Jon Hartmann

First 3 Minutes with IE9

• September 15, 2010 7:39 PM
• Internet Explorer, User Interface Design
• Comments (1)

So, first three minutes with IE9, and my thoughts are:

• The new interface looks spiffy.
• Cufon is broken in IE9, so my site looks terrible.
• What kind of idiot thought it would be a good idea to make an undifferientiated part of the clear area at the top of the browser launch new tabs instead of maximizing the window on double click?

Double-clicking in the portion of the top of the window where the tab bar would extend to causes a new tab to appear instead of maximizing the window. There is no visual differientiaton to indicate where the cutoff point between these two behaviors is located. Thats a usability fail right there.

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Internet Explorer 9 (Beta) Released

• September 15, 2010 3:22 PM
• Web Trends, Internet Explorer, User Interface Design
• Comments (0)

The Beta of Internet Explorer 9 was released today. I'm usually not excited by IE, but man, anything that stands a chance of knocking IE6 further down the road is a good thing in my book.

Ars Technica has a great article covering IE9, so I wont go into specifics, but I will say that while Microsoft's done some typically stupid things (the UI... yuck), it is a very compliant browser, and hopefully will let us really move forward with HTML5 and some advanced styling. Look for some post from me about what kind of CSS tricks we can hopefully treat as standard now that IE is "back in the game".

Download IE9

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UX Videos Article on Smashing Magazine

• January 5, 2010 11:53 AM
• User Interface Design
• Comments (0)

Check out these videos on User Experiance at Smashing Magazine. I've not had the chance to watch many of them, but there are some gems in there.

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Make the Logo Bigger

• October 13, 2009 1:18 PM
• Web Trends, User Interface Design
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Found a very funny song about web design while looking for good articles today. Perhaps it will give you a laugh too, since I found it so sadly familiar. Click here for 'Make the Logo Bigger' (warning, it autoplays).

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UX Rule: Fixed Content Width

• October 7, 2009 1:56 PM
• User Experience Design (UXD), User Interface Design
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When you're laying out a site, one of the most basic questions you can ask is "Do we make this liquid or fixed width?" Do you let your site fill the user's browser, or do you hold it to a single fixed width? It's a good question, but let me make a suggestion, nay, let me suggestion a rule: Always use a fixed width for your content.

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