182
There is not really a "UX" reason for this—or if there is, it is a very limited one. The actual reason why dialog backgrounds are (by default) some shade of grey is because some designers thought that looked better.
In many early operating systems, dialog and window backgrounds were stark white. Obviously they were white on the original Mac OS, since it had ...
127
If the output is binary (success/fail, OK/NOK, whatever), why not only show a status on the failure state?
timestamp | action name | description
timestamp | action name | description
timestamp | action name (FAILED) | description
timestamp | action name | description
Edit:
Some comments to the original question have ...
107
Libraries exist to do this. For spacing, I feel very strongly that the spacing expected by the user is the spacing you should use.
Most people remember phone numbers (especially their own) with a kind of rhythm based on (usually) the official spacing used in their region. When they see their number in a spacing other than that which they expect, they might ...
50
Yes. The Oxford Comma increases readability.
When items are logically separate, putting a delimiter between them makes their separation visually obvious. Without the delimiter, the separation can still be determined, but it is not obvious.
The Oxford comma removes the requirement that the reader figure out whether item n and item n-1 are logically separate....
50
There is a better solution, at least in terms of legibility, perhaps not so much aesthetically. And I'm 99% sure you've already seen it.
Black border, white letters.
White letters are almost always brighter than the background, and the black outlines act as a sort of shadow, separating the text from the background.
Of course, the best legibility is still ...
49
You read as you approach.
Theoretically. In reality, levels of visual acuity mean that some people (like you and I) can read the whole block at once. Another reason that painting information on the pavement isn't always ideal.
Here's a good visual for how this is designed to function in practice:
The trick is (as the image above shows) the spacing of the ...
40
I'd say the best two options are:
1) Display terms and conditions as long plain legalese text as usual, in a left hand column, but then summarise it in much shorter, friendlier, simpler text on the right. 500px.com does this really well:
2) Format the text in a legible manner. Separate it into linked sections with proper headings, good typography and ...
37
The book On Writing Well (a great book,) suggests making things like these plural. In the book, he talks about how to avoid the gender problem when talking about men/women. (By calling them people.) For example, when talking about a specific user, instead of saying "when he clicks on the button..." you'd say "when they click on the button...", or the passive ...
36
What you need to examine is the use-case for these terms within the context of the project logbook. I have to guess here but I'd say the logbook is a project management tool - an aid to charting progress or discovering problems/blockers
'NOK' is not a commonly understood term. This means that anyone joining your team for reasons of scale, sickness cover, ...
35
Too much white can cause eye strain, so tints of grey reduce this.
There is another ux.se topic which discusses white vs grey backgrounds:
Grey versus white background for ease of use and readability/legibility
30
Use non-breaking spaces
Other answers have talked about the pros and cons of spacing and where to place the spacing. I would like to mention one more issue. If your interface is ever going to be translated to a language like Arabic or Hebrew with a right-to-left writing system, there is an issue with spaces that you need to be aware of. Take the phone ...
27
For what it's worth - I tried a variety of timings myself and ended up at 3200ms for a two line message of up to about 20 words. But I also place a small dot (10px diameter) to the left, which is coloured according to message type (eg red/error, blue/info, orange/warning) and which fades out over the 3200ms. When the fade gets to 100%, the message itself ...
27
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
In Albania, Belgium, Bosnia, Estonia, France, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and much of Latin Europe as well as
French Canada: 1 234 567,89 (In Spain, in handwriting it is also
common to use an upper comma: 1.234.567'89)
In Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, ...
27
I think the top-voted answer is only partially correct... The Oxford comma can resolve ambiguity OR create ambiguity, depending on context. This is the reason that grammar experts and style guides disagree on the use of the Oxford comma - sometimes the Oxford comma helps, sometimes it actually hurts readability. Consider the following examples...
"I gave ...
25
You could consider changing the wording of the values:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
24
Readability is hard to get right
Great question. It's always good to question the point at which style destroys function.
