My Tab Study: Apropos Links

There’s been lots of interest in the talk I gave at Mozilla last week on the early results of my web browsing study. I’m starting to realize that I’m far from the only one thinking about this stuff. Here are some interesting things I came across in the last week:

Andy Edmonds pointed me to an informal survey done by Dave Munger at Cognitive Daily on how many tabs people use. Dave found that most people had only 2-4 tabs open, and that younger people were likely to have more tabs open. But my favourite part was his finding that if you know who Jonathan Ive, Leo Laporte, and Esther Dyson are — you’re likely to have more tabs open.

Liz Blankenship told me about her project on Tab Visualization for an infoviz course at the University of Michigan. Their goal is to help browser users who tend to have “too many” tabs open at once make sense of the information overload they experience. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Also, I realized that I haven’t mentioned anything yet about Mozilla’s Test Pilot project, other than a brief mention in my last post. Test Pilot is a Mozilla Labs program that will allow people to do studies like mine on a massive scale. The goal is to have 1% of Firefox users opt-in to being participants in these kinds of studies. My study had 22 participants. Think hundreds of thousands, or even millions. Pretty cool. I can’t wait to see where it goes.

Links: Windows 7, visualizing complexity, Cruz

Ars Technica: First look at Windows 7’s User Interface

Looks like Windows 7 is going to have a bunch of interesting new task management features. (Of course, Microsoft has been pulling the ol’ bait-and-switch on things like since Memphis…we’ll see what actually ships.) The taskbar is getting a complete overhaul: thumbnails and “Jump Lists” look cool. Window management is changing as well; I especially like the ability to dock a window on one half of the screen.

Even if you’re not a Windows user, major new features like this will no doubt influence other platforms.

Engineering Windows 7: The Taskbar

Seeing the Ars article on Windows 7 reminded me about this post that I saw a while back. It sets the context for some of the new task management features. The most interesting part is seeing the statistics on what features of the taskbar are actually used, how many windows people typically have open, etc. This is a bit like the kind of data I’m hoping to collect with my tabbed browsing study.

Why Windows is less secure than Linux

This is brilliant. A graphical visualization of system calls in IIS/Windows vs. Apache/Linux. Full size images: IIS, Apache. (via Greg Wilson & Visual Complexity)

Cruz – A Social Browser for Mac OS X Leopard

Cruz is a new WebKit-based browser written by Todd Ditchendorf, the creator of Fluid. Some cool features: multi-pane browsing, a plugin API, Greasemonkey support, built-in TinyURL support. It’s only at 0.1 now, but I’ll be keeping my eye on this.

Things to check out

A roundup of the latest links from del.icio.us/pdubroy:

• AJAX Libraries API – Google Code

  I was wondering when this was going to happen. Google announces that they are now providing hosting and distributing of popular JavaScript libraries. No longer do you have to include the kitchen sink in your application. Well, as long as you are willing to put your eggs in Google’s basket.

• Proposal for a new ticketing system for DrProject

  An interesting idea for bug tracking. Your bug database starts as a simple to-do list, and then you add fields as you need them. Only one working on a project? Don’t need the “owner” field. Just starting to write the code? Don’t need the “release” field.

• Grape desktop

  Really cool concept for a desktop interface based on zooming and spatial organization.

• Long Methods are Natural – Beautiful Code

  Michael Feathers explains how method length seems to have a power law distribution.

• Stanford Human-Computer Interaction Seminar – Free on videos iTunes

  via UsabilityBlog

• When location is everywhere | FactoryCity

  How will your web app change when (and not if) your users can easily share their location data?

Spring Fever: Links for March 14, 2008

It’s finally feeling like spring in Toronto; 6° and sunny today. Here are some links to help you procrastinate on a sunny Friday afternoon:

• Thank god for Spotlight: A Mac user decides to experiment with saving EVERYTHING to the desktop and relying on Spotlight to find things again. Looks like the computer equivalent of compulsive hording. Hat tip: Paul J. Sherman/Usability Blog

• Where’s My Stuff? Beyond the Nested Folder Metaphor: Paul J. Sherman looks at the problems with the traditional file-and-folder metaphor, and points to some alternative interfaces that are inspired by the physical world. BumpTop is of course mentioned.

• Cool 3D, zooming tree browser: Not quite sure how else to described this…you have to see it.

• 3D molecular visualization UI using head tracking: Cool project from U of T that does 3D molecular visualization using head tracking, either using a Wiimote or face recognition.

• Less is More (More or Less): Uncommon Sense and the Design of Computers: Bill Buxton’s classic essay arguing that instead of convergence, divergence should be the dominant model in computing technology. For a while now, I’ve been meaning to write a post that provides a counterpoint to this argument.

Links for January 15th

• UI Design Patterns – Chris Messina’s excellent collection of Flickr albums showing user interface design patterns. Reuse, recycle, but don’t reinvent the wheel unless necessary.
• 1960s Braun Products Hold the Secrets to Apple’s Future (Gizmodo) – Shows many similarities between Apple products designed by Jonathan Ive, and Braun products from the 60s designed by Dieter Rams. Includes a great gallery of dozens of Rams’ most iconic designs.
• Exchange Information with Handshake – Design for a ring that will exchange contact information with another person when you shake hands.

Links for December 4th

• Building shaped like a brain – The International Neuroscience Institute in Hannover, Germany is shaped like a brain. Brilliant. Would this ever happen in North America?
• Software development: The Vast and Endless Sea – If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
• Eventlet – A Python networking library – A highly-scalable networking library which uses non-blocking IO through the use of coroutines. Requires the greenlets module, which adds coroutines to the standard CPython interpreter.
• Design evaluation of the Amazon Kindle – French designer Thibaut Sailly evaluates the physical interface of the new Amazon ebook reader, and suggests an interesting alternative design.
• The CANADIAN DESIGN RESOURCE » Elevated Wetlands – A functional sculpture on the Don Valley Parkway, and one of my favourite things in Toronto.
• Bright Blind creates fake windows – Makoto Hirahara’s “Bright Blind” can be hung on any window-free wall to create the illusion of a window covered by a venetian blind.