Google Chrome is Google's new web browser, and I have been using it over the weekend. Here are some things they did not do right from a user interface design perspective, with explanations and violated UI principles. Over a couple of years  I taught desktop user interface design to companies and institutions in the greater Stockholm area. This has helped me not only to spot some of the design errors, but also explain why they are errors. I used Chrome 1.0.154.43, which I downloaded yesterday, so it is a fresh Chrome to the test.

1. Are you talking to me?

When you try to reach https://gmail.com, this is the page that you get:

Now there is something fishy with this page, well actually several things. Google should of course design their e-mail pages in such a way that their browser does not need to warn about their own service, gmail. But there is more:

First, who is talking?

The user interface on the computer is supposed to be an extension of the the user. This is why in Windows it is called "My Computer" and not "Your Computer". If it said "Your Computer", the user interface would be talking to you, and that would not work, because the computer is not a person.

On the web it can be a little more complicated, because web pages made by other people can obviously not be an extension of you all the time. However, in the above page, Google has managed to use "you" and "me" on the same page. Who is talking to who? The principle that has been violated:

On top of that, "Help me" is something you say to a person, or something of similar intelligence, not to a computer.

2. Understand the world

So what more is fishy here? Let's look at the phrase "Help me understand". It feels like the browser is talking down to the user. But let's start with the word "understand". Understand what? There is at least a noun missing. Will they explain the entire history of hacking if the user clicks there ? We just do not know what they want to help the user to "understand". It is too abstract.

3. Feelings of helplessness

Thirdly it does feel like the browser is talking down to the user. The reason for this is that the language is slightly emotional. "Help me" is a phrase used in drama. Now the user interface should not do drama. "Help me", as innocuous as it may sound, has an air of helplessness around it.

Here is a screenshot of the top result, for a google search for the words "help me":

Instead of "Help me", they could have used the phrases "Get help" or "Explain", to get away from the emotional payload.

4. Do not use gray for active elements

Grey means "not editable" or "inactive" or "not selectable".

This is the way it should be:

 This is what the url line looks like in Chrome:

A better choice here would have been to color code the different parts as you do with syntax higlighting in a code editor.

5. Give me menus!

There are no normal menus in Chrome. Menus in a menu bar at the top is important. It makes programs look alike and hence give the same look and feel to different applications on the computer. If you have used one application you'll know how to use the others. Cars work the same: Steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedal are in the same place in all cars and work in the same way. Yes Eleanor, also in French cars. Nowadays.

One of the most frequent violators to this look and feel uniformity are mp3 player applications. I just want to listen to mp3s. If I wanted to play with strange UI controls that do unforeseen things, I'd download an application especially for that purpose. Probably Myst.

Well, Google Chrome does not have menus, at least not in the usual place, in the menu bar. Menus do not only give consistency across applications, they are also quite useful. They give the action space of the application, i.e. the sum of all things you can do in the application.

There are more things to say about menus and muscle memory but I will leave it at that for now.

6. Tweaks - under the hood? More likely than you think.

Once you do find the menus (they are buttons at the upper right) you can get to the options in Chrome.

The Options dialog looks like this:

This sounds like the language of a bad mechanic. The user does not know how the things she wants to change Chrome fits in in this "Basics"-"Minor Tweaks"-"Under the Hood" categorization.  The categorization is thus meaningless to the user. Imagine the doctor using this language when you come in with an ailment. Come to think it, Dr House probably would.

Internet Movie Database used to organise its online help a bit like this, with a freshman course, up to graduation. It does not work. The user does not care what level of difficulty Google (or imdb) thinks these settings should be aggregated under. The user wants meaningful labels, and these aren't. Many programs get away with labelling one tab (or corresponding ui element) with "advanced", but they do not label the other category as "not advanced". The words are abstract and hence have no meaning.

We revisit:

And:

7. Chrome refuses to show my site

This is not a user interface problem. iI don't know what it is. Is this a pre emptive measure from Google? I cannot get Chrome to load this blog you are reading. This page you are reading loads fine though in Chrome.

Opera on Windows loads the front page fine:

IE on Windows no problem:

Konqueror on Linux no problem:

(And Konq uses more or less the same rendering engine as Chrome)

But Chrome fails:

"Unknown error". To boldly err were no one erred before?

