Kieran Chapman Design » UI

Is Apple Killing the Mouseover?

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:30:42 +0000

Andy Croll writes in the end of :hover?:

:hover as an web interface design tool going forward is going to be less and less important. As to whether this is a good or bad thing I’m not sure.

He makes the point that as more and more sites and web apps optimize for the iPad and iPhone, designers aren’t going to be able to rely on mouseover states. Mouseovers are used both to provide feedback that an item is clickable and to reduce complexity on a screen by hiding controls until the cursor is moved over an area. But that ability goes away with the iPad. I’m running into this issue with a current project, and it takes a new way of thinking about the problem.

Andy sums up:

I know that I’ll certainly be considering ‘tap to toggle’ as a user interface choice ahead of hover in the future. The iPhone-ification of interaction online continues.

(via Daring Fireball)

yav Form Validation

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:17:19 +0000

yav Form Validation

- Make form validation (a little) easier with yav.

Forms are a way for your site’s users to contact you, place orders, complete a survey — in general, provide you with important information. So, it’s very important that forms are clear, well-designed, and easy to use.

Validating online forms is a pain from a developer’s point of view, but necessary for a good user experience. If a user does make a mistake completing a form — such as omitting a required field or entering an invalid email address — you want to let them know right away so they can fix it before submitting the data. And it’s best to show the error right away without refreshing the page or having to user search for what might be wrong. (A somewhat-old but still-relevant article by UIE is worth a read: Web Form Design in the Wild, Part II.)

yav is Javascript form validation tool that does a great job handling form validation. It’s good for both simple validating (such as requiring a field or checking for a valid email address) and more complex rules (if your country = United States then require the State field; if your country = Canada, require province). You can even write custom Javascript functions if you need require even more specific validation rules.

yav also gives you options for displaying form errors. You can list the errors in a single section above the form, which works well with shorter forms:

IMAGE

You can also display error messages inline, which is better for longer forms. You don’t want users to have to search for their error, so calling out the error next to the field that needs correcting makes it easy to find:

IMAGE

yav’s config settings let you change error message text, and you have total control over the look of the errors using CSS. The only downside is that it’s not terribly well-documented, so if you’re unfamiliar with Javascript you’ll probably require some trial & error to get things to work like you want them.

yav also gives you options for displaying form errors. You can list the errors in a single section above the form, which works well with shorter forms:

iPad: a Huge Leap Forward for Regular Folk

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:13:23 +0000

There’s been so much reaction since the release of Apple’s iPad, a lot of it strangely underwhelming. Not that everybody needs to be an “Apple fanboy suckling at the teat of Steve Jobs” (as some people have put it) but the iPad is more than “just a big iPod Touch.” (As an aside, I realize nobody likes the name “iPad” — The Onion’s comment “Awkward name enables Twitter users to make the same joke over and over and over again” points out the obvious jokes — but why don’t IBM ThinkPads get the same treatment?)

On his blog, Mike Monteiro suggested that “The iPad isn’t the future of computing; it’s a replacement for computing.” I think he’s right, which is why so many people who “do computers” (geeks) are underwhelmed — or worse — by the iPad. It’s not going to replace computers for geeks, but it’s going to bring computers to the rest of the world.

So many things that it doesn’t do or have are actually perfect for non-geeks: The iPad has no file system, which is good for people who can’t find files they’ve saved. There’s no multitasking, so people who don’t realize that they left 10 applications open won’t wonder why their computer is running so slowly. And another big improvement is software installation.

Right now it’s pretty simple on a Mac — just copy the application from the disk image to your Applications folder — but even that can be confusing to novices. (How many non-geeks have run their newly downloaded application from the disk image?) iPhone and iPad app installation is easy: find the app you want to install, the icon appears, you move it to the screen you want. This simplicity alone is a huge step in the right direction for the non-geeks.

The iPad isn’t for everyone (I certainly can’t see it replacing my regular Mac) but I believe it is for a lot of people. The geeks may not be impressed (how could a UI designer not be impressed? Simplicity is not simple!) but perhaps the iPad isn’t supposed to impress them. It’s not for them; it’s for the regular folks.