Scrollable pull-down menus enable users to access long lists of options without the need to divide the list into smaller units. For example, Firefox’s Bookmarks menu has scroll buttons at the top and bottom of the menu. Moving the mouse over the top button scrolls the menu up; moving the mouse over the bottom button scrolls the menu down. When scrollable menus contain application-defined options as well as user-defined options, the application-defined options should not scroll.
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Mozilla has released my Text2Link Firefox extension for public download. Text2Link makes it easy to open web pages and send emails to addresses when their URLs are not marked up as HTML links. Although this is a simple enhancement, it really improves the usability of Firefox, especially when interacting with Google’s image search results which don’t mark up the websites hosting the images.
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Scratch is a visual programming environment for creating interactive stories, animations, games, music and art. Scratch is object-oriented and organises projects into objects called sprites. Sprites have a visual presentation called a costume, sound effects, and behaviour implemented by user-defined scripts. Sprites interact with each other on the stage, another object that has sound effects, behaviour, and a visual presentation called a background. At first glance, Scratch resembles Logo’s turtle graphics. But look deeper and one finds that Scratch’s design is deceptively clever and has the potential to change the way we write software.
Continue reading ‘Scratching a Visual Programming Itch’
Harry Beck’s iconic map of the London Underground is now seventy-five years old, which is surprising because it is as fresh today as it was when the first edition was printed in 1933. The London Underground map is one of those rare designs: functional, beautiful and difficult to improve.
Continue reading ‘Harry Beck’s London Underground Map at 75′