Thanks for your attention.

Read more: Google Chrome - Download a new browser

This is what happens when an engineer needs to ..

Läs mer: YouTube - An Engineer's Dog

I alla fall en del av dem

Vienna, December 24 – The Transcarpathian Rusins (Ruthenians), who are estimated to number more than a million, are calling on Moscow to recognize the independence of Subcarpathian Rus because Kyiv has ignored their demands for autonomy within Ukraine, an appeal that could create yet another “unrecognized” republic in the former Soviet space.

Enda gången jag stött på den etniska gruppen rutenare är i Istvan Szabos fil "Överste Redl" där huvudpersonen är rutenare, men om jag minns rätt försökte dölja det.

Enligt Wikipedia är begreppet rutenare omstritt.

Läs mer: WindowonEurasia: Window on Eurasia: Another ‘Unrecognized Republic’ is Born – This Time in Ukraine

För du är väl inte oaustralisk?

This site is part of The Inspiration Room™, a global effort designed to influence, affect and involve creative communities in the development of a world standard for inspiration. Become a member of The Inspiration Room™.

Läs mer: The Inspiration Room™ | Daily

Björn von Sydow sätter fokus på att USA är uppbundet militärt nu i andra delar av världen än Europa. Då ställer ju jag mig frågan: Vad händer om europeiska länder måste lita på varandra för sitt försvar? Och det gör mig lite orolig. Som jag skrivit om tidigare så är möjligen Tyskland, Italien och Spanien inte beredda försvara Baltikum  (från FT.com).

Det kan mycket väl bli så att en del länder i Europa hellre låter Ryssland karva av lite fria stater från Europa, än att stå upp och riskera egna medborgares liv. Och då är processen igång, och vi kan hamna i en mycket farlig situation.

Indirekt kan denna frånvaro av konventionella militära styrkor från USA och Nato i Europa göra att rysk politisk och militär försvarsplanering utgår från att man har handlingsfrihet - åtminstone i form av överraskande, begränsade infall och angrepp på grannstater inom före detta Sovjetunionen

Läs mer: Dags för Sverige att rusta upp mot Ryssland

Grötzinger and his team also determined the 3-D shape of hydramacin-1, which revealed that it most closely resembled a superfamily of proteins found in scorpion venom; within this large group, they propose that hydramacin and the two leech proteins are members of a newly designated family called the macins.

Läs mer: New Family Of Antibacterial Agents Uncovered

Proud2B_American Quote 2009-01-17 03:04:16 PM

And not to cross-thread jack, but The Government of Seoul, South Korea just issued a newly updated forecast...Temperatures expected to rise dramatically from a nice 65 degrees to a toasty 12,000 degrees, with winds going from light winds to winds in excess for 500MPH....

Läs mer: FARK.com: (4150968) Hawaii shut down government on Friday because it was "windy." Totally not because it creates a five-day weekend with MLK on Monday and the Inauguration on Tuesday

Designers love freebies that make life easier and help them create higher-quality work. Free vectors are useful, free vector packs even more so. Fortunately, there are plenty of talented graphic designers who are willing to give away their work (or samples of it) to benefit the rest of us. In this post, we feature 60 of the best and most useful free vector packs.

Läs mer: The Ultimate Collection Of Free Vector Packs | Developer's Toolbox | Smashing Magazine

In this article, you’ll find 15 free tools to help you facilitate remote/web-based collaboration. Whether you need basic whiteboarding/brainstorming tools or fully-featured project management applications – you should be able to find a tool or two that’s worth checking out.

Läs mer: 15 Free Tools for Web-based Collaboration - Six Revisions

Dabbleboard is an online collaboration application that’s centered around the whiteboard. With a new type of drawing interface that's actually easy and fun to use, Dabbleboard gets out of your way and just lets you draw.

Läs mer: Dabbleboard - Online whiteboard for drawing & team collaboration

Eftersom javascript kan öppna en url, så kan ett javascript från någon sajt kolla om den kan ladda en bild från en annan sajt, t ex från en banks "säkra" webbsidor. Om javascriptet kan ladda bilden, ja då är du inloggad på den sajten. På så sätt kan koden veta att du är inloggad på en specifik bank, och kan lägga upp en loginruta, som påstår att du är utloggad och måste logga in igen.

