Anything & Everything...

Those of us that use the web every day, or work in the industry should try to get a refresher course in how ordinary users (i.e., the whole world) work with their computers and use their browsers when going online.

I see it daily when helping out friends and family and have always been very interested in UI design and feature development and how that relates to user producivity.

One basic usability issue, that I STILL see all the time, relates to typing in URLs. Do you know how many billion people are still typing in "www" or "com" to go to a web site? The majority.

For a real world example, read the comments at this recent NYT article about "user tips & tricks." WOW, doesn't even begin to describe it.

It gets worse. Because of the atrocious user design foisted on the world by Microsoft, IE users never could merely type "opera", then <enter> to go to Opera's web site. You always had to type "www" and "com." What a disaster.

I used to use Netscape a long time ago, up until about v4.5, I think...until I discovered Opera v5.0. We now have millions of IE, Firefox and Safari (and new Chrome) users, still typing in ".com"...since they were brought up on IE, and can't break the habit.

Here's THE easiest and fastest way to go to a web site in your browser on your computer or phone:

Type the web site domain WITHOUT the "www" or the ".com" and press <enter> and get to that web site quickly. And, by using this tip, you will save TONS of time when browsing with Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on your phone...great for getting that info you need much faster.

(OPERA SECRET HINT: If you mis-type something in the Opera address bar to go to a site...instead of backspacing, finding your mouse to click back, highlight, blah, blah, blah, just simply hit the up-arrow key, <ENTER> and use your favorite search engine in Opera, like Yahoo or Google, to correct it for you. Faster, easier. (Where do we see search engine integration in the address bar now? You're welcome, Chrome.)

(And, if you haven't tried Opera v9.6, try it for a few days. You won't go back.)