Hot answers tagged standards
117
If I saw that in an interface - I would assume only one item can be checked, especially before any had been selected. Only the wording of the title would indicate to me that multiple selection is possible. I think this design would lead to a greater than normal number of people choosing a single item rather than a selection of items.
I don't see the benefit ...
32
A check*box* should look like a box and not a circle. They are not check circles, after all. Subtly rounded corners, as others have mentioned, would be okay, but user interfaces have always represented a checkbox as a square and a radio button as a circle. The designers behind your examples are likely trying to be different, favoring style over function.
20
mailto: links are still the standard way to display e-mail addresses, largely because it's the only way to link to e-mail addresses. Webmail clients generally require a toolbar or plugin to become the default application handler for mailto: links, but it's still better to have the link than to not have it: for people who don't have their webmail service set ...
17
A checkbox should be square. As Cooper, Reimann, and Cronin wrote in About Face 3 (emphasis mine):
Traditionally, checkboxes are square. Users recognize visual objects
by their shape, and the square checkbox is an important standard.
There is nothing inherently good or bad about squareness; it just
happens to have been the shape originally chosen ...
17
You can just put the word recommended in brackets, and/or italicized and/or in a lighter shade to differentiate it from the main label.
But the important thing is that you communicate to the user why it's recommended. You know why, but the user will probably not, so stick a little linked why? in there too. The user is much more likely to fill in what is ...
14
HTTP error codes are primarily useful for support and debugging. In the early days of the internet, almost all users were technical, and so having them made a lot of sense.
Today, it still makes sense having them visible, but that should not be the only information that you provide. Explain it like a human for the rest of the world to understand what ...
11
This is a widely debated subject. One of the best ways I've seen this explained, is from the presentation Design for developers: making your frontends suck less by Idan Gazit.
This had the following slide:
This is 16pt text on a normal screen, and 12pt text in a book. The message is that 12pt is excellent for a book, but is also usually held much closer to ...
11
I believe this application (Skype) and many other communication type applications including instant-messengers, email clients and other VOIP apps, hi-jack the "X" button to minimize the more user-frustrating event of accidentally ending a users communication session. In many cases, users might simply want to get the application of the screen, the fastest and ...
10
"and unrelated"
EVERYTHING that goes into building a successful web site that meets the needs of the users is related.
There's a tradition, it seems, that anything seen as 'code' is immediately given to IT. That separation is rather silly and, IMHO, a remnant of antiquated waterfall development practices.
The way forward that I feel is the most agile and ...
10
You may also be able to rephrase the question and avoid the somewhat unusual "at least one is required" construction with something like this:
It is a little clunky, but it does get around the problem of presenting a user with a form type that most people haven't seen before.
10
The best way here is to remove all read-only fields from the form. You have to find some other way to show this info. But if there is no way to remove them, so make sure that they don't look like input field.
For fields with default value you just have to put some value in them; with black input font color. (grey color will confuse them, because a lot of ...
8
It's usually a bad idea because the header, footer and sidebar are ancillary to the primary content area. Why take screen real estate away from the primary function? There may be a reason, and, if so, consider it, but usually the request is arbitrary, at best. Have you asked why they desire that?
There are compromise solutions as well. Instead of a full ...
8
I'm not aware of a conventional better solution. In situations like these I try to do something like this, with visual grouping of the alternative fields and placing the asterisk next to the group title:
Sometimes it works, sometimes - not so much.
Also, it's always a good idea to use inline validation, but it's doubly helpful here.
8
Yes, it is using the right affordance (to be consistent with OSX Lion).
This is slightly confusing implementation of what I think they are trying to achieve. I agree, it does look like the slider/switch control used in iOS. Sad news is, this is what OSX Lion is going to look like. They are changing the look of these "tabbed" controls. See below:
At this ...
8
The round "boxes" implies that it's a different graphical representation of a radio button. A confusing one.
Whether or not that is the case, I do not know without reading the context. Rounded boxes is one thing, but circles are not as helpful as they could be as they use the visual language of a different widget that is close enough in functionality to ...
7
The Usability Professionals Association - http://www.upassoc.org/
Interaction Design Association: http://www.ixda.org/
Information Architecture Institute http://iainstitute.org/
You also need to check the websites with regard to your country/city - the UPA and IxDA have many local branches. Also, some other countries have local organization unrelated to ...
7
12px seems to work fine for most people. Having something at 17px makes it harder to read, and so does having it below 10px. I think 12-13px is a good guideline.
But really, you should set your text size to something like 1em. This is because some browsers will not allow users to resize text if it is set in pixels. No matter what text size you have, people ...
7
May you have a look at Jeff Wilcox' "Metro" Design Guide for Developers: http://www.jeff.wilcox.name/2011/03/metro-design-guide-v1/
This guide is not as extensive as the PDF provided bye @Jin, but focuses on some main aspects to consider, when developing WP7 Apps.
7
I agree with Phil, read only should not be fields. It is considered better practice now to say up front 'All fields are required unless stated otherwise' or similar and clearly mark optional fields. If you don't need to ask something then you really shouldn't ask it.
Once again, I refer to you exhaustive research carried out by Luke Wroblewski ...
6
@Nick Fine - did you read this page? http://www.w3.org/TR/UNDERSTANDING-WCAG20/visual-audio-contrast-contrast.html
"Text that is larger and has wider
character strokes is easier to read at
lower contrast. The contrast
requirement for larger text is
therefore lower. This allows authors
to use a wider range of color choices
for large text, ...
6
There's no such thing as an optimal font size. Looking for one means that you're forgetting something important: legibility of text is not solely a product of size.
I've built around a dozen websites as a UI designer in the past five years, and they've all had different audiences. One of the things I found was that size isn't the biggest factor. It's a ...
6
In the long term, I'd love to see a standardised way to do this (even though it may be wishful thinking).
The only way to achieve that, since trusting site owners isn't an option ;), is to have browsers implement some kind of UI that triggers when cookie storage is requested.
I imagine it'd look something like the yellow alert bars browsers like Chrome ...
6
There's not quite enough context on the dribble.com posting to be certain if this will work. In the context of an app, these rounded checkboxes might work okay. They also might work if one of them is (always) checked by default (i.e. the checkmark image will help with understanding of the function).
However, there is no doubt in my mind that round ...
6
The default behavior is to go to the previous screen no matter what it is.
If you're deep in the menu then it takes you up a level.
If you're in the top level of a menu it takes you back to the application.
If you're in the main screen of an application it takes you either to the desktop or to the app, from which you launched the current one (e.g. from ...
6
It depends on who "the user" is.
HTTP error codes are definitely cryptic and unhelpful to users using a browser. Different web servers will each have their way of displaying these pages, with varying levels of user-friendliness out of the box. In most cases web developers can override these, but many times this will only be done for the most common ...
5
Honestly I thought we were past using mailto: links for email addresses (or using email addresses for that matter). We live in the golden age of spam and it is far more plausible to have a contact page or allow people to copy and paste a contact email address as I find mailto: links intrusive and borderline anger inducing when they try and open Outlook all ...
5
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) website is already requesting permission to use cookies. They've taken the 'great big wodge of text' approach. The results are ugly (click image for big version):
It remains to be seen whether web developers will take the new laws seriously enough to vomit cookie warnings at every new visitor in this way, but ...
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