Jag har inte provat detta hack, men det borde fungera för alla sajter som har kända url:er som är skyddade med lösenord. Så det borde fungera på alla möjliga lösenordsskyddade tjänster, speciellt de som skyddar per directory.

Vad är lösningen? Jag skulle hävda att man bör göra bankärenden i en separat webbläsare med bara ett webbläsarfönster öppet, och med tajt säkerhet inställd. Använd t ex Portable Firefox, som kan leva i ett eget  bibliotek på hårddisken.

Kanske man som webbutvecklare  måste skydda sig genom att randomisera url:er i framtiden. Hmmm, många användare kräver nästan DHTML+javascript idag, för att det ger ett mer kraftfullt användargränssnitt, så det kan nog bli svårt att bara slå av javascript eller ens delar av dess funktioner.

The malware exploits weaknesses in the browser that lets the attacker "see" the banking site URL where the victim is logged in, and then the phisher automatically generates a popup posing as that bank. If the user falls for the popup lure and enters his banking credentials, the phisher then gets those credentials

Läs mer: New Phishing Attack Targets Online Banking Sessions With Phony Popups - DarkReading

It's explained in a few comments above. You just reference a resource (usually an image) that requires you to be logged in at the target site in order to access. If your attempt fails, the user isn't logged in at that site. If it succeeds, you know the user is currently logged in.

Läs mer: Slashdot | Phishing For Bank Info Without Any Pesky Malware

Som jag skrivit om tidigare, så verkar det vara en god idé att ha en checklista vid akutvård och operationer, och att en person har hand om denna checklista. Man har nu gjort en storskalig studie på flera kontinenter, och det verkar stämma. Dödstalen halverades i snitt.

Låter som något som borde införas i svensk sjukvård.

In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reported on how well the checklist worked on more than 7,500 surgical patients in eight hospitals, in Toronto, Seattle, London, New Delhi, Auckland, Manila, Amman in Jordan, and Ifakara in Tanzania. The rate of death was 1.5 per cent before the checklist was introduced, and dropped to 0.8 per cent afterward, Dr. Atul Gawande of Harvard Medical School in Boston and his co-authors reported. In-patient complications also dropped from 11 per cent to seven per cent.

Ett riskkapitalbackat företag i Kalifornien (såklart) har utvecklat en javabaserad plattform för att handla med värdepapper. Det här kan bli roligt. Plattformen kan använda Ruby som scriptspråk.

Det här kan leda till en explosion av lösningar och idéer tor jag. Jag gick till deras sajt, men jag kunde inte ladda ner något.

Linux and open source software are a key component in the underlying infrastructure of the finance industry, but the higher layers of the stack are still dominated by a multitude of proprietary, in-house solutions. A software startup called Marketcetera aims to change that with a new, open source platform for building automated trading systems.

Läs mer: Open source trading platform could be a win for Wall Street

Here are some notes on my experiments with screen casts. I have just started experimenting with it so these notes are here mostly for my own use. All software I use is free. There are probably better ways to some of these things, please inform me if you know. I will cover:

• How to set up your browser for a screen cast
• What software to use in Windows to make a complete screen cast in flash format
• How to edit out portions of that screen cast on Windows

• How to convert the screen casts to a Flash swf file, ready for inclusion in a web page

• How to use mencoder to convert to flv in those cases it is too long/awkward for CamStudio swf producer
• How to convert the video from CamStudio's avi so that it can be edited with Cinelerrra on Linux
• What Plone products can be used to display the screen casts, swf and flv formats respectively, on a web page

What is a screen cast?

The term screen cast as used in this post, is a video showing a piece of the computer screen, with a voice over.

How to set up your browser for a screen cast on Windows

Use a separate browser from the one you usually use. The idea behind this, is so that you do not get distracting text suggestions in forms, when you do your screen cast. You e.g. do not want Firefox to suggest "I think I am pregnant" right in the middle of a screen cast, just because you wrote that in a subject line in an e-mail four days ago in a form field by the same name as the form you are now demoing on screen. I use the portable Firefox. It can live in a folder without getting "installed" into windows, and so becomes a Firefox separate in its settings from your system Firefox. Disable form autocomplete and all other such things in it.

How to do a screen cast on Windows

I use Camstudio. It is free and open source.

