Undo UI

Nothing beats a good undo (unless it's a redo).

My boss showed me Netflix's UI for undoing the removal of a movie from the queue. When the user clicks on the X to remove the movie, the line item greys out with a message that the movie has been removed and an Undo link in the far right column. Clicking the Undo link simply restores the line item for that movie. Gone is the modal window to confirm whether this is really what you wanted to do or not.



The only other examples I've seen so far are from Remember the Milk and Google Gmail which make use of a page-level undo when you remove items from your list or inbox. Instead, Netflix's model uses it as an inline action. Both are fine implementations and I suspect it's an element we can expect to see soon on other sites.

Switching from Firefox to Chrome

On the sole basis of memory usage, I'm switching to Google Chrome--for now. I find that even with only 1 add-on, Firefox uses up about twice as much memory as IE7 and about 3 times as much as Chrome.

Don't get me wrong, I love FF but it just comes down to a matter of productivity. I'm tired of sitting at my computer waiting on processes because of FF acting like a memory hog.

Hopefully FF is able to fix this problem. :(

Mario Kart Love Song (Original)

Trying out the YouTube blog feature.

+1 for YouTube's integrated-with-3rd-party-blog feature. When I come across a cool video, I don't need to spend time copying the embed code, navigating over to my blog, creating a new post, etc. I can just blog straight from the video I'm watching.

Figuring out where to access this feature was the hard part... Sure, it makes sense now, but since I wasn't familiar with all of YouTube's social networking aspects, I was left scratching my head. So for all of you who don't know, it's located under the "Share" section on the video page. Just click on the link to your blog's title and a little blog widget opens up. DUH.

Coming full circle now, here's my recommendation to YouTube: Include copy on the Blog Setup page telling users where they can access this feature. Thanks, the invoice is in the mail!

Geeking Out

Halloween: Dressing up as (badly drawn) wireframes!


Disneyland "work" field trip

Balsamiq Mockups: Sketching Made Digital (Easy)

I came across a neat little app called Balsamiq Mockups that takes some of legwork out of creating quick ideas and sketches. Mockups offers a pre-made library of UI elements to choose from, all using a hand-drawn style intended to keep the design lo-fi. Within a matter of minutes, I was slapping together a rough representation of some faceted navigation, dragging-n-dropping containers, text, and placeholders onto the drawing board area.

My only issues are that I wish it allowed for custom drawn elements and the ability to detach the UI Library onto a second screen. But other than those, very impressed.

IE 7: Where's my refresh button?

So I successfully avoided using IE 7 since it first came out... Until recently, that is. Unfortunately, the Disney IT department doesn't support Firefox (which is jaw-dropping in it's own right) and I've been forced to use Microsoft's excuse for a browser. :( I know this is old news, but here I am discovering things for the first time.

I'm sitting here thinking about the rationale of why IE's UI designers would break apart such a successful cluster of buttons. After the Back button, I imagine Refresh must be a browser's most-clicked button; then Home, Stop, and trailing at the back of the pack would be Forward. Although I never made use of the Favorites button, I noticed it's orphaned in the bottom left corner just before the tabs.



Perhaps it was a strong desire to distinguish themselves from the rest of the browser world by creating a UI which focused less on the traditional buttons approach. Unfortunately, I think they missed the mark.

Thankfully, they kept the text menu cluster intact.

Goodbye IGN...

So it's been awhile since my last post, but things have been up in the air for me career-wise. Suffice it to say there were some organizational changes at IGN and I needed to look for a new job. I'm eager to announce that I'll be a part of the UX team at Disney Parks and Resorts. The biggest factors were the ability to surround myself with folks I could learn from and the close proximity from home. Oh, and because my daughter and niece said it'd be pretty cool. :)

Most of the folks at IGN (and Fox) were great and I hope for their continued success.