Just because you have the ASCII table memorized doesn't mean you know how sorting works. I remember a bug filed where somebody said that the "sort" command was sorting underscores incorrectly: this was claimed to be wrong "because underscore character follow uppercase letters and precedes lowercase letters". Well perhaps it does if you thi...
When do you put "..." after a button or menu? For example, some menus say "Save as..." and some buttons say "Customize...". What is the rule for dots? Many people believe that the rule for dots is "If it's going to display a dialog, then you need dots." This is a misapprehension. The rules are spelled out in the Windows User Interface D...
Plane-spotters to require government license. The article spins it as a "benefit" for ground-based aviation buffs, but this is just one of those "two steps back, one step forwards" things. Plane-spotters were outright banned from airports in the summer of 2003. Now they can go back, but they'll need to shell out £15 for the privileg...
Larry Osterman picks up the history ball and describes how those FILE_SHARE_* values came to be.
Mike Pesca undertakes a textual analysis of the Friends theme song.
When you're displaying a menu item or a dialog option, and the option is not available, you can either disable it or you can remove it. What is the rule for deciding which one to do? Experiments have shown that if something is shown but disabled, users expect that they will be able to get it enabled if they tinker around enough. So leave a...
For the third year in a row, the United Nations' Development Program has ranked Norway as having the best standard of living in the world. Norwegians beat out all others because of their high levels of education, pay and life expectancy. In a totally unrelated story: Norway world leader in casual sex. Of course, Norway isn't all candy ...
The commentary after my entry on taskbar grouping drifted into people asking for still more features in taskbar grouping. Writing the code is the easy part. Designing a feature is hard. You have several audiences to consider. It's not just about the alpha geeks; you have to worry about the grandmothers, the office workers, the IT dep...
As if there isn't enough to worry about. Everyone knows about the dangers of open SMTP relays. But how many people realize the dangers of an open HTTP relay? Many web sites do arbitrary redirection. If I were a spammer, I could create a link to myself that redirects through some well-known web sites, thereby granting my spam link false aut...
(Even if you don't read Swedish, you may enjoy the links at the end.) Några personer har frågat mig varför jag läser svenska. Historien börjar för många år sedan. Jag läste tidningen och såg att det fanns avgiftsfria norskalektioner i Ballard kyrkans källaren. (Ballard är en d...
