August 26, 2003
Usability & Common Sense
I was discussing the MIT "Common Sense" notes with a friend, and I had some thoughts to share...
At my previous employer, HotelTools, we used real-world common-sense input from subject matter experts/employees to design the behavior of our app. How should the app behave? Ask the users, not the developers. Make the software predict the user's common sense behavior.
Common sense is the heart & soul of usability. Something is "usable" if it responds in a way I assume it would respond. If I get in a new car, it should go when I push the accelerator.
I form assumptions of consequence before I perform an action. If these assumptions are proven wrong, I get confused and may become more hesitant to make similar assumptions in the future in relation to the task. Common sense has gone unrewarded in such a case.
This also leads to the need for consistency, which is another huge usability issue. If your common sense was rewarded once, you would expect it to be rewarded in the future. If my hotel software accurately predicted that I wanted to check someone out of the hotel because I clicked on the name of a guest who was scheduled to leave today, my common sense was rewarded. Therefore, I presume that when I select a guest who is scheduled to arrive today, it will also assume that I want to check them into the hotel. If it does not, I will not be able to make a consistent prediction as to the results of my actions, and the software becomes more frustrating to me.
Try to anticipate your user's actions. If there is very large chance that they will always do a certain thing in a certain situation, default to that action and give them the ability to navigate elsewhere if they want something else.
MIT's free college courses online
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been posting their open courseware online. This means you can read materials for many of their college-level courses online for FREE.
Highlights for interested Flash coders include:
Common Sense Reasoning for Interactive Applications
Classical Mechanics: A Computational Approach
Dig around. Not all courses have lecture notes online, but some (like the Classical Mechanics physics course) even have the BOOK online for free.
Learn something every day.
August 25, 2003
Flash my PDA, please.
Macromedia once tried buidling a Flash player for Palm devices a few years ago. Word on the street was that the devices were too slow, so playback performance was unacceptable and they delayed development.
Macromedia has released only ONE player for a PalmOS line of devices, the Sony Clie series, which run the PalmOS 5 operating system.
Handspring has a new Treo which is about to be released, the Treo 600, which also runs the PalmOS version 5. So hopefully, Macromedia will release a player for these devices.
I am personally left out in the cold, as I just purchased a Treo 300, which runs PalmOS 3.5, and it looks like I'll never see a Flash player for my pda/phone. Maybe with all of the new speed improvements made in the Flash player 7, I can wish for someone at MM to try and apply these fixes to the Palm player, and give it another try on the Palm OS3.5 devices.
Please?
(Maybe I should have just bought a PocketPC with phone features instead)
August 22, 2003
Some Friday entertainment...
My wife and I have seen some animated clips on the VH1 cable channel, featuring a band of kittens playing a Ramones song. Evidently, it all started with a couple of Flash animations featuring punk kittens. Great stuff.
It just goes to show you that Flash can be used for so many things. Flash is frequently used to make animations for TV, from commercials to full-length animated series.
If only they would give Homestar Runner a TV show...
August 19, 2003
Mobile bloggin
I'm working on a way to blog from my PDA.This internet thing is neat...I think I'll keep it.
:)
August 18, 2003
Screenweaver updated to 3.0.6.4
They updated Screenweaver on Friday. For more info, check the Screenweaver Changelog.
One interesting addition:
swFile.createProjector, for creating Macromedia Stand-alone projectors from a given .swf file. Maybe someone wants to use Screenweaver's SWF-to-EXE tools to build their own SWF-to-EXE tools...
...they also added programming support for downloading files.
August 15, 2003
Stop listening. Now listen.
I found a bug in the Flash6 player that does not properly unload all listeners contained within a loaded movie. If a loaded movie creates listeners, they should be removed when the movie is unloaded. They are not. If your project loads and unloads movies repeatedly, these listeners can pile up and really slow things down.
I had a project that loaded/unloaded the same movie clip repeatedly, and there were listeners in one of the components within the clip (a text editor).
The movie became very slow, as these listeners accumulated. I worked around this by editing the component to look for a global pointer to the listener, and remove the listener before adding a new one. That way, if one exists already, it would be removed before creating a new one.
This worked around my problem, and my project 's performance improved greatly.
I got a tip from Moock that you can use the _listeners array to access all of the listeners currently running.
For example: Key._listeners.length would give you the number of listeners currently being handled by the Key object.
Flash friend
My buddy Robert Thompson helped build a recently launched online game, Cosmic Encounter Online.
I remember when we were building "Futuresplash" movies back in the day...
August 13, 2003
Kodak Black & White Disposable camera
Kodak has released a black & white, disposable camera.
This is a cool idea, since there are times when B&W photos really enhance a particular scene. So you take your color film or digital camera to a party, and have a spare b&w disposable in your pocket for added variety.
Hilarious
Bullet-time ping-pong, performed by a live group of performers. Priceless.
Neato Treo
I ordered a Handspring Treo. They had a super deal, whre I could get a Treo for $99.
Should have it in a few days...too bad there's STILL no Flash player for Palm OS. :(
August 05, 2003
Elvish fonts
(via Slashdot)
For those of you interested in all things Tolkein, here is a guide to Writing With Elvish Fonts.
I see some cool Flash designs that could arise from this...
(Please don't ask for me to do Elvish translations. Read the guide.)
Illogicz Collision Engine
Stuart Schoneveld has a killer demo of his Illogicz Collision Engine. This tool seems to allow you to create/import objects in a Flash project and assign elastic physical properties to them, so that they will bounce off of and interact with things around them.
It's great to see what can be done in Flash by people with the gift for mathematics & physics.
August 04, 2003
Big Fish
We saw the Coral Reef Adventure IMAX film over the weekend. It's a very beautiful film. The shots of the reefs and fish were amazing to see. It also makes you aware of how fragile these ecosystems are.
For those who don't know about IMAX, it is a large-format movie film, shown on a screen 80ft (25m) high. Seeing a reef full of life and color on an 80ft high screen was pretty incredible.
August 01, 2003
iTrip
The iTrip is a cool little FM transmitter for your iPod to play your MP3 music through your car stereo or home audio system without wires. It's always nice to see a good idea executed with a sleek design.