Archives for the month of: March, 2009
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Windows Server 2008: Cryptic login failure

March 29, 09 //
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You gotta help a user out a little, especially if the error is catastrophic. In the case of this ridiculously cryptic error message, it is indeed catastrophic, since the user is barred from logging in, and is absolutely stuck. I’ve seen this one before*, but managed to get a snap of it this time since it was in a VM:

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Well, now what? No help, no explanation, nothing. How do I fix this? What the hell is a trust relationship with a primary domain, anyway? There’s zero excuse for this abysmally terrible experience. Since I’m getting a friendly (heh) error string, not something like “Error 3X98C4” or “Fatal error in com.microsoft.security.DomainTrustController“), obviously someone bothered to write the string, associate it with the error and localize it. Why, then, isn’t there any information on what the causes might have been and (more importantly) what to do to fix it? Initially, I had no idea what to do, but learned through trial-and-error that logging in as Administrator and restarting solves it. Why does that work? No idea. How can I prevent this error in the future? Again, can’t say.

In general, I’m not a fan of help text. Nobody reads it, it’s often poorly written and an afterthought. However, in this case, there’s no alternative (i.e. a web search) to get the info.

*=And before you think this is a Server problem, and therefore not worth friendly user assistance, I’ve had it happen on Vista as well.

microsoft.com: IE upgrade notice

March 27, 09 //
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If you’re going to be obnoxious, at least don’t be lazy about it. I’m against using browser detection except in extreme circumstances, since it’s so easy to break, causes headaches for developers, testers and users alike, and is generally just sloppy. Here’s a perfect example of that sloppiness, in the form of this notice for IE 8:

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Astute readers will notice immediately what’s wrong with this picture: I’m looking at this page in Firefox on a Mac. So, getting a new version of IE is absolutely impossible for me. Assuming this is done with a user-agent detection, why couldn’t they hide this for obviously non-upgradable configurations? But it gets worse. Say I’m interested in this mythical upgrade to my experience*. I click on the link and get, not directed to a useful page where I can obtain the update, but a cheesy pop-over:

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Dude, yes, I’m interested. Why the interstitial bullshit? Anyway, I perform a second click, which leads me somewhere useful:

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Well, I was just trying to get the browser, so I’m not sure what “Get all 3″ means†, but, whatever, OK, get me to downloadable file already! Nowhere does it say anything about compatibility, so I assume I can get a version that will, in fact, work on my computer. So I go ahead with my third click and get this unattractive, albeit informative, message:

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Ah, there’s the fail. Finally. Now, obviously, they can do detection that indicates I’m not going to be able to use IE 8. Why couldn’t they have told me that before I bothered to click around?

Granted, I know better, and this was an exercise. But what if I just bought a Linux netbook, and really didn’t know? I’d be frustrated. Microsoft does enough frustrating things to/for users (though plenty of non-frustrating, quality ones!), it’s a shame to see this sort of sloppiness still going on. EPIC FAIL.

*=Also they lose points for trying to be clever/coy. Just say “Upgrade to IE 8,” for god’s sake.

†=Bundling crap with your desired download is so five years ago. Lame.

Quickie: Crappy URL

March 27, 09 //
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I initially mis-parsed this as “watch heads”:

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Hint: If you’re going to put a phrase in a URL (which is, indeed, a decent idea), use something to separate words. “watch_the_ads” or “watch-the-ads” would have worked just as well. Sheesh.

OmniFocus: iPhone (3.0 beta)

March 23, 09 //
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Never use a single element or style as an indicator. It’s a very basic principle, but one that’s often forgotten (yeah, I do it too). To take a small example, say you’ve decided to turn off underlining on active hyperlinks, and just use color to indicate the links. Now you’ve possibly screwed color-impared users, or users with a high-contrast theme.

Good user experiences, however, don’t rely on single clues to differentiate content, indicate actions, etc. Here’s a great example. On iPhone OS 3.0, OmniFocus gets horked, dropping the text labels on three of the six categories:

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Had they only used text, I’d have to memorize the list and think about the ordering every time*. But, since each group also has a unique color, I lose no productivity, even though the UI is broken. This is the sort of good redundancy I love to see. Even if was an accident, it’s a definite WIN.

*=Yeah, yeah, there are only three things. But what if there were 30, or the ordering changed dynamically?

Spreadshirt: Best signup form. Ever.

March 22, 09 //
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I have found the absolute gold standard for sign up forms at Spreadshirt:

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That’s it. One field. No fiddling with duplicate passwords, no CAPTCHAs, nothing. Enter email, and you’re ready to accomplish tasks. In this case, design stuff (like t-shirts) to be made on demand:

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One click from “sure, I’ll try that” to getting to the meat of the service. It’s perfect. Why don’t more services do this? OK, I know why. But this is absolutely one place where taking the time to answer the question “What do we have to have from users to get started?”— and not being willing to take shit from developers who don’t want to go the extra mile to overcome technical limitations— can turn a routine, tedious experience into an EPIC WIN.

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