It can:

• Capture what you are doing on screen and save it to an avi file
• It can simultaneously record your voice and save it to the same avi file

In this way you can make a screen cast in the avi file format.

How to edit out portions of the screen cast on Windows

I used the free and open source program Virtualdub. Virtualdub allows you to set markers in the video and cut out the portion in between. When saving the avi file from Virtualdub, it becomes huge. I believe this is because it makes all frames into key frames, but I am not sure. Incidentally, all subsequent instructions in this post operate on an avi file that has been through Virtualdub after Camstudio. (I don't know if that matters.)

How to convert the screen cast to a Flash swf file, ready for inclusion in a web page

After you have created the avi screen cast with CamStudio, you can use the accompanying program Camstudio swf Producer to make an swf file, complete with a player and an example html page. Neat!

How to publish swf in Plone

I used ATFlashMovie 1.0.2 on a Plone 3 site, to publish the swf file. For flv format, see further down.

How to use mencoder to get the avi file from Camstudio/Virtualdub into Flash flv file

I made a long screen cast that Camstudio swf Producer wanted to break up into smaller parts. It did not succeed in this. It may be because I edited it in between with Virtualdub. I then resorted to mencoder on Linux. Mencoder is a part of MPlayer, and is also available on Windows. On this page I found an incantation that worked in getting my avi file from CamStudio/VirtualDub into a Flash flv file:

mencoder screencast.avi -lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames -of lavf
 -ovc lavc -oac pcm -lavcopts vcodec=flv:vbitrate=500:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3 -o screencast.flv

The above command gave a file containg a 10 minute screencats with PCM sound, weighing in at 114 MB.

The following command (found here):

 mencoder screencast.avi -forceidx -of lavf -oac mp3lame  -lameopts abr:br=56 -srate 22050 -ovc lavc 
-lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frame -lavcopts 
vcodec=flv:vbitrate=250:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3 -o screencast.flv

...gave a file weighing in at 16MB. The quality is noticeably worse. From what I can tell, sound has been encoded as mp3 with a low bitrate (56 Kb/s), and the bitrate of the video has been cut in half. Subjectively I find the sound to be too bad, but the video OK, but a bit on the grainy side. Future adjustment would be to get a higher (or variable) bit rate for the sound. I have not deployed this later more compressed version of the file, but I assume it works with flash.

If you want to find out what codecs mencoder supports on your system, type:

mencoder -ovc help

and

mencoder -oac help

for video and audio codecs respectively.

How to publish the flv movie in Plone

I then used the Plone product FlashVideo 0.8.2 on a Plone 3 site, to directly publish the flv file.

FlashVideo will automatically wrap the flv file in a player. But it wants you to manually specify the height and width of the video in pixels. FlashVideo will automatically extract information on the height and width of the video (I failed to note this capability first, verified 2010-01-04). You also need to make an image the size of the movie. I used Gimp and took a screenshot and resized it to the desired dimensions.

How to convert the video from CamStudio's avi so that it can be edited with Cinelerrra on Linux, using ffmpeg

Cinelerra is what seems to be a capable video editor for Linux systems (actually all X systems according to their pages). Cinelerra likes to work on Quicktime movies. The avi file can be converted to Quicktime movie that Cinelerra can read with the following incantation:

ffmpeg -i screencast.avi -acodec mpeg4aac screencast.mov

 
ffmpeg is a converter that is meant to be easy to use. If you want to find out what codecs ffpmeg supports on your system, type:

ffmpeg -formats

Finally

I am looking into how to crop movies after they have been made. With crop, I mean removing a region of the video, throughout the movie. It seems both cinelerra and ffmpeg can do this.

ffmpeg has commands like cropbottom, cropleft etcetera.

Then came the revelation: Instead of haphazardly moving from one connective channel to the next, as might be seen in classical physics, energy traveled in several directions at the same time. The researchers theorized that only when the energy had reached the end of the series of connections could an efficient pathway retroactively be found. At that point, the quantum process collapsed, and the electrons’ energy followed that single, most effective path. Electrons moving through a leaf or a green sulfur bacterial bloom are effectively performing a quantum “random walk”—a sort of primitive quantum computation—to seek out the optimum transmission route for the solar energy they carry. “We have shown that this quantum random-walk stuff really exists,” Fleming says. “Have we absolutely demonstrated that it improves the efficiency? Not yet. But that’s our conjecture. And a lot of people agree with it.”

