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    Bad usability...

    English below.
    Pozdrav Irfane!
    Rekao si da te veseli vidjeti ovaj jezik, pa evo ti jedan dvojezični post
    Ne znam koliko ti je poznat lik koji se zove Jakob Nielsen. Piše o iskoristivosti dizajna sučelja.
    Čini mi se da ga je tvoj save-as dialog prilično nadrkao da mu je posvetio cijelu kolumnu sa screenshotom. U ovih 2 godine što ga redovno čitam, ne sjećam se da je toliko posvetio jednom konkretnom slučaju.
    Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for July 23 is now online at:
    > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/dialog-box.html

    Summary:
    Interaction techniques that deviate from common GUI standards can create usability catastrophes that make applications impossible to use.
    E sad, on je to dobronamjerno napisao, (pohvalio je program,i rekao je da ga je čak platio) i nije spominjao ime programa, baš zato, da ne bi mislili kako ne valja....
    Pa ti vidi, pročitaj, odgovori mu, popravi dijalog whatever...
    Kako bilo, mislim da bi ovo trebao znati...
    Pozdrav iz Zagreba.
    -----------
    The respected usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote in his newsletter about this program and gives some free advice on how he thinks it should look and behave.
    Interaction techniques that deviate from common GUI standards can create usability catastrophes that make applications impossible to use.

    #2
    I believe Jakob Nielsen is right when he says that user interface rules should remain constant, consistent with previously released software. Many apps decide to create their own dialogs instead of using Windows defaults (damn Adobe, also Macromedia and Corel have sinned) – it's hard to work with Photoshop where substract is done with Alt instead of Ctrl, and programs where you cannot drag your mouse over a menu and activate the command where you release the mousebutton (if Windows menus allow that).

    But why does he perceive that the new window is so different from “options within the main "Save As" window”? It's pretty much the same and has less risk of breaking the Save As dialog if nonstandard font size or controls have been used. For example if I edit comdlg32 in order to increase the size of this dialog many “progressively disclosed” apps break with the controls appearing inaccessible outside the window.

    I think the color scheme Jakob was using is not optimal. It's hard to distinguish the active (focused) window from a background: You see very minimal change in contrast on the titlebar and the color of the close button, which as well might be obscured. If he would use a scheme compatible with windows standard (colored titlebar versus gray), he would have noticed that the main Save window is focused and the options box does not require attention.

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      #3
      The story of Nielsen may be important for users who expect an OK button for every action they carry out. But there are Windows applications who are selfopinionated. Good examples are the plugins from Kai Power Tools. Most important is the intuitivity of an application. Jakob Nielsen has a kind of civil servant look at applications in my opinion. So Irfan, keep selfopinionated! For that matter (not unimportantly) when I save text from the Microsoft Notepad I see the same 'Save' button as in the save dialog of IrfanView. So who cares for the rigmarole of mister Nielsen?
      Last edited by Sjef; 27.07.2007, 12:25 PM.

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        #4
        A civil servant look but also with ridiculous dramatic terms : "..catastrophic failure..", "..completely violates the design rules..".
        Maybe that's the price for a free advice.. A typical case of tunnel vision.

        Of course some kind of constinstency is nice on a machine, but I really wouldn't like all my apps to work with the same, often crappy, defaults, that the civil servants at M$ have chosen for me.
        I don't need some OK button in the save-options dialog.
        I know, that the last setting is still there, as in the ini-file, so I take a glance at this dialog, before affirming a save.
        An OK buttun in the 'save options' could make sense, if it was to save the setting in some way, so it could be recalled.

        I must say, in this light, that the tekst in the JPG dialog "Please remember" with the 'save as greyscale' checkbox is quite odd.
        Because the same warning is valid if I had chosen for 'progressive'.
        It's also a rather silly warning, because it is for people who have disabled 'Show options dialog'. So can't read it.
        0.6180339887
        Rest In Peace, Sam!

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