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Use your own app!

7/27/2016

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HIn other words, use your own app frequently. I think that that naturally will reveal features that could be implemented, some of them easily of course, to great benefit to users who you might not originally intended to use the app.

Let me give you an example: I like to use text-to-speech, since I can then do other things. For books, this is usually not an issue. But for text on the web, say, I've been less than impressed.

One app that I thought came close was iSpeech. Instead of requiring me to select and right-click on text, it created neat little buttons in the corner of each paragraph. The other things I tested either required me to select and right click the text, or, even worse, copy-paste it into their app.

However, iSpeech has two features: read from article, or read paragraph. I realize that this is probably what is most important for most of their users.

But, if they had used it themselves frequently, I think they would have realized that there should be a "read from paragraph" option. After all, who wants to hear the table of contents of a Wikipedia article?

I don't usually prove that solutions are simple, but I spent less than an evening fixing this myself - not patching the actual plugin but creating a separate work-around. After some consideration I decided to also use the "Readability" plugin (which should have had the option to remove fluff, so I had to add that also).

So, I wrote a Chrome plugin that removes elements matching the following JQuery selectors:
    ".entry-origin",
    ".entry-meta",
    ".toc",
    ".mw-editsection",
    ".reference",
    "figure",
    "#References",
    ".reflist",
    "#External_links",
    ".external",
    ".sistersitebox"
and that creates a paragraph inside the current paragraph that is positioned way outside the page so that "read paragraph" in effect becomes "read from paragraph".

Here is the public gist:
https://gist.github.com/flyrev/9eab13cd7ecf5e43bddf714fb612d9fc

and here is the repository on GitHub:
​https://github.com/flyrev/chrome-talk-plugin

My extension limits the URLs the plugin fires, which the original project should have also have been able to do under "preferences". (And I had to open a different tab and search after their web page to find their "contact support" information!)
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Always make it easy and obvious how to go back

3/9/2016

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I frequently click on the wrong thing. It just happens. Sometimes, I don't understand how to go "back" properly, so I just start over. Web sites are bad at this. The "back" button does strange things instead of taking the user back.

Come on, people. Get this one right.
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(Really, Spotify?) - If I'm likely to want to do it, make it easy

3/3/2016

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I use Spotify everywhere. It wants to notify me about everything - what I could listen to, what other people are listening to, changes to the playlists I have subscribed to ...

However, in Gnome (which i use at work), the default for Spotify is to send a desktop notification each time the song is changed. Since I usually listen to songs that are about three to five minutes in length, this can get annoying.

The way to disable them is not acceptable.

Are you kidding me? Editing a configuration file for an application that is for "everybody"? I can accept that for a lot of things, but not Spotify.  And the "guide" was initially wrong, too(!), further confusing the poor users.

Spotify made me look through the settings three times, because I was sure I had missed something. But I hadn't.

If I'm likely to want to do it, make it easy. And I'm likely to want to turn off notifications - all of them​. Spotify is not the only sinner, of course. But, dayym. That was just horrible.
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Enough with the error codes

3/3/2016

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I am so sick of error codes. The program crashed. Error code 92. So what?

An improvement over no error code, for sure. It means I can Google it and it will be more likely that I can find a solution.

But, seriously: if you can give me an error code, you should also have a pretty good idea of what's wrong. Don't be lazy. Give me some more information to save me the extra Google search.
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Make obvious things one click (or multiple, obvious clicks) away

3/2/2016

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It drives me barking mad whenever something obvious is not one click away.

A lot of late night comedy clips and various other interviews from programs like 60 minutes are frequently shared in social media. Nobody ever links to the full episode when posting these links (except maybe me). Most people have various disorders that prevent them from being able to watch a full 40-45 minute of anything randomly encountered on the internet.

While that might not happen all the time, I frequently want to see the full episode! And this is very rarely one click away. It's the most obvious thing to link to.

Let's take CBS, for example. Here is a random clip. Now, quickly, find the full episode of that clip. Yes, I know that the rest of the episode probably does not have too much relevance to that clip, but let's look at what they prioritize:
Like, Tweet, Google+, Info (which does not give the link either - only the air date), Check In (some CBS account stuff), Comments. And there is more than enough room for adding "full episode" there. In the example below, I have artificially added a link like that to illustrate that, yes, there is indeed room for it:
Picture
Conan has the same problem. And most other sites. They might have link to full episodes at the beginning, but I rarely access those directly.

With YouTube, the links could be placed in the description. But this is of course not YouTube's fault - but people should still do it.

(Also, for late night talk shows, I usually only care about the monologue, but that's another matter.)
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Don't pretend everything is OK.

3/2/2016

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Sometimes, programs fail and you get no indication of this.

One prime example is setting a browser as default. No, it's not something you do often; usually you do it after installing a new operating system, and when you get a new phone or tablet.

All of them will usually ask: do you want this to be the default browser? Due to various restrictions, this does not always happen even if you click yes.

Surely there is a way to detect this, and tell me that I have to set it somewhere else.

Let me know if you couldn't do it - preferably with a hint as to why - instead of pretending that everything is OK.
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The number one thing I want to do is copy ... the number!

2/24/2016

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Often when someone calls or texts me, I want to copy the number so as to check if it's a telemarketer or something along those lines.

Try copying a number out of the log on the default Android phone app. It's almost impossible.

And it's certainly not the only place where it's difficult.

Always make it easy to copy the relevant info so that I can paste it into a different app!
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Let me easily tab on your page

2/23/2016

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i like to tab around pages, usually to get to the desired input field.

Get this one right. It's not hard. I don't want to *select*  images and things like this. For web pages, just set the appropriate tab index.


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Provide a wrap-around if it makes sense

1/27/2016

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I consider this to be a common problem.

So you're browsing through something. You hit the end of it. Now, you want to go to the first element. But you can't. Because the developers didn't think that you would like to go back to the first element quickly.

The best example I can come up with for this is on-screen keyboards where you have to navigate with arrow keys to get to the keys. That solution will annoying anyway, but at least try to make the navigation as good as possible by providing a wrap-around. Hitting right, expecting to wrap around, and only getting the "error" sound is infuriating.
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Having to sign in to your free Wi-Fi hotspot is not user friendly

12/23/2015

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    Christian Neverdal Jonassen

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