Läs mer: Is Quantum Mechanics Controlling Your Thoughts? | Subatomic Particles | DISCOVER Magazine

Med det masskommunikationssamhälle vi haft, där få kommunicerqar till många, är det lätt att komma undan med psykologisk sanning. Men med Internet vrids hela kommunikationen i samhället mot fakta, och det är det som nu biter Liza Marklund i svansen.

I Expressen kan man se olika författare uttala sig om Liza Marklunds fadäs, att ge ut en bok på vilken det står "En sann historia", men som nu inte tycks vara det. Jan Guillou säger t ex:

Nej, hennes böcker har presenterats som romaner. De har sålts som romaner. Vad författaren då avser är inte en journalistisk sanning och så har det varit i decennier. Men den kunskap som finns i förlagsvärlden är tydligen inte självklar för allmänheten.

Notera citatet "Men den kunskap som finns i förlagsvärlden är tydligen inte självklar för allmänheten."

En författare som kan hitta på historier är ju produktivare än en som inte gör det, och det är förmodligen lättare att hanka sig fram som sådan om man låter fantasin flöda fritt. Men nu kan allt faktakollas, och miljoner människor, som inte hade en röst förut, har nu det.

De flesta "vanliga människor" har en uppfattning om vad det ska innebära när någon påstår att det som skrivs är sant. Och det är att det är faktamässigt sant, inte att det är psykologiskt sant. Guillou kanske tror att det mer relativa sättet att se på sanning inte nått ut till menigheten från förlagsvärlden, men det blir nog alldeles tvärtom.

Fast man ska inte bunta ihop alla författare i heller så klart. men det är ändå så att ju bättre fantasi desto lättare är det at vara en (framgångsrik) sådan.

Läs mer: Kollegornas dom | Nyheter | Aftonbladet

I Latinamerika utrotades mässling 2002, tack vare massiv vaccinering. De fall som dyker upp nu är importerade från Europa. I en del länder i Europa så är det så många föräldrar som inte vill ha sina barn vaccinerade, att sjukdomen sprids.

In contrast, Latin America eliminated measles in 2002, but has since suffered outbreaks "imported" from Europe. While measles rarely kills in Europe, in poorer countries malnutrition and limited healthcare make the virus far more lethal

Läs mer: Europe 'exporting' measles to poor countries - health - 10 January 2009 - New Scientist

The first people to point out that humans were short of genetic variation were John Maynard Smith and John Haigh, in 1974. They looked at the allelic variation of the beta globin gene and determined that it was consistent with a population of only 10,000 individuals. Since there are more than 10,000 people now, they needed some other explanation.

Läs mer: Cultural impedance, demographic growth, effective population size | john hawks weblog

En stor undersökning i Kalifornien i USA visar att ökningen av konstaterade fall av autism, inte enbart kan förklaras med att man blivit duktigare och känsligare vad gäller att upptäcka autism. Eftersom gener inte ändrar sig så fort, återstår bara ändringar i miljö, vilket kan delas upp i två faktorer:

• Kemiska ämnen
• Nya infektioner

Dessa påverkar moderlivet och också det växande barnet så klart.

Jag funderar:

Det finns många kemiska ämnen som vi använder som ger neurologiska och immunologiska effekter. Det vore därför intressant att göra en kvantitativ studie för att se om användning av vissa kemiska ämnen har ökat samtidigt eller med viss förskjutning, jämfört med autism

Eftersom vi använder mycket substanser med antibiotika i kan det också vara så att vissa typer av infektioner tagit överhanden och ger skador. Man vet sedan gammalt att ökat antal infektioner i Röda Hund ger mer autism.

The California researchers concluded that doctors are diagnosing autism at a younger age because of increased awareness. But that change is responsible for only about a 24 percent increase in children reported to be autistic by the age "A shift toward younger age at diagnosis was clear but not huge," the report says. Also, a shift in doctors diagnosing milder cases explains another 56 percent increase. And changes in state reporting of the disorder could account for around a 120 percent increase. Combined, Hertz-Picciotto said those factors "don't get us close" to the 600 to 700 percent increase in diagnosed cases.

Läs mer: New Study: Autism Linked to Environment: Scientific American