Life is grand

The Times Reader is an interesting project between the New York Times and Microsoft. For Microsoft it is a technology demonstration, in this case .NET 3.0 (WinFX really) and for the Times it is an exploration of delivering readable content to screens. The web and even most desktop software makes for a bad reading experience. Low DPI, wide blocks of text, poor fonts and, especially on the web, little if any typograhic control.

The Times Reader aims to make reading on the screen easy on the eyes. Using the Microsoft technology it offers the Times’ fonts, builds in readable columns and uses up all the screen real estate it can to present what looks very much like a print newspaper on your screen.

Here are a few screenshots of it in action though I recommend you download it and give it a go to see the layout technology at work (it is a Windows XP/Windows Vista only app, no Mac or Linux versions.)

When you first load it the app downloads a complete set of articles from the server. It then periodically synchronises allowing you to later use the app and read articles offline. As you can see it mimics a newspaper layout. On the right you will see some articles are just being displayed as headlines. If I made the window bigger the summaries of each would start to be displayed and the layout would change.

Along the top you have the different sections which smoothly flips the view from topic to topic.

Here you can see the front page after I have resized the window to a smaller area.

Clicking a headline/article takes you to the article view:

The article is nicely displayed in columns and flows around the image. You can see an advert in this screenshot but not all articles display an advert. If the full article was too long to fit on this one view then the page control (bottom right) would let me flip to the next page. It is a bit fiddly though as you have to click the little arrows rather than a bigger region.

You can also see the text-size control in the bottom left. As you adjust this the view automatically re-flows itself to fit. Honestly though the sizing is in steps and is quite jumpy. I’d have preffered something smoother.

You can go to the next article using the control near the bottom right. The arrows are once again a bit small but the transition to the next article is quite smooth.

An article has several tools one of which lets you annotate with a pen. Handy if a bit limited (other users can’t see it for instance.)

The search has three views one of which is this fluid diagram that shows an article with its assigned “topics” radiating out from it. Topics are much like tags.

Clicking on a topic takes you to a view which shows all articles tagged with that topic:

The other search view shows a grid layout of all stories that match your search, sorted by relevance (as indicated by the litte filled in dots):

Then onto the News in Pictures view which is very, very simple:

It simply takes all the photos in the paper and displays them one after the other with captions. A gallery would have been ideal and also links back to the originating articles.

I am not convinced of the usefulness of the What’s Read but it is an interesting view. It shows you each section with little squares that on roll-over display an article you have read. I would have liked an indicator next to each article title on any page to show that I have read it (much like links on the web change colour.)

All in all the Times Reader is interesting and works quite well. My main problem with it is that it is a separate, desktop app. bound to one OS. We need to get this technology into the browser.

I don’t often read technical books but thought the thin, interesting and good looking Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug would be a good read. A few hours later all the good reviews were proven right. This is an excellent book for everybody involved in user interface design, especially for websites. It is short and too the point with a very friendly tone that is not patronising. It covers a lot of common sense and a lot of usability you may have already read by the likes of Jakob Nielsen and others. But it does it in a thorough and consistent fashion that is well worth reading again.

It also goes a bit into usability testing. Getting people to sit down and test your products. What I really found interesting was how Steve pushed the idea of testing early and often. This reminds me of agile programming and even seems to complement it. Get people in to do usability testing of your product on a regular basis and without the usual usability testing overhead. Not too serious but still useful is the tone he advises. It got me thinking that we could easily fit it into our two-week iteration development cycle and use it for feedback and priority setting.

Hopefully after a few months I’ll be able to report back on how that goes.

Do give the book a read. It is quick and easy but imparts a lot of good information.

Can anyone explain to me why most systems place restrictions on usernames? Why must a username never contain a space? Why must it be longer than 5 characters but shorter than 24? Why can’t I have a / followed by a ! and then a ” in my username?

If a user wants a username of Bob Marley (note the space) then why can’t he have it? Why does he, without fail, have to enter BobMarley?

Is this just a hangover from older times where resources were scarce and text handling libraries rudimentary?

Personally I prefer using my email address as my username as it is almost always unique and available on a system I have yet to try. But my mum doesn’t want a complicated email address as her username. She wants to use Paul’s Mum. Why not?