclipse RCP?

What's the name of this widget?

rodii — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:47:25 -0800

You know the little draggable overview map in Google Maps? What's that kind of UI control called? They're pretty common: the Navigation Palette in Photoshop is the first one I remember encountering. It's a small window with a thumbnail view of a larger chunk of a document (maybe the whole document), with a little rectangle representing the area displayed in the larger window. In Google Maps it's at the lower right (honest, it's there, just click on the arrow); in Photoshop it's a separate palette.

What am looking for is (a) what that kind of widget is called in general (so I can google for more info) and (b) any discussions in the UI or HCI literature with guidelines, best practices, that sort of thing. Thanks!

Change searching in windows in Firefox

Mo Nickels — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 07:25:56 -0800

How can I change the behavior of searching in windows in Firefox? The Firefox search-in-browser bar is, and has always has been, awful. [I posted this to the Firefox forums and got no response.]

I am not referring to searches done using URL shortcuts nor am I referring to searches done using search box in the upper right corner of the browser window.

The search-in-browser bar is what I am calling the bar that appears at the bottom of the browser window when you search for content inside of the page that is currently loaded by hitting ctrl-F on Windows or command-F on Mac. I use Firefox 3.0 for both platforms.

The search-in-browser bar is broken (or, if you prefer, intentionally coded in such a way that it behaves in a broken fashion) in that it:

a. Continues to appear on the screen even long after it has last been used.

b. Continues to appear on the screen when a link is clicked and a new page is loaded.

c. "Match case" seems to be arbitrarily selected in between searches.

d. Takes up an inordinate amount of screen real estate, especially in a browser window that fills the monitor. This is particularly problematic on a laptop with a small screen.

What I would like to find is a way to change this behavior. I have looked for things to change in about:config and for an appropriate extension but found no joy.

What I'd like to have happen in Firefox:

1. The search-in-browser bar should disappear in user-settable amount of time after it has last been used, either X amount of time after the last search is made or after the last time a related search key command is entered. I know that you can sometimes hit escape to get the search-in-browser bar to disappear, but that doesn't always work either--it sometimes stupidly requires that you click back into the search field and *then* hit escape--not even rehitting ctrl-F/command-F and then hitting escape works.

2. The search-in-browser bar should disappear when a link is clicked and a new page is loaded.

3. "Match case" should never be selected by default or at the start of a search; or, it should be a user preference as to whether it is a default or not.

4. Ideally, the search-in-browser bar should be able to be turned off. It should return to being a pop-up window as it was on previous versions of Firefox, or it should be a user preference as to whether it should be attached to the window or should be a free-standing pop-up window.

MY EYES MY EYES - help me avoid the WordPress interface and still post to my blog.

jessamyn — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:48:15 -0800

I don't like the WordPress 2.5 look and feel. I am not interested in switching CMSes. What are my options for basic postings to my blog with minimal interaction with the WordPress interface? The suboptimal things include having to scroll to choose categories and add tags, the "3D" look to the buttons, all the extra headings and colors, the small "publish" button and all the nagging (I know 2.5.1 is available, I'd like to dismiss that message). I'd like to not have to scroll to write and publish a short post with tags and categories. I think this must be possible.

I am fairly tech-savvy. I want to post a blog entry with maybe a category and some tags, nothing else fancy (this is for my "work" blog, not my personal blog). I can write my own HTML, don't need WYSIWIG. I'm okay using the admin interface for more complicated things or for editing. I like what WP does, just not how it looks.

I had a nice custom admin section before I upgraded; my fallback plan is just to hack away at the CSS like I did last time. I have tried a few things that have not worked so well.

- ScribeFire and Deepest Sender addons for Firefox both kick back errors that I don't quite understand. (I get through installing/configuring them and see my categories but can't post. DS returns "TypeError: node is null" SF returns "The server returned a malformed response. Please check that your blog and API URLs are correct." If this is a chmod problem, I can chmod). If I could get either of those to work my problem would be solved. I have command line access to my account and a medium level of comfort with command line Unixy stuff.
- I have installed a few plugins that claim to make WP easier on the eyes including Retro-Dashboard Admin Theme, Admin Menus, Dashboard Lite and a few more that I may have already deleted. They are fine but don't solve these specific problems.
- I do not want to install an older version of WP just to fix this.
- I have searched the WP plugins admin section and Google for something that seems to do this and tried many things and didn't find anything that looked good.