Example scrim formats
I've done quite a lot of user testing on scrim-based image captions (where there is a partial or complete semi-transparent overlay on the image and contrasting text).
Here's what I've found, in no particular ...
24
It appears that the biggest problem is being able to find the status indicators within a large group of text.
Barring some significant technical limitation, I would say your solution should be to display the status of each action in its own column.
This makes your question of exact terminology much less important by
Reducing the importance of terminology ...
23
Based on UX.Movement: Why Text in All Caps is Hard for Users to Read
The reason of the worse readability of uppercase vs lowercase is the lower contrast of shape.
Small caps still has worse contrast of shape than lower case, so it'll still be less readable.
There is also some relationship with familiarity, taking into account that for sure more of the 90%...
23
In complete agreement with the other answers, but to provide an alternate viewpoint: If you were driving at night, your headlights will reveal the beginning of the sentence before the end.
21
I would say it has to do with the following reasons :
Contrast : Studies have shown that black or dark backgrounds provide the easiest contrast and can allow users to read discrete information quickly without having to make an effort to discern details when in a dark environment (which is often the environment in cars)
Darkness adaptive : Another reason is ...
21
I feel like you have very different questions here.
To answer your first question:
is some research in regards to how font-weight affects readability?
Yes, there is. First you have to understand that type/fonts are judged by their "readability" (how easily can words, sentences, and paragraphs be read by an average reader) and their "legibility" (how ...
21
Timestamps aren't meant for most users
Showing friendly names such as 2 hours ago or yesterday can quickly provide context to the user as opposed to showing them 2015-01-27 18:54:03.259 Mixing both formats together will always cause friction (anything that forces a user to ask a question in their mind adds to cognitive friction). In almost all cases ...
21
According to studies, the line length should not exceed 70 characters. So keep your paragraph width between 50 and 70 characters.
So actually you should not care about the width in pixels, but rather the width in ems (The width relative to the font-size). So go for 30-50em.
Also wikipedia says:
Some studies have shown that 100 cpl can be read faster ...
20
There is no reason to force a user to read the terms and conditions first. It is not a legal requirement and it doesn't improve the UX.
Don't do it.
Legally they simply have to agree to the terms and conditions, and if they choose not to read them, then that is their problem.
UX wise, what part of the experience are you trying to improve by doing this? ...
19
It varies, but for English language...
Generally the time taken to read a flash notice will vary according to the complexity of the information, length of notice, and focus/distraction level of the user.
That said, I tend to use the following informed approach:
1. Flash notices should be short
If a notice is longer than about 1.5 lines, it likely too ...
18
If you look at most languages they are from left to right and the basic concept of a chat is about mutual interaction based upon the person's previous response. Hence, your responses will be driven by the response of your chat partner and hence his response is placed on the left and your response on the right since your response is driven by what he has said....
18
Apart from the answer given, I would like to mention one very important Use Case where the solution is nothing BUT shadows.
Text on an image
When you don't have control over the image on top of which you are writing text, you have to ensure proper contrast for best readability. A Big hero Image seems to be rage these days. A dark shadow is added behind ...
18
Two things to think about:
In computing, it's common to use failure instead of just fail, because it happens to be the same number of characters as 'success', so in mono-spaced fonts they end up being the same width. (Side note: "warning" is also the same number of characters) In addition to this, some systems (like Linux/Unix) color the words - failure is ...
17
This is an interesting approach to this issue:
“Terms of Service; Didn't Read” - https://tosdr.org
e.g. Facebook ToS:
17
You have a few options in terms of referencing pages...
QR Codes
URL Shortener
Using full URL
Search
No matter which method you choose to use, you have your pros and cons depending on your site's demographic.
QR Codes
Using a QR code is great for the younger, more tech-savvy, users.
They usually carry smartphones with them and can easily scan your QR
...
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