Welcome! Now go away!
By kmaage. Wednesday, 24. January 2007, 14:58:12
This just in, from the "God bless and keep our customers...far away from us!" department.
Yahoo has taken the "first run" concept to new heights. The first time you use the new yahoo photo, it starts as a normal webpage*, looks like a regular page, then...BAM!
The screen goes grey. Going grey is a good way to indicate that you can't interact with those elements. Except...a second ago I could!
To give you a feel for what happens, you have to understand that the page doesn't load in a greyed out state, it loads in a "looks like it is fully interactive" style, then switches to the inactive state. As if to say, "Ha ha!" (queue that kid from the Simpsons). You thought you were in control, but WE are.
It even gets worse. After one attempt to get rid of the "help," I was forced into page one of a six page tutorial. Same grey background still.
And the creme-de-la-creme, is the condescending, "We'll let you pass,"
remeniscient of Monty Python's Holy Grail. If you answer these three questions... "What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
How many times do I have to say this, people? (at Yahoo) Users hate when you put things in their way. When you force them to do things your way.
* The "start as a webpage then switch to grey" is especially visible with Opera's progressive rendering, where Opera displays content as soon as it has something, instead of waiting for the entire page to load first.
Yahoo has taken the "first run" concept to new heights. The first time you use the new yahoo photo, it starts as a normal webpage*, looks like a regular page, then...BAM!
The screen goes grey. Going grey is a good way to indicate that you can't interact with those elements. Except...a second ago I could!
To give you a feel for what happens, you have to understand that the page doesn't load in a greyed out state, it loads in a "looks like it is fully interactive" style, then switches to the inactive state. As if to say, "Ha ha!" (queue that kid from the Simpsons). You thought you were in control, but WE are.
It even gets worse. After one attempt to get rid of the "help," I was forced into page one of a six page tutorial. Same grey background still.
And the creme-de-la-creme, is the condescending, "We'll let you pass,"
remeniscient of Monty Python's Holy Grail. If you answer these three questions... "What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
How many times do I have to say this, people? (at Yahoo) Users hate when you put things in their way. When you force them to do things your way.
* The "start as a webpage then switch to grey" is especially visible with Opera's progressive rendering, where Opera displays content as soon as it has something, instead of waiting for the entire page to load first.
WIDGETIZE
Eddie_Lopez # 24. January 2007, 16:43
I think the problem with first runs is that you're forced to make a decision before you know if you'll need to.
I think a large number of people are DIYers to some extent- we should be given a little freedom to poke around and kick the tires a bit. Ideally, like Lawrence posted on OW, a helpful tutor will be right over your shoulder and point out things that are missing or that you're frustrated with... but in (software) reality that ends up being clippy
But these "first runs" always remind me of a family around celebrating x-mas. A kid opens a package and screams with delight, but then dad step in and says "now son, before you open this, let me tell you a few things about how to put it together..."
That kid just wants to get in and dig through. When he can't find Slot B to insert Tab A, *that's* when it's nice for dad to interject. Putting that fatherly guidance into a software user experience is much easier said than done though. The only example I've found that works well is the Mouse Gesture activation menu, I'm not sure yet if I like it because its simplicity or if I'd like (as someone said on OperaWatch) some more call outs to how gestures work.
kmaage # 25. January 2007, 09:41
Perhaps the best way to avoid the whole issue is to try and tap into our natural ability and desire to explore. From the moment we're born, our little baby brains are asking the question, "what can I do with this?" (the answer until about age 2 is "Oooh! I can drop it!").
Yahoo photo couldn't design their interface so the answer to that question was obvious? I can only think of a few things I would expect an online photo site to be able to do.
- Store my own photos online
- Send photos to someone
- Look at other people's photos
- ...I'm having a hard time coming up with any more
The real issue here is not the intrusiveness of the "help" it's a poor design that doesn't focus in on the important things.
vaspers88 # 30. January 2007, 14:46
Eddie_Lopez # 30. January 2007, 16:06
vaspers88 # 30. January 2007, 16:30
Eddie_Lopez # 30. January 2007, 17:05
http://www.faststone.org/FSCaptureDetail.htm
Just found this to that looks interesting:
http://blogs.geekdojo.net/brian/articles/Cropper.aspx
Anonymous # 30. January 2007, 17:50
I will check into them. Thanks.
Vaspers88 aka Vaspers the Grate, a Blogspot blog slinger.
kmaage # 31. January 2007, 14:45
Which puts the whole screen into the clipboard.
And then I just toss it into irfanview (free but horrible usability) (paste with Ctrl-V), do a quick cropping...
And then I decrease the color depth to make nice small .png file.
And then myOpera "helps" by converting my 9K png to a 24K jpg when I upload it... unless the images have smaller dimensions (width x height) than some magic threshold. Image 3 came beneath that size, which is why it is still a nice small png.
Eddie_Lopez # 31. January 2007, 14:59
Very handy.. the only think I don't like about it so far is that I can't find a way to assign it new hotkey to it when it's resident in memory (to bring it forward)... it uses F8 which I use in Opera for focusing the address bar already.
Anonymous # 21. March 2007, 23:31
:(
Anonymous # 21. March 2007, 23:32
:mad: