Month: June 2002

I have been reading the newgroup thread about window and dialog resizability. I’m particularly impressed that the preferences dialog will not be resizable anytime soon and I am somewhat amused by all those that want it to be.

I just wish that Mozilla would actually show the resizer in the status bar. For whatever reason, it really bothers me that it’s not there. Maybe I miss it because it provides a larger click target than trying to resize from the teeny window edges. Maybe it is because I usually resize the window from the corner. Or just maybe it is because I keep clicking the lock icon when I really want the scroll arrow. Without the resizer, Mozilla feels incomplete. Now I know that it exists on Windows XP and only XP. Like many things in Mozilla (did someone say download manager?) it appears nobody tested the feature: maximized windows should not be resizable. Last I saw, Windows 98 still had more than half of the Windows marketshare, but no resizer there. I use Windows 2000 and miss it there, too. Inexplicably, no one seems to be working on the problem. I would have thought it should be catfood and mozilla1.0.

Cool. Looking for a logo? Logotype’s database of 50,000 logos from all over the world may help you find it.

IBM’s internet guru has recently started a blog and has various other websites. He also wrote the book Net Attitude. Dave Winer says he reads John’s blog everytime it is updated.

I’ve managed a few googlewhacks and had some fun collaborating with Basil to come up with a few more. My favorite so far is missiological prawns.

After reading my earlier Jon Udell and Alan Cooper blog entry, Basil dug up an interesting debate between Alan Cooper and Kent Beck. They are discussing the differences in process between extreme programming techniques and interaction design. At times I feel they’re speaking different languages, but I feel like Cooper generally has a better understanding of the software development process than Beck does of interation design. I believe Cooper won the debate, but then I believe in interaction design as a way to improve the quality and usability of software.

Google searches itself to get new ideas. The story hints at the power of intranets to help a company communicate and the importance of research and development. I hope Google just keeps getting better and better.

The patriarch of Antioch has granted autonomy to the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (AOA). The news story notes that this comes on the eve of the key national congresses of both the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). There are many signs that the AOA and GOA are interested in working together with the OCA as an autocephalous church. (The OCA has been autocephalous for more than 30 years.) In a June 2001 interview, Metropolitan Philip of the AOA makes it clear that he has been thinking about autocephaly for a while. An autonomous AOA seems to be a step in the right direction.

Jon Udell talking about his question to Alan Cooper: “Is there no hope that interaction design can itself be made interactive, with the assistance of software? He doesn’t rule out the possibility, but thinks that useful interactive prototypes are unlikely and, in any case, unnecessary … It’s extreme design versus extreme programming. I don’t buy either one completely. Call me an extreme anti-extremist.” More…

Pixelsurgeon has an interview with the usability guru. I was quite amused by how hard they tried to get Jakob Nielsen say that splash screens on a web site were worth doing (they aren’t) and to recant his Flash: 99% Bad article (he didn’t). If you are a web designer, Nielsen is interesting to read as always.

User style sheets can be powerful tools in browsers that support them.