I'd be happy to hear if you've found something that works but please don't direct me to the WP site (unless there's really something you think I've missed) or to a Google search. Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!

Recommend best Java Swing reference books

mbatch — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:38:20 -0800

Recommend the best advanced-level Java Swing and AWT reference books you know of. Pretend I'm coming from this question but someone has already chosen the answer for me: build your GUI with Java Swing.

Also pretend that I've programmed heavily in Java for many years, but UI work was stuck in MFC for reasons beyond my control. What Swing I have done has led me to find that a lot of Swing is over simplified and/or convoluted to a point that everything I tend to do with Swing widgets is none-standard, causing me to pull my hair out when the Swing widgets misbehave, breaking their own API docs (often times, revealing bugs that I eventually discover are well known).

Now suggest the best books for offline reference, given that the reader is a very advanced Java programmer, in general. Thanks!

Mozilla, Inc. Department of Redundancy Department

Inspector.Gadget — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:46:18 -0800

I'm running Firefox 3 RC1 on Windows Vista. How can I use userchrome.css to hide the "list all tabs" button until Tab Mix Plus is updated? The Firefox 2 userchrome tricks documented at Lifehacker and elsewhere don't work because the element names have changed from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. The transition has been surprisingly easy for me because I've been able to tweak everything to my liking - except this. Thanks, hivemind!

Can Firefox menus use different fonts to display items in different languages?

trig — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:16:11 -0800

Can Firefox menus use different fonts to display items in different languages? I have some menu items and live bookmarks that are in different languages, some of which don't use the Latin alphabet. I know how to edit userChrome.css to set the font in general:

menu, menulist, menuitem {
font-family: [someFamily] !important;
}

but the problem is that I can't find a font where every language looks decent. Either English looks fine and the others look like crap, or some other language looks good and English and the rest look terrible.

Is there a way to specify specific fonts for specific languages?

Adobe and the inflexible acrobat

johnofjack — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:30:05 -0800

I have a few pdfs of tabular data that I would like to use in a spreadsheet and/or database. Acrobat Reader is not cooperating; it converts obvious tabs into spaces. Is there some way to get this data, properly formatted? I have 3 pdfs of 8 columns of data, roughly 100+ pages apiece. The data is clearly in a column format, but copy + paste converts the tabs into spaces, regardless of whether it comes from a browser plugin or from Acrobat Reader itself, and regardless of whichever program it goes into.

Exporting as txt also converts the tabs into spaces, in addition to getting the column order wrong on any row of text with line breaks in it. (something like "1 / 2, 2, 2 / 3" comes out as "2 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 2")

If I copy and paste, I can not do a global replace to convert spaces to tabs (and then a series of them to convert double-tabs back into single tabs) because many of the columns have spaces in the data inside.

I've looked online and found a number of shareware tools claiming to convert .pdfs to .xls, but I don't know how successful or trustworthy they are, and I'm hesitant to install anything unknown/untrusted onto workspace computers.

Tech Services here at work could not figure out how it's done.

I'm not convinced there isn't a workable solution. Do any of you have experience with this problem? Is it possible without buying new software?

What was the site that mirrored allmusic.com's content but didn't suck?

Tuwa — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 13:35:15 -0800

What was the site that mirrored allmusic.com's content but didn't suck? I've read this question and visited mp3.com; that site doesn't seem to license allmusic's content anymore and I remember a site with a different interface.

Allmusic's user interface sucks enough to be the definition of a user interface that sucks, and it also hasn't loaded for me over the last two weeks.

Was there a second site that licensed its content? What was it?

ID this UI & Video Fair Use

MaxVonCretin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:25:02 -0800

Two Totally Unrelated Questions About THIS VIDEO. Not the content of the video, but the usage. 1) What flash player/UI is that? Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I feel like I've been seeing it not just on Gawker sites, but on many others. Is that a standard player UI that is built into Flash for output to .flv files? 2) Obviously this is totally unauthorized usage. Would this be considered "fair use"? Can anyone recommend any articles on the current state of fair use and online video? Are companies like Gawker and Huffington Post (example) on firm legal ground with this kind of excerpting, which they then host in their own systems/servers, or are they just gambling that the web is so anarchic, that Mr. Big Media Company won't come a suin'?

What are the best external link icons?

yeahyeahyeahwhoo — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 08:57:00 -0800

Web Design Nerds: Is there a common name for off-site link icons? What are the best examples and uses of them? The best example I can think of is the square with an arrow next to Wikipedia's external links.

Best Ajax Vote Buttons

Dag Maggot — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 23:50:26 -0800

We are in the middle of a redesign of a community voting site - and we're lookng for examples of good voting buttons. Our site uses both up and down buttons, and there are often click mistakes, where someone upvotes instead of downvotes. I am interested in examples of novel UI or especially nicely done vote buttons.

How to learn applied .NET from top to bottom?

debacle — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 21:13:37 -0800

Looking for resources on specific programming topics, with a particular teaching methodology (basically, applied examples and real-world walkthroughs). Some of the topics are C#-specific. Some are more general, but would preferably be taught from a C# (or at least .NET) perspective. A) The resources would preferably be in book form, however I'll take anything that fits further criteria.

B) If I need to refer to several resources to learn what I want to about one topic, that is OK - as long as the resource doesn't confusingly mingle the topic material with other material.

C) *Very* important is the teaching style. I'm *not* looking for a syntax reference, or simple "Hello World" examples on how to use each of the language features, etc., that I want to learn about. For the most part, I am interested in learning how these features can be applied from the ground up to solve real-world problems; and how to identify how each feature can be helpful in solving such problems.

D) Any text will make certain assumptions about the prior knowledge and experience of its readers. Ideally, these resources would make assumptions that are as close as possible to my own knowledge and experience.
1. I have quite a lot of real-world experience with C++ (but little with multithreading, network communication, or UIs).
2. I have written some small- and medium-sized tools in C#, with and without simple GUIs.
3. I have done some (annoying) work in managed C++, bridging a C# application with unmanaged C++, both static and dynamic libraries.
4. I know some basic principles of multi-threading, but have little hands-on experience with it.
5. I have only implemented simple GUIs, and the few I have made from scratch have been C#.
6. I have not substantially utilized any of the "higher-level" features of C# in my code (attributes, delegates, etc.).
7. I have only just started working with the new features in C# 2.0. Basically, all I have used are the built-in generics classes.
8. My Managed C++ experience is in VS7, but I have recently ported some of my existing code into VS8, which exposed me to some of the new keywords and syntax rules in MC++ 2.0.
9. Most of my .NET programming experience has felt like I was writing a C++ application with C# syntax. I don't know how to properly use the extra features that C# offers, so I stuck with what I know, while enjoying the streamlined development process.

E) That being considered, here is my list of topics:
1. General best practices for C# (from the ground up).
2. Design patterns in C#.
3. The features of C# that set it apart from languages like C++. Including: attributes, delegates, events, etc.
4. The new features/syntax of C# 2.0.
5. Managed C++, with a focus on how to properly use it to bridge unmanaged C++ to C#.
6. The new features/syntax of Managed C++ 2.0.
7. General multithreading resources, from the ground up (preferably from a C# perspective).
8. Multithreading specifically in C#.
9. C# UIs, from the ground up. Ideally, would move on to available open source extension packages such as DotNetMagic.
10. How multithreading can/should be applied to UIs (preferably from a C# perspective).
11. General socket and network communication resources, from the ground up (preferably from a C# perspective).
12. Sockets and network communication specifically in C#.

F) When I say "from the ground up", I mean, from the basics and *all the way up*. Basically I want these resources to provide me with the power to work on my own to gain the experience necessary to become a "guru" in these areas. Again, if it takes several resources to provide all of this for one topic, that's not a problem.

Fixing Firefox

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 03:27:11 -0800

Making Firefox behave like a Mac application... While it's trivial to add OS X-like themes to Firefox to make it look like a Mac application, are there preference or component modifications that can make it behave like a proper Mac application?

Specifically, with respect to how mouse and keyboard input are managed, these are a couple examples of what I'm talking about:

• I double-click on a word to select it, and in all other Mac applications, dragging additional words selects those words in entirety, instead of letter by letter as in Firefox

• I use Alt and Command modifiers to move the cursor around in text input areas throughout the browser (within a page and in the widgets); in Mac applications, these modifiers work as expected, but in Firefox, they take on Firefox defaults

Thanks for any advice. I would love to move to Firefox from Safari, but its interface continually frustrates.