Dear @microsoft#MSExcel developers: has none of you printed a spreadsheet with #MSWindows set to its built-in #accessibility visual theme, high-contrast black? Because the latest version of #Microsoft365 apps for enterprise prints out black pages with light text. And when I switch the visual theme to the built-in high-contrast white, it prints white pages with black text. Same spreadsheet. That shouldn't happen. #usability
“Sorry, I couldn’t do the reviews nor submit that abstract. We had to hack a replacement for shitty #Sonos app for there’s no way we can do any scholarly work without appropriate music and nap timers”
Understanding What #Drupal Editors and Authors Need
By Megh Plunkett and @ckrina
To validate changes to Drupal’s administration menus and user interface, we employed various types of #usability testing, we ran card sorting exercises, a survey, and several rounds of user testing. #UX
Do you want to learn about accessibility? Well, yes, you should!
Ta11y is a collection of articles on different topics to help you get started, from page structure to colors, font choice keyboard navigation, focus, images, forms, data viz and more.
Free resource: https://www.ta11y.org/learning
The crafting guide in #Repixture has become quite unwieldy because it's a long list of text. So today I've been experimenting with replacing it with a scrollable list of buttons. #usability#GameDev#Minetest
Bloody hell: don’t disable the copy and paste functionality in electronic input forms, dear software developers and managers! Doing so only makes it more difficult for people to enter their information. Do you want to frustrate people to the point of giving up? Scare them away? No? Then allow copy and paste. #usability#accessibility#ux
#usability: The error messages your tools present to a user, must be so helpful and clear, that a user immediately understands what to do to fix it. This is true for hardware (ERR_01 flashing on a LED), and software (“updates failed with error -214747939293641579495”), but also for programming language interpreters (“null is not an object”), build tools (“cannot resolve dependencies because this one dependency couldn’t be resolved”), and compilers (“reference not set to an object”). Do better.
Listen, I love #fedora. Bar none it's one of the best distros out there, but more than that it's been the stomping grounds for #linux#desktop innovation. Don't believe me? You've got #Wayland, #PipeWire, contributions to #xdg, to the Linux kernel proper, etc. Fedora is more than a distro, it's a #comunity of people who wish to push the envelope.
That's why I am for #plasma becoming the new workstation standard, because of the good it did #GNOME. Let me explain...
For me, I'm holding out hope for #plasma 6.2 or something, to come barreling in the door, saying "here am I, freshly dressed and ready to mingle."
I hope that the #usability issues would be solved, like the whole desktop costumizer needs modernising, the various widgets and even theming needs to be finely polished.
Once more, let me step down from my high horse by stating THAT'S A LOT OF WORK. Let's not pretend otherwise. It's easier to review than actually do.
I mean there are many basic iCal implementations and more project management tools that I can count.
But an app, where I can do stuff like ... remind me to take my meds 1h after my alarm goes off ... I want to meet with these 4 friends, can you find a date for us?
Agile was intended to address the problem of waterfall software development: delivering the wrong thing too late.
When "Agile" teams only want to code something once – no acceptance that usability testing might reveal a failing that necessitates another iteration – it's just more waterfall development with Agile-flavoured rituals and ceremonies.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, most of y’all don’t know what it’s like to be a fediverse developer of a popular project and have to deal with all the negative feedback and personal attacks
Let’s be nicer to the devs of the fediverse who have been doing this mostly unpaid for the greater good, all I ask is for basic respect!
Anfora, Prismo, Firefish and dozens of other projects have been abandoned by their devs, and I’d bet the fediverse mentality towards devs is part of the reason
One good way to support the Fediverse's volunteer devs: ask them to work with volunteer design and user-research practitioners who help them to develop and test usable designs – before any substantial code is written.
Testing mockups and prototypes with the community would reduce unhappiness all around.
@bastianallgeier The #usability#UX people recommended that? "Twist and open instead of reaching out for a scissor" OR "You're picnicking and you forgot your knife or scissor".
It is sad to see Jakob Nielsen going from an advocate for accessibility (treat your disabled users as people) to a pessismist (nothing has changed, only AI can help make things better for users with a disability).
Man, do I disagree.
But I alm also worried. His stance really shifted 180 degrees. His latest articles don't sound like him. Either he is being impersonated or these are true signs of dementia.
It’s been way too long (almost 2 years!), but I finally got around to finishing that draft in my drafts folder for the second article in my “screen readers and drag and drop” series: https://www.darins.page/articles/screen-readers-drag-drop-2
This one deals with picking up and putting down draggable items. It’s very long, so skip to the conclusion if you just want the summary.
Qwerty keyboards are laid out to keep the arms of a mechanical typewriter from hitting each other as you type, because letters that are more commonly used side by side are farther apart on the "keyboard".
Thumb typing has different constraints. There's probably a case for a different keyboard layout, now, to reduce common typos.
Who would research new layouts and the demand? One of the O/S publishers?