A repository of my thoughts, a blog, a source to get insight, know-hows, my views on Software Development and everything else in between......
Showing posts with label Usability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Usability. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
why they can't understand?
I don't understand the obsession with people wanting web pages to do everything all in the one go. It's like we're removing the need for hyperlinks and navigation. People are perfectly happy to edit the information in a new window, make their change, click the save button (which can close the opened window or takes them back to the originating page) and see their changes. The user knows what's going on as it's an obvious transition between Edit and View modes of the website. This is still a viable solution to a development problem and continues to be used today in mainstream applications like Yahoo!
Best Practices-- Date Control
While designing web pages you come across Date filed (Ex. releasing dates, stocking dates, order dates, shipping dates,birth dates,wedding dates, you name it.) many times.
I realised that there was no real consistancy with dates, in all there is about 4 different ways that a user can enter in a date. That made me think, why isn't there a standard. Surely there has to be a best practice in relation to accepting user dates.
Dates are of Two types :
1. Known Date :A known date is where the user is fully aware of the exact date, like a birth date, a start date, an expiry date. Known Dates are usually entered by the user using the a form element like a drop down box or even entering the text into a textbox.

2. Fuzzy Date :A Fuzzy Date is where the user isn't excatly sure of the date they have in mind and need prompting from the graphical interface. The date could be the first weekend in August or the Monday before the 26th of December. To properly assist the user with this type of date, Calendar functions are used and the user select the day they would like.
I realised that there was no real consistancy with dates, in all there is about 4 different ways that a user can enter in a date. That made me think, why isn't there a standard. Surely there has to be a best practice in relation to accepting user dates.
Dates are of Two types :
1. Known Date :A known date is where the user is fully aware of the exact date, like a birth date, a start date, an expiry date. Known Dates are usually entered by the user using the a form element like a drop down box or even entering the text into a textbox.

2. Fuzzy Date :A Fuzzy Date is where the user isn't excatly sure of the date they have in mind and need prompting from the graphical interface. The date could be the first weekend in August or the Monday before the 26th of December. To properly assist the user with this type of date, Calendar functions are used and the user select the day they would like.
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